Today, two extraordinary Roman bronze genre statues, each depicting a young toddler leaning forward with open arms pursuing a partridge were formally presented at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional having been relinquished voluntarily back to Spain by the collector who purchased them and voluntarily return to Spain.  The little girls, leaning forward with open arms and splayed fingers, stretching toward a bird that is just out of reach were forged somewhere between the1st century BCE and the early 1st century CE.  

In 2012, Christie’s had announced their sale, estimating a purchase price of between $3-5 Million USD, and listing the artefacts as coming from a "private collection, the owner’s family having acquired them from renowned Swiss collector Giovanni Züst in the 1960s, whose collection formed the nucleus of Basel’s famed Antikensammlung."  

Züst, (Basel 1887 - Rancate 1976) was an important collector not only of paintings but also of ancient objects and is most well known for having donated 600 objects of Etruscan and Greek art to the Swiss museum.   

That ownership narrative however proved to be categorically false. 

Christie's purchased the bronzes in a private transaction for $3 million and then sold them on to a collector. Two years after the initial Christie's publicity, the striking pair were loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and given temporary accession number: L.2014.38.3a, b.  

But by 2023 the truth about the pair's murky origins began to publically unravel in published reports regarding an acquittal in Lugano, Switzerland on charges of fraud, and subsequently embezzlement, for a suspicious transaction.  

At the centre of that dispute were the two ancient bronze figures, whose origins were hotly contested by a then 51-year-old Swiss man from Mendrisiotto and an 80-year-old Italian already noted for crimes related to the illicit trafficking of cultural property, as well as looting and smuggling. 

The Swiss defendant claimed the bronzes had belonged to his family for generations, while the private prosecutor, alleged that the bronzes were found by his grandfather on land in Spain with prosecutors suggesting the most likely scenario was that the pair of bronzes came from an archaeological site in Spain near the accuser’s residence and were then transported abroad without authorisation.

Between 2006 and 2007, photos taken at the accuser’s house in Spain documented the poor condition of the two bronzes, showing them in need of conservation.  This  negates the credibility of the 1960s Swiss collector Giovanni Züst ownership narrative which was presented to the auction house. The artefacts were subsequently handed over to the Italian for restoration and later circulated through London as well as Ticino, Switzerland, before ultimately making their way into the hands of Christie's collector who loaned them to the New York museum.

The private accuser in the Swiss case claimed false documents were prepared asserting that the bronzes were family heirlooms and even concocting the fictitious association with the renowned Swiss collector.  When half of the sale proceeds were not paid as agreed, the accuser filed his complaint in the Swiss courts in 2018.

As the case wound its way from the lower court to the Court of Criminal Appeals, the prosecutor in the case voiced his doubts about the origin stories exchanged between the warring parties, stating: "It is hardly credible that there are no family photos (of the 51-year-old, ed.) showing the two bronzes, much less expert opinions if his ancestors were indeed art collectors. Even more unusual, not to say absurd, that two statues worth millions of dollars were exchanged in the parking lots of a shopping center (between the two defendants, ed.)."

All of this ultimately worked to the advantage of investigators. Spain’s Historical Heritage Brigade and the Central UDEV (Specialized Violent Crime Unit) of the Policía Nacional, supported by the Spanish Embassy in Switzerland, the Ministry of Culture’s Subdirectorate of Registers and Documentation of Historical Heritage, the National Archaeological Museum and the Customs department of the AEAT, concluded that the bronzes had been looted from Spain between 2007 and 2008, and were part of a illicit trafficking and money laundering scheme that has impacted Spain for almost two decades.

With collaboration of Homeland Security Investigations, the toddlers were officially announced today during a handover ceremony at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, attended by members of the National Police, the head of the Central Unit for Specialized and Violent Crime, José Ángel González, and representatives of the Ministry of Culture. The bronzes will now enter the national collection, where they can be studied and appreciated by the public rather than hidden behind false pedigrees. 

Yet their journey also stands as a stark reminder that cultural property crime is far from a relic of the past. Spain’s archaeological heritage continues to face real and persistent threats from looting networks, forged provenances and the international market’s willingness to profit from high-value objects with only cursory due diligence, ignoring thin or implausible histories. Recoveries like this one are true victories, but they also highlight how much work remains to ensure that cultural heritage is protected, not commodified, and that the stories buried beneath the soil of source countries are not erased for private gain.

By:  Lynda Albertson

Author: Penelope Jackson

Publisher: Monash University Publishing, Clayton, Victoria, 2025

Reviewer: Dr Vicki Oliveri, Australian-based Art Crime Researcher

Penelope Jackson's use of the word ‘unseen’ as the main title of her new book is a clever descriptor to employ, as it captures various aspects of art history and art crime in Australia where knowledge gaps exist. Each chapter explores these gaps and provides pertinent details that too often are left out, not only in the backstory of an artwork and art crime, but also in their present status. Jackson further enriches these details by analysing why such gaps exist.

In Chapter One, “An Exhibition of Missing Art”, Jackson presents us with a collection of missing (and still to be recovered) artworks. Included in this “exhibition” is what she dubs the “inaugural ‘known’ theft” [in 1926] from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) – The Gentle Shepherd, by Scottish artist Sir David Wilkie (p. 12). In this chapter, Jackson makes the important observation that in Australia, “while some missing artworks are acknowledged, others are not. There’s no right answer, or definitive rule, about how to deal with acknowledging missing artworks” (p. 11). As is her style throughout this book, Jackson explores the backstories of this and the other missing artworks, as well as analysing the many aspects of the term ‘missing’ itself.

In Chapter Two, “Artnapping and Recovering Art”, when recounting well-known art thefts, Jackson goes beyond the usual re-telling and delves a bit deeper. For example, with the 1986 theft of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the NGV she tries to understand what the fascination is with this particular heist (p. 36). The Weeping Woman was recovered but, as Jackson rightly points out, “so often a work’s theft and recovery are not acknowledged by the gallery” (71). As this chapter highlights, it’s not only the missing works that are “unseen” but also details about them.

Copies of artworks can also fall into the category of ‘unseen” too, as discussed in Chapter Three’s “A Mania for Copies”. In a world of art forgeries, it is refreshing to read about the place of legitimate copies of art and their role in Australian art and cultural history. Here we read about famed copies such as the ubiquitous Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (1954) by William Dargie, also known as The Wattle Portrait, in reference to the yellow ballgown worn by the Queen. Then there is the Australian public’s obsession with William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World. The replica that went on tour in Australia was painted in the period 1900 – 1904 and it is estimated that four million people came out to see it (p.85). Many saw the painting “several times” and, as Jackson notes, with a national population of five million at the time, the visitor numbers were indicative of “an incredible event and achievement, demonstrating the popular taste for the subject matter and style of art” (p. 85). Copies have since fallen out of favour with few remaining on display and, over time, copies “can be passed off as authentic artworks” (pp 103-104). This is why provenance research is vital, to help distinguish authentic works from any replicas or intentional fraudulent art.

Chapter Four’s “In Verso” tackles cases of fraudulent art through the lens of the artwork’s verso. It is, in a sense, the backstory of the back-of-a-painting’s story. The details noted on the back of an artwork, and those that aren’t, can provide evidence to “help establish and confirm a work’s provenance” (p. 106). Focusing on the verso is a creative and intriguing method of exploring these cases of art crime.

When it comes to art crime Jackson notes that “Every country has a Dobell” (p.138). She is, of course, referring to the famed Australian artist William Dobell, known (amongst other things) for his Archibald Prize winning portraits of Margaret Olley and Joshua Smith. In her research, Jackson has noted that Dobell’s works have “regularly been at the forefront of illegal behaviour” (p.138), so much so that she devotes the whole of Chapter Five to him – “Stealing Dobell”. In this chapter, Jackson chronicles twenty cases (!) involving Dobell, many not well-known, if at all.

With so many art crimes remaining unsolved, it’s not surprising that the available data on the extent of this criminal activity is hard to come by. Jackson addresses the challenges of data collection, such as the way art crime is classified by Australian criminal law, but she takes the topics of ‘numbers’ a lot further in Chapter Six – “Painting by Numbers”. Money talks so yes, the chapter does begin with monetary value of artworks which so often dominates the headlines (such as the National Gallery of Australia purchasing Jackson Pollack’s Blue Poles in 1973 for a record $1.3M) but, as Jackson notes, “Art historians have traditionally shied away from including monetary information in their narratives” (p. 179). This chapter covers a variety of areas, from the ‘numbers’ provided by art sales, to what is meant by the term “prolific” (a word artists are often tagged with), to acknowledging the role data and statistics can make in “redressing the imbalances of individual artists, and group of artists, as the subject of exhibitions or being represented in collections” (p.199) – trying to make the unseen, seen.

Finally, in Chapter Seven, “Damaged Goods”, Jackson profiles a number of artworks that have been damaged by accident, vandalism, theft, fires, and natural disasters, and how an “object’s status can change irrevocably when damaged, regardless of how good its restoration is” (p. 218). Cases include the devastating destruction caused by the unprecedented level of flooding in Lismore in 2022. Despite staff following their Disaster Plan, Lismore Regional Art Gallery suffered terrible losses, where the “final tally saw 60% of the collection deemed unsalvageable” (p.226). This has understandably led to questions being asked about the efficacy of Disaster Plans and the locations of cultural institutions (p. 227). The chapter also looks at the rise of activism which garners attention through vandalising art.

By adopting a holistic narrative approach, that goes beyond the typical finish line of other historical accounts of art crime, this book becomes an exemplar on how to write a full history of an art crime, and the life of an artwork itself. And for those new to art crime Jackson provides definitions throughout the book of the different types of crimes committed against art, including unpacking the tricky terms 'fraud'; and 'forgery'; and their application in Australian criminal law. There is also a handy glossary.

Overall, this book is such a good read because, along with the themes and backstories developed in this book, Jackson rewards the reader with lots of art-historical gems scattered throughout the text. For example, the serendipitous way in which she came across an unfamiliar colonial artist, Eliza Blyth, who created beautiful botanical artworks but who has all but been forgotten (pp.25-26). Then there is poignant case of a stolen Albert Namatjira painting, Areyonga Paddock, James Range (1957) which he had gifted to the girls at the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. A plaque had been attached to the painting’s frame noting that it had been presented to the girls there. Sadly, although the painting was recovered, the plaque was missing, which caused the former residents significant hurt (pp 70-71). Then you have the curious case of the nineteenth century painting Chloé, by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, which suffered numerous attacks and eventually became a “landmark of Melbourne’s urban history” (pp. 223).

In the book’s “Afterword” Jackson writes that by discussing the backstories of artworks she hopes “to have opened up new ways of looking at Australian art” (p. 254). She has more than succeeded in doing just that. Unseen: Art and Crime in Australia is an important and welcomed addition to the growing canon of Art Crime texts.

Axel Vervoordt Co is a family-led business. Boris (left) and Axel (right).Image Credit: TEFAF

In a surprising turn for the international art fair circuit, Dominique Savelkoul  stepped down as Managing Director of the European Fine Art Foundation, (TEFAF), at the end of December in what was described by the foundation this week as "differing views on the strategic direction."  This marks the second leadership change in just over one year at one of the world’s largest fair providers for fine art, antiques, and design, covering 7,000 years of art history.

TEFAF confirmed this week that, Boris Vervoordt, one of the sons of Belgian art and design dealer Axel Vervoordt, and a driving force behind his father's influential Axel Vervoordt Co, has been named chairman since 1 January 2026 and that the fair's executive committee members will each take turns leading the foundation for a period of six months. Vervoordt is the first non-Dutch chairman to steer Europe's prominent art foundation and on paper, brings visibility, experience, and an enviable network of ultra-high-net-worth clients to the foundation's annual New York and Maastricht fairs.  

Well known in the art world for cultivating an enviable black book of high-profile collectors and luxury tastemakers, Vervoordt arrives to TEFAF's management with deep familiarity of the fair’s culture and commercial ecosystem having been a participant from the fairs beginnings. Active in the international world of art, design, and antiques since the late 1960s, the family of Belgian art dealers have sold everything from Egyptian marble bowls, to contemporary Japanese paintings and Le Corbusier armchairs.

In it's current iteration, Axel Vervoordt Co, was founded in Belgium in 2011 (and in Hong Kong in 2014). Their  art gallery, arts and antiques trading organization, interior design and real estate development divisions are headquartered, since 2017, outside Antwerp, at an industrial complex known as Kanaal.  Part gallery, part exhibition space, Vervoordt's showcase institution is housed in a former malting distillery and malting complex built in 1857 on a shipping canal leading to the port of Antwerp, though many Vervoordt-held companies are registered elsewhere. 

Rostec boss Sergei Chemezov, Vladimir Putin and multi-millionaire Sergei Adonyev

In the 1980s Axel Vervoordt purchased the floor you see in this photo of his library at 's-Gravenwezel castle, the medieval fortress surrounded by 60-hectares of park land he calls home. After the parquet de Versailles floor was restored and published in the October 1986 issue of Architectural Digest, French authorities informed him that the flooring had been stolen from a French château.

Later, in March 1998, at a time when the art world's big players paid little attention to whether an artwork offered for sale could have been stolen during the Second World War, Axel Vervoordt brought the painting Sumptuous Still Life with Lobster, Oysters, Silvergilt Covered Beaker, Silver Mounted Kendi Wine Flask and Glassware by Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten, (21 April 1630 – 10 July 1700), a Dutch Golden Age painter, apprenticed to Frans Hals to TEFAF's fair at the MECC Exhibition and Convention Center in Maastricht. 

Its provenance, stated:

"Doweswell, circa 1900; A. Schloss Collection, Paris; Private Collection, Belgium"

Remarkably, neither the Vervoordt gallery, nor their buyer raised any eyebrows. 

This despite the fact that the painting is recorded in publicly available wartime asset lists as having been taken during World War II from the renowned Schloss Collection, assembled by Adolphe Schloss—a German-Jewish collector whose family holdings, including more than 300 paintings were seized during the Nazi occupation. Documentation related to the Schloss seizure, including official French postwar recovery reports and international claims lists, identified the still life among the numerous works looted from the Schloss family collection. 

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs even stated where the then holder of the Van Roestraten painting as: "Private collection, Belgium. Castle of 's-Gravenwezel,  the six-story castle home Axel Vervoordt shares with his wife May in Belgium. Deflecting from its non pristine past, Vervoordt sold the painting at the Maastricht fair along with the silver matching ewer which is depicted in the artist's work.  The painting sold for $800,000 to an unnamed European private collector.

Again, not shying away from World War II sensitivities, in 2011,  Le Monde, art critic and correspondent Philippe Dagen reflected on an exhibition curated by Axel Vervoordt at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. He noted that while the inaugural Artempo show had been widely admired, and its successor In-Finitum had leaned heavily into a lavish presentation of works associated with Vervoordt, the Belgian's third installment, TRA, included an absurd work by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera: a heavy iron sculpture emblazoned with the phrase: Arbeit macht frei, translated as "Work makes [one] free." 

Those familiar with Belzic's work on identifying stolen artefacts from Cyrenaica,  the region in North Africa located between Roman Egypt and Tripolitania; today it is part of Libya know that his identifications have lead to restitutions, some of which have been discussed on ARCA's blog.  Often, that same research, in favourable jurisdictions, has resulted in restitutions of cultural property to Libya. Note that the absence of a face, or aprosopy, remains without real parallel in any other location in the rest of the Mediterranean world. Likewise, this object's first appearance in circulation on the international art market coincides with the Second Libyan Civil War (2014–2020), which marked a large uptick in material appearing on the art market from illegal digging around Cyrene, near Shahhat, during the country's instability.

Also in 2014, Vervoordt's firm brought a first century BCE South Arabia (Yemen) alabaster Relief of a Male Figure with Elaborate Hairdo and Horns to TEFAF's Maastrich fair.  For that event, the gallerist listed the object's provenance as: "Ancient collection Belgium, acquired in 1940; Ancient collection M. Abdalla Babeker, Sudan, acquired between 1917 and 1930."

It should be noted that "M. Abdalla Babeker" has been identified as a false-collector name which has come up in provenance records linked to stolen artefacts from Sudan circulated and sold by Jaume Bagot, of J. Bagot Arqueología in Barcelona.  That problematic Catalan dealer, frequently discussed on ARCA's blog, is known for having handled stolen Egyptian shabtis of the Pharaoh Taharqa and Senkamanisken which were illegally exported out of North African country and sold onward in the European ancient art market with this same Babeker provenance.

This object was seized by US Customs and Border Protection at the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport on 15 June 2016 as part of a 40-item shipment weighing more than 5 tons collectively valued at over $745,000.  A form submitted by a customs broker lists the importer and consignee of the items as "Kim Kardashian dba (doing business as) Noel Roberts Trust," an entity linked to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s US real estate purchases.

That same Roman sculpture was photographed at Vervoordt's booth in TEFAF by the Italian Carabinieri on 21 March 2011

"I would consider my visit there most successful. The financial situation being what it is, I was anxious to spend as little money as possible in purchases and get as many pieces on consignment as possible. I am glad to say it worked out better than I expected."

"I bought a beautiful Baphuon female torso from Peng Seng for $ 13'000, a small, but exquisite Baphuon head from Chai Ma for $ 2'000 and four pieces from Douglas Latchford for $ 20'000. These Bangkok purchases, together with a vase from Mayuyama, $ 8'500, bring the grand total of my purchases on this trip to $ 43'500."

"The greater part of my time in Bangkok was spent in numberous [sic] meetings with our friend Douglas, I am getting the following two important pieces on consignment:(they are supposedly already on their way)."

"Pre Angkor Hari Hara, about 35", supposedly recently excavated in Cambodia near the South Vietnamese border, It is a great piece. The selling price will be $ 300'000 or over, still to be decided upon with Latchford."

"Large Koh Ker female torso; another very beautiful and important piece, selling price $ 100 000 or more, to be determined still."

"Douglas has the following 3 bronzes which at this time he is not ready to give me yet, but which I am sure will come in the very near future."

"I have explored extensively with Peng Seng and Latchford how to get legitimate papers for the large Koh Ker guardian and for all subsequent shipments. The following is the best procedure that I can think of at this time:  For the Koh Ker guardian Peng Seng will send us a letter written and signed somebody in Bangkok. He will say that he has seen this piece in Peng Seng's shop three years ago. Peng Seng would like us to give him the exact text we want in this letter. You and I will discuss this when I am in London."

"On all future shipments of important pieces only, both Peng Seng and Latchford, they will ship the pieces the way they have always done, but at more or less the same time will send a modern piece of about the same size and same subject, described on the airway bill in such a way that nobody will know to which this airway bill applies. From my discussions with Sherman Lee I can say that an airway bill which describes the shipment as a sculpture, rather than "personal belongings", would be satisfactory. It also occurred to me that: we are mostly talking about Khmer art from Cambodia, being shipped out of Thailand, which is not the country of origin, this should lessen our problem."

Back in the Spring of 2014, the art world found itself drawn to a particularly controversial object slated to come up for auction in Bonhams April's Antiquities sale in London. The piece was the lower two-thirds of a monumental black basalt stela which depicts an Assyrian king in a long-fringed cloak, holding his staff, surrounded by divine symbols.  Incised across his body were twenty lines of evenly-spaced cuneiform script, with more text spilling over the sculpture's left side. 

Listed as "a monumental Neo-Assyrian black basalt royal stele of Adad-nerari III of Assyria" the artefact was given an estimated sale price of between £600,000 to £800,000.

One inscription, carved with deliberate precision millennia ago, warned of divine retribution against anyone who uprooted the monument from its sacred setting. The irony was hard to miss: an ancient warning against plunder carried on a fragment plainly removed from its own archaeological context, its journey into the modern market underscoring that loss of context, while standing as evidence that plunder continues to drive today’s illicit antiquities trade, hidden by vague statements of ownership that try, and fail, to hide its true origins. 

What made this sale contentious was not its dramatic epigraphy, but the serious questions raised about where and to whom this Assyrian piece could be traced. The stele in question dates to the reign of Adad-nīrārī III, King of Assyria from 811 to 783 BCE, a ruler whose period marked both consolidation and transition within the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Ascending the throne as a child, he initially ruled under the regency of his mother, the formidable Queen Šammuramat, often identified with the later Semiramis of classical legend. 

Once in power, Adad-nīrārī III launched military campaigns across the Levant, extracting tribute from a wide arc of subject kingdoms and helping to reassert Assyria’s dominance after a period of instability.  His inscriptions frequently emphasise divine sanction, royal piety and the restoration of order, themes that appear on the complete stela from which this fragment was once part.  Objects bearing his name are valuable not only for their artistic and epigraphic qualities but also because they help us define and understand the extent of Assyria’s political reach under his rule. 

Consigned to Bonhams through an intermediary, the stela would ultimately be traced by law enforcement to the then-Geneva-based Lebanese antiquities dealer Halim Korban.  For those familiar with major art crime cases, his name may resonate for his involvement in the sale of the controversial Sevso Silver, the spectacular, but looted hoard of fourth-century Roman silver sold to the Marquess of Northampton and ultimately restituted to the Hungarian government in 2014.

Without any paperwork to substantiate how it left its country of origin and came into the possession of Korban, the Assyrian artefact was listed for auction with a simple but vague claim that the owner's father gifted him the ancient object "in the 1960s." 

"had great difficulty to move to the sea-coast what remained of the Assyrian sculpture, because it was too large to carry on horseback; and when we came to thin it, as I had taken some tools with me for the purpose, it was found too hard to cut."

Eventually Rassam returned to England with a hacked-down, and significantly mutilated version of the upper portion of Adad-nīrārī's famous stela which has been housed in the British Museum's collection (inventory number: BM 131124) since 1881. While the explorer wanted to return to Syria to seek out the lower portion,  Rassam was never granted permission to do so, and it is unclear how or when the lower portion was discovered and ultimately removed from the country without permission. 

What we do know with certainty is that the lower portion of the stela first came to public notice in June of 2000 when it was consigned to Christie’s in New York.  Offered as Lot 491, but mistakenly attributed to S ˇamsˇı¯-Adad V of Assyria, the memorial stela remained unsold and was shipped back to Geneva after the failed auction.