Bonhams ‘sold 2,500-year-old wine jug it was warned had been looted’, claims antiquities expert

Greek artefact sold by London auction house in 2010 is withdrawn from Munich sale after archaeologist tells police it was trafficked

Lot 5 depicted in the confiscated Becchina archive, after restoration, with its upper part (rim) restored.
A Greek vase, pictured before and after restoration, that was allegedly trafficked and subsequently withdrawn from auction in Munich

Bonhams has been accused by a leading archaeologist of selling a looted Greek wine jug despite allegedly being sent evidence that it was sold by a convicted artefact trafficker.

Prof Christos Tsirogiannis has condemned the auction house after the jug, sold in 2010, was withdrawn from another planned auction this week, this time in Germany.

He alleges that Bonhams was negligent in originally selling the jug in London, claiming the company had been sent photographic evidence that links it to Giacomo Medici, one of the most notorious convicted traffickers in looted artefacts.

Police in Germany have alerted Interpol and the Italian authorities about the jug, which from around 480BC, after Prof Tsirogiannis raised his concerns.

Gorny & Mosch, a Munich auction house, was planning to sell it on July 22, mentioning Bonhams in the object’s collecting history.

It is one of four antiquities that was withdrawn from that sale after Prof Tsirogiannis passed evidence to police, including photographs of the same pieces allegedly taken while in the possession of traffickers.

For the wine jug, he has photographs, from before and after restoration, purporting to be from an archive seized by police from Medici, who was convicted in Italy in 2004 of dealing in stolen artefacts.

Prof Tsirogiannis told The Sunday Telegraph: “Bonhams had been notified at the time, and yet the object was sold.”

Lot 33 depicted in the confiscated Medici archive, before restoration, with encrustations and part of its tail missing
This figurine was another lot withdrawn from sale by the Munich auction house Gorny & Mosch

Before the 2010 Bonhams auction, he contacted Prof David Gill, who ran a report on his Looting Matters blog, which focuses on the ethics of collecting antiquities.

Prof Gill had contacted Bonhams and made the Italian authorities aware through a report that appeared in The Art Newspaper under the headline “Medici ‘loot’ for sale?”.

It quoted a Bonhams spokesman saying the firm had yet to have any proof that the provenance was questionable.

Prof Tsirogiannis, an associate professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Aarhus, in Denmark, said that Italian newspapers also reported the case: “This is all published information and anyone who googles it can find it. But Gorny & Mosch do not put it in their catalogue.”

The Munich auctioneer had listed the provenance of the wine jug, originally lot 17, as “2010 at Bonhams; from a Swiss private collection from the 1960s to the 1970s”.

Prof Tsirogiannis, a former senior field archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, said that “Swiss private collection” was the only provenance given by Bonhams in 2010, “which in reality appears to refer to Medici”.

Last year The Sunday Telegraph reported that Bonhams had withdrawn an ancient Greek drinking vessel after Prof Tsirogiannis alerted Interpol and other police authorities.

The other items withdrawn from the Munich auction include an Etruscan bronze figurine and Greek vases.

Although such antiquities are thousands of years old, their prices may be considered inexpensive  the Greek jug sold by Bonhams, for instance, changed hands for £3,600.

Bonhams said: “At the time of our sale ten years ago, we had no proof that there was anything questionable about the provenance. We do not have direct access to the Medici archive.”

Dr. Hans-Christoph von Mosch of Gorny & Mosch disputed the claim they were looted. He said: “Gorny & Mosch deliberately [withdrew] the four items for further research."

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