On January 30, 2024, Christie’s Auction New York is scheduled to sell artifacts from Magna Grecia.
However, it is not clear if some of these artifacts violate a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that the USA signed with Italy that prohibits any antiquities that originate in Italy from being sold in the USA. unless they were discovered and exported out of the Italy prior to 1970, or unless the artifacts have a valid license of export issued by the Italian Government. The MOU prohibits the sale of archeological material from Italy representing preclassical, classical, and imperial Roman periods ranging from approximately the 9th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. In paragraph 2,D of the MOU are listed many weapons and armor, including helmets.
Many exquisite helmets that are listed in Christie’s Auction catalogue Collecting Odyssey are described as being from Magna Grecia in Southern Italy and were purchased after 1980– and thus could be in violation of MOU.
One of the valued items in this auction’s catalogue is The Guttman Mouse Helmet that is described as “one of the greatest Roman helmets ever found.” The catalogue states that this sale “gives collectors perhaps the final opportunity to acquire some of the rarest military objects from the ancient world still in private hands.”
There are concerns about the dates in the provenance of the helmets, which if they do not adhere to the MOU’s agreement, should provoke a pause of this auction until authorities can ascertain if the works are prohibited for sale under the current MOU. Any temporary pause to ascertain if the artifacts, helmets in particular, were discovered in illicit archeological digs and then trafficked out of Italy illegally without license of export should be considered reasonable by the Christie’s Auction House, as well as the current owner Christian Levett, who has a good reputation as a collector and patron of the arts and has already proven his respectability by returning a set helmets from his collection to Spain that were proven to have been taken illegally from an illicit archeological site in Northern Spain. Levett also recently donated a 15th century Madonna in stucco polychrome to the Palazzo Davanzati Museum in Florence.
Many of the lots in the auction catalogue list provenances that begin with the German collector Axel Guttmann apparently well after 1970. After his death, Guttmann’s heirs sold off his collection at Christie’s in 2002 and 2004. The collection was bought by various dealers and collectors including the late Jerry Eisenberg of Phoenix Antiquities of New York. They were later acquired by the current owner Levett, who exhibited them in his Museum in France.
The MOU mandates that antiquities will be prohibited for sale in the U.S. even if they come from 3rd countries, from dealers or private collections. An example of precedent is when the Manhattan DA’s Office seized a gold Phiale taken from Sicily that was in the collection of the billionaire Michael Steinhardt. The Phiale, dated from 450 BC, cost Steinhardt $1 million. The prosecutors stated that many antiquities that were seized from Steinhardt were trafficked by dealers who were notorious for trafficking in illicit antiquities including one named Gianfranco Becchina. In 2009, Fabio Isman wrote in his book The Raiders of Lost Art, that Becchina was one of Guttmann’s main suppliers. Becchina was convicted back in 2011 for trafficking in looted Italian antiquities and his name always raises suspicions.
Axel Guttman’s collection has already been questioned by experts from as far back as 1995 when the archeologist Daniel Graeper of the University of Heidelberg questioned where and when the artifacts were unearthed in Southern Italy. In the 1995 edition (gennaio-aprile) of Bolletino D’Arte of the Ministero per I Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Graepler wrote about how Guttmann began purchasing large amounts of armor and weapons in 1982 and amassed 174 bronze helmets that were most probably from tombs. Graepler stressed that this many helmets were indicative of large number of tombs that were destroyed by the tomb raiders that did the illicit digging.
This collection should be scrutinized swiftly prior to Jan 30. The seller, Christian Levett stated after returning the helmets to Spain it was his opinion that when an object has been illegally looted or exported from a source country, he would not want to retain that piece in his collection. He is an art patron of good reputation and should be given an opportunity to pause the auction and carefully review the current mandates of the MOU that the U.S.A. signed with Italy.
