Bonhams Antiquities Controversy: 10 Works Withdrawn After Italy Intervenes

Withdrawn from Bonhams: Large early Apulian red-figure hydria, attributed to the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl, ca. 410-400 B.C. Estimate: £80,000-120,000

Bonhams is starting to seem like the auction house of choice for sellers who are concerned that their disposals might meet with disapproval if information about them were more widely disseminated, as would happen if the sales were at the bigger houses. This could be the case with the planned deaccessions in New York by the Museum of Arts and Design, which I reported about yesterday, as well as with the scheduled sale of 10 antiquities that were suddenly withdrawn from yesterday's auctions (here and here) in London.

Nick Squires of the London Telegraph reports:

Bonhams made the last minute decision not to auction the artefacts after being told by the Italian embassy in London that some of them were probably stolen and illegally exported from Italy. The 10 items, which were expected to fetch £200,000, were among 600 fresco fragments, busts and statues due to go under the hammer.

One of them, a 4th-century BC Greek vase, was once owned by Robin Symes, a British dealer who in 2005 was imprisoned for two years for bankruptcy but released after seven months. The auction house was furious that the Italian authorities gave just 24 hours' notice about the objects' suspect provenance.

Former Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, now a member of Italy's parliament, was in the forefront of efforts to stop the sale of the allegedly suspect pieces. As CultureGrrl readers may remember, Rutelli last March announced:

I expect that over the next few years hundreds of other works stolen from our national patrimony and taken abroad will return to Italy: the agreement that I have made with the British Minister of Culture to shed light on the [Robin] Symes collection housed in London has opened new, considerable opportunities.

Rutelli now feels that his successor as culture minister, Sandro Bondi, is "not taking sufficient action" to pursue those considerable opportunities, as the Telegraph reports.

David Gill of the Looting Matters blog, who has been following this antiquities story for several days, yesterday posted  Bonhams' somewhat irate press release (which I could not find on the auction house's website) announcing the withdrawals. The auction house criticized Italian authorities for "keep[ing] information [about the pieces] hidden, for whatever reason, until the very last minute."

Could the reason be to achieve maximum publicity value for a last-minute "rescue"?