The Medici Conspiracy (78 page)

From Etruria in Italy, the modern area stretching north of Rome to Grosseto, Siena, and Florence and into Umbria as far as Perugia.

This illegal dig had come to light when a building company had been clearing a road, which had collapsed. It turned out that the road had collapsed because tombaroli had built a tunnel under it, to get from a house on one side to a
stipe
—a room attached to a temple—opposite. Votive objects galore had been smuggled out via this tunnel, but once the road had collapsed, the very distinctive antiquities from Scrimbia had been on the Carabinieri's watch list ever since. Dozens of objects in Savoca's mansard room matched the style of objects typically found at Scrimbia.

One such object was the sarcophagus stolen from the Church of San Saba in Rome, which had been consigned to Sotheby's in London by Editions Services (see p. 19).

The Brygos Painter flourished in Athens c. 490–470 BC and was a pupil of Onesimos.

See p. 73.

In the catalog of the Passion for Antiquities exhibition, in relation to catalog number 126, the text of the Hercules reads as follows: “The superb illusionism of Second-Style Roman wall painting is brilliantly in evidence in this fragment from the upper zone of a Pompeian wall.” It continues: “The upper portion of the fresco matches precisely the upper portion of a fresco section in the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection... and is from the same
room
as catalogue number 125” (italics added; see the Dossier section). Catalog number 125 was in fact another fresco fragment, consisting of two rectangular panels and showing landscape scenes bathed in a light blue-green hue. The text argues that, based on the right-to-left orientation of the shadows on the columns, “this was part of the right-hand wall upon entering the room.”

These two items recall the frescoes from the Pompeian villa that Pellegrini first encountered when delving into Medici's documentation—they too were of the Second-Style (see p. 69).

We know that three walls were photographed by the tombaroli, but it is not clear if they are from the same villa. Only
parts
of three walls were recovered in Corridor 17, but if the building had dimensions as hinted at in the diagram on p. 71, many frescoes might still be missing.

See the Dossier section.

See Note, pp. 384–385.

See p. 22.

The circumstantial evidence was that the buyer lodged a bid just above the reserve on each item and did not bid on any other items. Furthermore, the commission bid was lodged just minutes before the sale, and afterward, Sotheby's shipping department was instructed to send the purchases of Arts Franc together with the purchases of Editions Services to Arts Franc's address in Geneva.

See p. 62.

See p. 19.

See pp. 96–98.

See pp. 103–106.

See p. 129.

See pp. 129–130.

See p. 10.

See p. 84.

See p. 26 and the Notes, p. 386.

See p. 82.

Again, see p. 99 and 209.

See the Prologue, p. xvi.

See pp. 103–106.

See p. 104.

See Chap. 16.

See p. 131.

See p. 204 for the circumstances.

The lost palace of King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) was rediscovered in 1847 by the British adventurer Austen Henry Layard. According to Genesis, Nineveh was among the first cities to be built after the Flood.

See p. 104.

See the Prologue.

In an interview with Peter Watson in London on February 6, 2006, Robin Symes said he had contributed $1 million to the Oxford Fellowship.

See p. 106.

The Kalmakarra Cave, known as the Western Cave, is located about nine miles northwest of Pol-e Dokhtar in Luristan, near the Iraq border. Several hundred objects are believed to have been looted and are now dispersed in Turkey, Japan, Britain, Switzerland, and the United States. In 1993, Turkish authorities seized a number of objects believed to belong to the treasure. One of the experts who examined the griffin noted its similarities to certain objects in the Miho Museum in Japan.

See pp. 123–126 for a discussion of their quality and probable provenance.

See p. 204.

See pp. 26–27.

By now, Pellegrini had worked out that the organigram must have been written down sometime between 1990 and 1993. The chart showed Mario Bruno, of Lugano, on a secondary level, below Medici and Becchina but above the capi zona. By then, the investigators had established from other interviews and interrogations that Bruno had been a prominent figure in the antiquities underworld in the 1980s, almost on a level with Hecht, but had lost some of his influence since then, though no one knew why. Bruno died in 1993, so it follows that the organigram was compiled between these dates.

See pp. 240–242.

See pp. 244–245.

Nikolas Zirganos is an investigative reporter based in Athens. He works for
Kyriakatiki Eleftheroptypia
newspaper and
Epsilon
magazine.

This perhaps also explained something that had puzzled Ludovic de Walden, the London lawyer for the Papadimitriou family. It was known that Christo always made notes using the yellow legal pads favored by American law firms. No notes of any kind by Christo, on yellow paper, were ever found among the archives, save for the one sheet written on in Symes's distinctive handwriting (see pp. 254–255). Is this what Symes was burning on Schinoussa?

See p. 239.

See p. 103.

See the explanation for this above, p. 373.