Stolen 80 years ago, a section of an Achaemenid-era (550-330 BC) bas-relief, once part of a long line of rock-carved soldiers displayed and then stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and later recovered 2000 miles away in Edmonton, Canada has been put on temporary exhibition, touring at the  Mashhad’s Khorasan Great Museum, northeast Iran. 

Patron views relief during an unveiling ceremony held at the Khorasan Grand Museum on Monday, December 24, 2018 Image Credit: Iranian Student News Association

The limestone sculpture, from the UNESCO-registered site of Persepolis in southern Iran, was recently restituted to Iranian officials by the District Attorney of New York County in September, 2018.

Relief takes centerstage at the Khorasan Grand Museum Image Credit: Iranian Student News Association

A New York Supreme Court judge has ordered the plundered bas-relief from the city of Persepolis, which dates from the 5th Century B.C.E., must be returned to Iran as the country from which authorities say it was stolen more than 80 years ago.  

In February 2014 ARCA wrote about a sandstone bas-relief panel then-titled, "Head of a Guard" stolen in September 2011 from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and found 2000 miles away in Edmonton.  The Persian Achaemenid relief from Persepolis was one of the museum's only pieces representative of Persian art of the Achaemenid period (2nd half 6th century BCE to 330 BCE) and had been part of the museum's permanent collection for decades. 

It was discovered thanks to a collaborative criminal investigation by the Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in collaboration with a Loss Adjuster from the insurance firm AXA Art.

Shortly after its recovery, and with the MMFA unable, or uninterested, in buying the piece back from its insurer, the Persepolis relief was sold.   AXA Art sold the relief to  London antiquities dealer Rupert Wace, owner of Rupert Wace Ancient Art and the object entered the commercial art market.

Rare and highly valuable on the ancient art market, the relief's debut was highlighted in an article by Royal Academy of Art's Charles Saumarez Smith and Sam Phillips titled What to see at Frieze 2016.   In that article, the pair picked out some of their favourite artwork on sale at the London fairs and this image of an ancient fellow was one of them.

The article opened with a high-resolution image of the Assyrian relief and went on to say that the antiquity was located at the booth of Sam Fogg near the show's entrance.  It mentioned the relief as being museum quality and that it was once part of the Montreal Museum of Art collection but made no mention of its theft in Canada or why the Museum did not buy back the object at the time it was recovered.  A further article in The Guardian stated that the piece was for sale for £2.2 million. 

But then the little soldier didn't sell.

The Park Avenue Armory. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Later, on October 27, 2017, law enforcement authorities confiscated the antiquity from Rupert Wace's own stand at the Park Avenue Armory during the first hours of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in New York.  The seizure was done under orders from the New York district attorney’s office on the basis that it had been unlawfully transported out of its country of origin.

Court records indicate that archeologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago had documented that the same bearded, eight-inch-square, relief of a Persian imperial guard could be seen in old photographs adorning the Persepolis ruins in Iran as late as the year 1936.  Given that the Iranian government had criminalised the export of such antiquities in 1930, the New York authorities seized the antiquity as evidence in a possession of stolen property investigation.

Antiquities dealer Rupert Wace argued that the relief had been donated to the Quebec National Museum by Canadian department store heir and collector Frederick Cleveland Morgan sometime between 1950 and 1951 and had been openly exhibited at the museum without any requests from Iran up until the date it was stolen in 2011.

Image Credit:  Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

But on Monday, July 23, 2018 a New York Supreme Court judge sided with Iran and ordered that the eight-inch-by-eight-inch work be returned to its country of origin on the basis that a thief cannot pass on good title on stolen goods.

As can be seen by this artworks presence in both the London and later New York sale venues, insurance claims can get complicated when it comes to magnificent art works once donated without fabricated, little, or no provenance to museums.  Especially when it comes to objects donated during time periods when stricter standards of due diligence may not have been satisfactorily applied.  This is especially true when high-value, high-portability and rapidly appreciating works of art are stolen and subsequently recovered years later. 

Updated:  26 May 2018

To view New York's very very interesting Application for Turnover and its details on the transactions and due diligence of both AXA and the dealer purchaser in determining this object's legitimacy in the market, please see here. 

To view New York's Final Turnover Order please see here. 

By Lynda Albertson

Two months into the new year brings with it two significant repatriations for objects stolen in Italy and illegally transferred for sale on foreign art markets.  Both artworks, an oil painting and a marble statue, were discovered during auction sales, despite having been stolen in Italy. 

This week a 17th century Italianate landscape, attributed to either Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691-1765) or Andrea Locatelli (1695-1741), has made its way home to Italy.  

Donated in 1892 by the Italian noble Torlonia family, the oil painting was stolen on January 1, 1994.  In November 2017 the artwork was identified by the Italian authorities when it came up for sale at a London auction house. Its starting bid: 40.000 GBP.

At some point the painting appears to have passed through the hands of the Roman branch of the London auction house, before being transferred to London for sale.  Under Italy’s Cultural Heritage Code any artwork created more than fifty years ago (i.e. before 1947 in this case) by a deceased artist requires an export licence in order to be exported.  No information has been released by the Italian authorities as to if the consigner provided the auction house with such a document and if so, if that document was valid or fabricated.  

After this week's press conference, the painting will be returned to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism and reintegrated into the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica where it will go on display at either the the Palazzo Barberini or the Palazzo Corsini. 

One month earlier, on January 30, 2018 the Carabinieri reported that a first century CE marble sculpture depicting the torso of the goddess Aphrodite had also been repatriated to Italy.  This marble statue, with an estimated value of €300.000 had been stolen in 2011 from the University of Foggia and was identified by Italy's Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale for sale in Munich Germany in 2013. 

In the scope of a lengthy investigation, Italian and German authorities identified identified an organized smuggling ring, operating between Italy and Germany, where looted antiquities plundarded from Italy passed from the hands of a looter, through a  middleman, who carried out the deliveries abroad, on to the individual in Germany who sold objects to collectors interested in antiquities in Germany. 

In 2016, when those involved in this trafficking operation were taken into custody, more than 2,500 objects were seized which had not yet made their way to Germany.   The statue of Aphrodite, was returned to Italy via international letters rogatory and with cooperation from the German authorities as well as the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rome. 

Location of Theft: l'Hôtel des Ventes de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines)

13, rue Thiers, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

The painting was taken, unnoticed, from the wall of a gallery the Parisian auction l'Hôtel des Ventes de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines) operated by SGL Enchères/F. Laurent de Rummel where the artwork had been on display just prior to its auction.  

The thief purportedly unhooked the painting and left the premises without being seen.  Value details can be seen in the screen capture from the auctioneers website above. 

Here's a link to the surveillance video of two men carrying baskets who break into the West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts (Permanenten Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum) in Bergen through a window panel, smash glass display cases, and grab items before running back out in less than two minutes.

In the Fall 2012 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Penelope Jackson writes about "Planning Revenge: Art Crime and Charles Frederick Goldie":

Charles Frederick Goldie is one of New Zealand's best-loved artists.  His portraits of Maori have been the victims of theft, vandalism, and forgery for decades.  Goldie's portraits remain highly prized and valuable.  This article highlights and gives an overview of the art crime that Goldie's oeuvre attracts, and offers some explanations behind what has become a catalogue of illegal practice.

Braque's beautiful Olive Tree Near Estaque  on display in the museum in January 2009/Photo by C. Sezgin

Detail from Braque's painting  Olive Tree Near Estaque/Photo by C. Sezgin