Some experts believe the vessel, known as a rhyton, was crafted in the 7th century BC in what later became the Persian Empire, now Iran. It features three trumpet-shaped cups that sprout from the body of a griffin, a fabled creature that typically has the head and wings of a bird and the body of a lion. On the chalice, the eyes are deep-set and wide open, like those of a bird of prey. The object was allegedly part of a cache of antiquities found in a cave near the Iraqi border in the 1980s, shortly after Iran's Islamic Revolution. "These were great treasures from a great civilization," said Fariborz Ghadar, an Iranian scholar who served as a deputy economic minister to Iran's shah. "Their discovery was of great significance to those who consider themselves Persians, who honor that period in history." 

In 2003, the chalice surfaced in the hands of a well-known antiquities dealer, Hicham Aboutaam, who ran a firm based in Geneva. As he passed through U.S. customs at Newark International Airport, Aboutaam presented a certificate indicating the vessel was from Syria. He was waved through. Aboutaam then set out to document the object's value. Three experts he consulted determined it was from Iran; two concluded it was consistent with the antiquities taken from the cave. An art collector was prepared to pay $1 million, but federal investigators caught wind of it. They charged that the object had been taken from Iran illicitly, making its importation to the U.S. illegal. The dealer was prosecuted and paid a $5,000 fine. The chalice was then placed in a climate-controlled storage unit. The value of the chalice remains uncertain. Some have maintained that it is not 2,700 years old at all, but a modern fake. But Iranian officials have insisted it is genuine and demanded its return.

Unfortunately, according to Hamid Baqaie, the former head of Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization, the artifact is without question a modern forgery. "Firstly, the way it has been made and the style in which it has been made shows it's a fake. This artifact doesn't have any roots in ancient Iran," Baqaie says. "Secondly, from a technical point of view the materials used to make it also show that it's not an original." 

Archeologist Oscar White Muscarella, a former curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has gone on record as saying he, too, does not believe the artifact is the real deal. He wrote in a paper published last year that it took only a glance at a photograph of the artifact to convince him it was a fake.

I saw many western-cave objects, some looted, more fake. I saw them too in the Aboutaams' shop. The one the USA gave to Iran is mostly fake, partly constructed from original pieces. I even know who did the construction. It is the same man who made the partly fake which was offered in Germany a few years ago. I made a documentary about that piece, together with the German ARD. Skip to 8.10.

Another Western-cave invention of the Aboutaams, in their shop, secretly filmed by me (see photo below):

ISPAC is organizing an International Conference aimed at exploring the indispensable role of crime prevention and criminal justice responses, at both international and domestic level, in combating all forms of trafficking in cultural property and related offences in a comprehensive and effective manner. This Conference addressed to international organizations, national enforcement agencies, academics, cultural institutions, private sector operators in art and antiquities follows a long-established commitment of ISPAC in the protection of cultural heritage and public goods as one of the most relevant challenges for contemporary criminal policy. Cultural heritage has come to be perceived not only as an asset for the "source Countries", but also, more relevantly, as the object of a cultural right any human being is entitled to, as well as a fundamental heritage for the whole mankind. Hence the growing interest that the United Nations, as well as many other international organizations, have been developing in the phenomenon, and the commitment to produce and implement international legal instruments aimed at protecting cultural heritage. 

In the past, several instruments have been adopted. The prevention and sanctioning of harms traditionally inflicted to cultural property during wars was the first aim to be pursued through the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), and its Additional Protocols as well as the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions (1977). Other interventions by the international community focussed on illicit imports, exports and transfers of ownership of cultural property under any kind of circumstance, and namely the UNESCO Convention (1970), as well as the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (1995). The international commitment to the safeguard of cultural heritage found also expression in several other international instruments, such as the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001), the European Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property (1985), the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (1969) and its revised version (1992). 

Nowadays the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, and its very complex features, are increasingly acknowledged at both international and national level. Trafficking in cultural property, as well as all other crimes related to cultural objects (such as looting, illicit import and export, forgery, and so on), are believed to be a constantly growing sector of criminality, and an increasingly attractive one for national and transnational criminal organizations. Hence, too, the growing involvement of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in drafting and implementing international instruments to face offences against cultural heritage. Since 2009 several initiatives were adopted pursuant to Economic and Social Council resolution 2008/23. In its resolution 2010/19, then, the Council considered that the Organized Crime Convention (2000), as well as the UN Convention against Corruption (2003), should be fully used for the purpose of strengthening the fight against trafficking in cultural property. At its twentieth session, the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice prepared a draft resolution (2011/42) entitled Strengthening Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Protect Cultural Property, Especially with Regard to its Trafficking, in which it mandated the Secretariat to further explore the development of specific guidelines for crime prevention and criminal justice responses with respect to trafficking in cultural property, and invited Member States to submit written comments on the UN Model Treaty for the Prevention of Crimes that Infringe on the Cultural Heritage of Peoples in the Form of Movable Property. Finally, in April 2013, the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice recommended to the ECOSOC a draft resolution on Strengthening Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Responses to Protect Cultural Property, Especially with Regard to its Trafficking, to be submitted for adoption to the General Assembly. The Thirteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (to be held in Qatar in 2015) will specifically focus - among others - on comprehensive and balanced approaches to prevent and adequately respond to new and emerging forms of transnational crime, such as trafficking of cultural property. 

ISPAC's Conference aims at exploring the indispensable role of crime prevention and criminal justice responses in combating all forms of trafficking in cultural property and related offences in a comprehensive and effective manner; the need for States to consider reviewing their legal frameworks, in order to provide the most extensive international cooperation to fully address trafficking in cultural property; the possibility for national jurisdictions to make trafficking in cultural property (including stealing and looting at archaeological and other cultural sites) a serious crime, as defined in art. 2 UNCTOC, as well as to fully utilize that Convention for the purpose of extensive international cooperation; finally, the importance of a speedy and effective finalization of the Guidelines, on the basis of the work carried out in the last years. Further issues worth consideration will be the need for credible and comparable data on different aspects of crimes against cultural property, including the links with transnational organized crime and the laundering of illicit proceeds, as well as the benefits of collecting and comparing best practices both in the public and in the private sector. 

PROGRAMME (contacts with panellists are in progress)

Opening Session • LODOVICO PASSERIN de ENTRÈVES, Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Courmayeur Mont Blanc Foundation, Italy • FABRIZIA DERRIARD, Mayor of Courmayeur, Italy • AUGUSTO ROLLANDIN, President, Region of Aosta Valley, Italy • LIVIA POMODORO, President, Court of Milan, Italy; CNPDS/ISPAC Chairman • Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism • Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Keynote Address • JOHN SANDAGE, Director Division for Treaty Affairs, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime-UNODC, Vienna, Austria 

Session I ILLEGAL TRAFFIC OF CULTURAL PROPERTY : THE NEED FOR A REFORM Chair DUNCAN CHAPPELL, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology, University of Sydney, Australia; ISPAC Board Member

• Cultural Heritage and Commons: New Tasks for International Community. UGO MATTEI, Professor of Private Comparative Law at University of Turin, Italy; University of California, Hastings College of Law, USA 

• Curbing Illegal Traffic of Cultural Property: Initiatives at the International Level STEFANO MANACORDA, Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Naples II, Italy; Collège de France, Paris, France; Deputy Chair and Director ISPAC 

• Anatomy of a Statue Trafficking Network: an Empirical Report from Regional Case Study Fieldwork SIMON MACKENZIE, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of Glasgow, UK

SESSION II THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLICIT TRAFFICKING OF CULTURAL PROPERTY Chair TULLIO SCOVAZZI, Professor of International Law, University of Milan Bicocca, Italy

• ALBERTO DEREGIBUS, Colonel, Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, Carabinieri Corps, UNESCO, Paris, France

• SARA GREENBLATT, Chief, Organized Crime Branch, Division for Treaty Affairs, UNODC, Vienna, Austria

• FOLARIN SHYLLON, Professor at Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan, Nigeria 

Session III INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES NATIONAL JURISDICTION Chair EMILIO VIANO, Professor, Department of Justice, Law and Society, American University, Washington DC, USA 

• HUANG FENG, Professor of Criminal Law, Director Institute for International Criminal Law, Beijing Normal University, China 

• DEREK FINCHAM, Associate Professor, South Texas College of Law, Houston, USA 

• Cultural heritage crime in the Islamic Penal Code of Iran MIR MOHAMMAD SADEGHI, Professor of Criminal Law and Head of Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran; UNESCO Chairholder for Human Rights, Peace And Democracy, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran 

• HELENA REGINA LOBO DA COSTA, Professor, University of São Paulo, Brazil (tbc) 

• ADOLFO MEDRANO MALLQUI, Professor of Criminal Law, Lawyer, Lima, Peru Coffee Break 

SESSION III (continued) POLICE COOPERATION Chair EMILIO VIANO, Professor, Department of Justice, Law and Society, American University, Washington DC, USA 

• RICHARD ELLIS, Founder of Scotland Yard! s Art and Antiquities Squad, London, UK • ANTONIO COPPOLA, Major, Head of the Operative Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, Carabinieri Corps, Rome, Italy 

• STÉPHANE GAUFFENY, Colonel, Central office for the fight against Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods (OCBC), Central Directorate of Judicial Police, Paris, France (tbc) 

• DOMENICO GIANI, Inspector General of the Gendarmeria Corps, Vatican City (tbc 

SESSION III (continued) RETURN, RESTITUTION AND CONFISCATION Chair LUIS ARROYO ZAP ATERO, Professor of Criminal Law, Universidad Castilla-la-Mancha, Spain

• Restitution and International Judicial Cooperation MARC-ANDRÉ RENOLD, Professor of Art and Cultural Property Law; Director of the Art-Law Centre; Holder of the UNESCO Chair in the International Law of Cultural Heritage at the University of Geneva, Switzerland

MARIE PFAMMATTER, post doctoral researcher, University of Geneva, Switzerland

• PASCAL BEAUVAIS, Professor, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, Paris France

• STEVEN FELDMAN, Partner, Herrick, Feinstein LLP, New York, USA

• MARK V. VLASIC, Senior Fellow & Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University, Washington, USA

SESSION IV THE ROLE OF THE PRIVATE ACTORS IN PREVENTING ILLEGAL TRAFFIC Chair LUIS ARROYO ZAP ATERO, Professor of Criminal Law, Universidad Castilla-la-Mancha, Spain

• ROBERT WITTMAN, Art Crime Investigator, President of Robert Wittman Inc., Pennsylvania, USA

• JAMES RATCLIFFE, Head of Recoveries, The Art Loss Register-ALR, London, UK

• LYNDA ALBERTSON, Chief Executive Officer, Association for Research into Crimes against Art-ARCA, Rome, Italy

• ROBERT N. LAYNE, Executive Director, International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection, Denver, CO, USA

• MARK STARLING, Chair, International Convention Of Exhibition And Fine Art Transporters-ICEFAT, Toronto, Canada

Round Table PROTECTING CULTURAL PROPERTY: CASE STUDIES AND BEST PRACTICES Chair SIMON MACKENZIE, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of Glasgow, UK 

• GIOVANNI MELILLO, Prosecutor, Court of Naples, Italy 

• FABRIZIO LEMME, Professor and Lawyer, Rome, Italy

• TESS DAVIS, Vice Chair of the American Society of International Law! s Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group - Researcher SCCJR, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK 

• FABIO ISMAN, Journalist, Italy 

• JASON FELCH, Journalist, Los Angeles Times, USA 

Conference Venue Conference Hall, Hôtel Pavillon Via Regionale, 62 - 11013 Courmayeur (AO) Official Languages English and Italian with simultaneous interpretation 

Conference Secretariat Fondazione Centro nazionale di prevenzione e difesa sociale-CNPDS Palazzo Comunale delle Scienze Sociali 3, Piazza Castello - 20121 Milano MI Tel.: +39 02 86.46.07.14 - Fax: +39 02 72.00.84.31 E-mail: cnpds.ispac@cnpds.it - Home page: www.cnpds.it Home page: http://ispac.cnpds.org

From the New York Times: Is this a Pollack?

Until her death, in 2010, Ms. Kligman, herself an artist, insisted the painting was a love letter to her created by Pollock in the summer of 1956, just weeks before he died in a car crash. But the painting was rejected by an expert panel set up to authenticate and catalog all of Pollock’s works by a foundation established by Ms. Krasner. This month, it seemed the dispute that outlived both women might finally be settled. Ms. Kligman’s estate announced that forensic tests — comparing samples from the loafers Pollock died in, his rugs and his backyard — had linked the painting with Pollock and his home. But instead of resolving one dispute, the findings only reignited another, one that pits traditional ways of determining whether a work is genuine against newer technologies. 

On one side stands Francis V. O’Connor, a stately Old World-style connoisseur with a Vandyke beard and curled mustache, who believes erudition and a practiced eye are essential to judging authenticity. Mr. O’Connor, a co-editor of the definitive Pollock catalog and a member of the now-disbanded Pollock-Krasner Foundation authentication committee, said “Red, Black and Silver” does not look like a Pollock. “I don’t think there’s a Pollock expert in world that would look at that painting and agree it was a Pollock,” Mr. O’Connor said at a symposium this month.

On the other side is Nicholas D. K. Petraco, a retired New York City detective and forensics specialist who examined the painting at the request of the Kligman estate. Approaching the canvas board as if it were a body at a crime scene, Mr. Petraco said he had no doubt the painting was made at the Pollock house and is linked to Pollock. “I’ve had cases with less materials than this where people are spending 25 to 30 years in jail,” he said.

As technology advances, the art world has turned to microscopic analysis and pigment testing to buttress — or challenge — the judgments of a tiny club of experts whose opinions have long been treated as law. This pursuit of scientific validation has only deepened as art historians and institutions like the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which shut down its authentication board in 1996, retreat from certifying art for fear of being sued. But science has its limits. Paint or paper may help establish the date of a work, while hair and fibers can help pinpoint where it was made. A work’s provenance must also be verified. Still, connoisseurs — as well as most auction houses who rely on them — maintain that true authorship cannot be established without an expert evaluation of the composition and individual strokes that reveal an artist’s “signature.” In this case, the difference of opinion could be worth millions. Unauthenticated, “Red, Black and Silver” would be listed as “attributed to Pollock” and carry an estimate of no more than $50,000, said Patricia G. Hambrecht, chief business development officer at Phillips auction house, where the painting is consigned. If judged a Pollock, the painting’s estimated value would soar to seven figures, she said.

Ms. Kligman’s account of the painting dates to the summer of 1956 when she was 26 and living in Pollock’s house in East Hampton, N.Y., after Krasner, having caught the lovers together, sailed for Europe. Pollock was in an alcoholic tailspin and hadn’t painted in two years. As Ms. Kligman detailed in a new introduction to the 1999 edition of her memoir, “Love Affair: A Memoir of Jackson Pollock,” the artist was on the lawn when she brought him his paint and the sticks he used. After he finished, he said, “Here’s your painting, your very own Pollock.” A friend of Ms. Kligman’s, Bette Waldo Benedict, has said Ms. Kligman told her the same story at the time.

Art forensics have primarily concentrated on what a painting is made of. But Mr. Petraco, who has decades of experience with the New York Police Department crime lab and is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, looked at what the painting contained: the dust, hairs, fibers or other detritus that might have fallen on the surface and under the paint. Because Mr. Petraco, who holds a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry, has more experience analyzing red blood than red paint, he decided to perfect his technique for removing materials without damaging the painting by making some Pollock-like drip paintings in his backyard in Massapequa Park, on Long Island. (It’s tougher than it looks, he confessed.) Despite what one sees on television crime shows, hairs and threads cannot be traced to a specific individual or sweater, Mr. Petraco said. What builds a forensic case is not any single piece of evidence but a combination of consistent factors. In this case, Mr. Petraco said the clincher was discovering a polar bear hair, a rare find in a country that has banned the import of polar bear products for more than 40 years. “Is there a polar bear in this story?” Mr. Petraco wondered. There was. A polar bear rug that had adorned the living room floor in 1956 was still in the East Hampton attic.

Colette Loll, a private fraud investigator who worked on the case, said she had no preset agenda. “I was looking to poke holes,” she said but “fraud just wasn’t supported.” Both she and Mr. Petraco said they had donated their services to the estate. Ms. Loll said the case presented “a real opportunity to shift the paradigm away from the dictatorship of the connoisseur, where only one or two people who sit on their thrones can decide what is and what is not an authentic painting.

Mr. O’Connor, who is widely viewed as one of the top authorities on Pollock, said art forensics are valuable, but in this case he found the results “redundant and essentially irrelevant.” The painting may have been made in Pollock’s yard but that doesn’t mean it was made by Pollock’s hand. He did not speculate by whose hand it might have been. To Mr. O’Connor, connoisseurship is just as rigorous as forensics. Its methods, he acknowledged, “can seem mysterious, if not laughable, to the lay person.” But the connoisseur, he said, has “absorbed into visual memory the artist’s characteristic form — his shapes, compositional devices, linear rhythms, typical colors” and handling of paint well enough to detect a fake. In “Red, Black and Silver,” a silver wash covers the canvas and a black ovoid shape near the center serves as a focal point. No other Pollock has either of those characteristics, he said. In 1995, the authentication board offered to designate Ms. Kligman’s painting as a problematic work, which meant that if other scholars, with further study, labeled the work as authentic, the board would not object. But Ms. Kligman rejected that qualification. In Mr. O’Connor’s view, “the Kligman work is in limbo with respect to authenticity.” Whether it remains that way is an open question: After all, precisely what happened between two people, now dead, who were alone on a summer afternoon in an East Hampton yard 57 years ago may ultimately be beyond the ken of science or connoisseurship.

The recent Pollock work given a thumbs down by a so called Pollock expert was no more than a magic trick smoothed over by an assemblage of gibberish seemingly portrayed as scholarly analysis. The connoisseur expert used facts and scientific verbiage to drive his conclusions but the science (Chaos Theory) was unrelated to the subject matter and has been challenged by other scientists as bogus when related to Pollock’s works. The facts supporting the expert call consisted of a recent movie about Pollock and not a well carried out investigation based on acceptable methodologies, replicable, and verifiable by others. The connoisseur Pollock expert even got some of his facts wrong regarding forensic experts. Forensic experts are deemed expert by the Judge in a particular case, and their expertise can be jettisoned at any time during a trial via an In Limine challenge. Further, forensic graphology is not considered to be field of expertise in a court of law, whereas Questioned Document Examination and Examiners are. Yes the world of connoisseur expertise is mysterious and those of us involved in forensic examination of fine art raise the question of why now with all our advanced technology and empirical processing are we still using hocus pocus to authenticate? (The Knoedler gallery case with 60 bad calls by 20 experts demonstrates how bad the problem really is.) What seems to be happening is that the world of the connoisseurship is undergoing a paradigm shift. Just as we found that the world did not end at the horizon we are now finding that the world of connoisseurship is unraveling due to its subjective and intuitive nature. The solipsistic nature of connoisseurship coated with gobbledygook and sleight of hand magic is under siege with its cloak of scholarly analysis slowly dematerializing.

Good article. As a 20+ year policeman with a CID background, who holds both a Fine Arts degree & an Art Authentication (covering Forensics) qualification, I took up this very same topic when I presented a paper at The World Congress of Forensics back in 2011 titled, "Connoisseurship versus Science or Connoisseurship plus Science -- Methods in Art Authentication". My conclusion was that, generally, there is too much dismissal of the value science can bring and that it should very much be a case of science supporting the experts' eyes -- but that's just a humble copper's point of view.

It's a common-enough problem (the 'snobbery' of the connoisseur & dismissal of what scientific testing can bring to the table) , and was the case here in HK too - certainly 10+ years ago - with regard to tests on Chinese antiquities / ceramics, but slowly the positives of what - and just how easily - science can detect a fake has been gaining ground, with the best dealers now taking this on board. The number of fakes being sold are still legion, with many dealers knowingly putting fakes out there into the local market, exploiting the ignorance of the general one-off buyer. It's still a case of knowing which dealer one can trust (ones who don't knowingly peddle fakes) of whom there are some and yes, ultimately, for the collector: Caveat Emptor. TrackArt can and does operate within this minefield, with its education seminars being just one 'weapon' in its arsenal against the trade in fakes.

The short answer to your question eliminate the mystery etc? Yes. But replace it with what? I propose a scoring system. E.g. Give "science" a score of 50 points. And Connoisseurs 50 points. On any single object let the experts weigh in and "score" said object. Take the average score from each side ADD them together for the final point score. Then let the buyer beware. Obviously a 100 point score "indicates" a general consensus that experts from both sides "agree/concer" and said object is "AUTHENTIC" (as most people accept that word). Like a bottle of wine rated 94 it doesn't necessarily mean that the end user will agree. Such a scoring system also leaves open the possibility that new evidence might arise which would alter the SCORE. Each "side" can create their own guidelines upon which any SCORE by any "expert" is acceptable. An independent panel might be formed to "consider" each score, etc. etc. It is possible to remove the decision from the realm of politics and special interests. This is one idea. What is yours?

The rate of recovery and successful prosecution in cases of art theft is startlingly low, with one expert putting it at only 1.5% globally, The Art Newspaper has learned, underlining the challenges of identifying and returning stolen works.  The global cost of crimes linked to art and antiques was recently estimated at £3.7bn a year by the UK’s Association of Chief Police Officers. Noah Charney, a professor of art history specialising in art crime and the founder of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, which organised a symposium on the subject at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum this month, says that statistics are hard to come by because police forces seldom distinguish between stolen art and other stolen goods. “A Rembrandt is classified with a CD,” he says.

At the core of the problem is the low importance that most police forces attach to such crimes; the exception is Italy’s Carabinieri, which claims that its force of 350 officers recovers around 30% of lost art. The theft of property in general “has a low priority in Britain and across Europe”, said Dick Ellis, the former head of the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit, at the symposium. In the UK, for example, the Metropolitan Police has just three officers dedicated to art crime (down from 14 around 20 years ago). In the US, the FBI has around 14 agents trained to investigate art crimes, although they do not work on these exclusively. Attempts to pool information on stolen works to create a comprehensive, international database have failed, largely because of a lack of funding.

Without proper public funding, the onus is on private firms, who charge a recovery fee of as much as 30% of a work’s value. Here, there are also areas of contention, particularly surrounding the issue of paying informers for leads on stolen works. This area is a “legal minefield”, said Claire Hutcheon, the head of the Met’s Art and Antiques Unit. “Art cannot be recovered at any cost,” she said.

Reuters: Eugen Darie (center) and Radu Dogaru (right)

A Romanian court sentenced the ringleader of a gang that stole paintings from a Dutch museum in one of the world's biggest art heists to six years and eight months in prison on Tuesday. Radu Dogaru and fellow gang member Eugen Darie, both Romanians, received the same sentence for stealing the masterpieces, including two Monets and a Picasso, in October 2012. The paintings have yet to be found. The trial will continue on Dec 3. for four other defendants including Dogaru's mother, who is also accused of destroying the art and has exercised her right not to comment. Dogaru and Darie pleaded guilty earlier this year to stealing the artworks, insured for 18 million euros ($24.4 million), from Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum.

The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, 1654 (Courtesy of The Frick)

“The Goldfinch” is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind. I read it with that mixture of terror and excitement I feel watching a pitcher carry a no-hitter into the late innings. You keep waiting for the wheels to fall off, but in the case of “The Goldfinch,” they never do.

Of course, all this is an alternate history (or a secret history, if you prefer). No such bombing ever happened, and the painting that a dazed and frightened Theo spirits out of the wreckage — “The Goldfinch,” made in 1654 by Carel Fabritius — was never stolen. It resides in the Royal Picture Gallery [Mauritshuis] of The Hague. This in no way spoils Tartt’s charmed narrative, which follows 10 years of Theo’s adventures.