In mid July, those following restitution news might have read about the United States and Italian authorities happily announcing the restitution of a stolen 15th-century letter written by Christopher Columbus.  Most of the many news articles which covered this particular restitution, were fairly pro forma.  They focused on the historic significance of this precious incunabulum, written by the controversial Italian explorer in 1493 upon returning from his first voyage to the so called "New World".  In his epistolary announcement, Columbus described his momentous journey to his royal patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who financed his expedition.

Portrait of Christopher Columbus  By Ridolfo Ghirlandaio

While the series of news articles discussed that the document had been stolen before 1988, from the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, most were written in a perfunctory way, with many simply echoing the spartan details regarding the historical significance of this document, alongside the object's circulation as outlined in the US government's July 2023 announcement, ie., that the stolen document had been found in "the collection of a privately owned library located in the United States" after having been purchased via "a rare book dealer in the United States."

Why government press announcements on the restitution of historic artefacts can be rather "vanilla".  

Normally the investigative agency announcing a restitution begins by describing why the painting or artefact is significant, and when and/or where it has been stolen.  Press announcements then move on to state when, or sometimes how, the object in question has been identified, and then might, or might not, mention who the buyer or seller were.  Usually at the conclusion of these briefs, the announcement wraps things up by thanking key individual investigators and the agencies involved, wrapping things up by naming all of the ceremonial VIPs who would have been present during the handover ceremony.

But as participants of ARCA's PG Certification Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection learn during their studies with us.  Sometimes these types of press statements leave us asking more questions than are answered.  One question being, why are these announcements intentionally vague. 

The writers of these briefings may choose to say less, as saying more might inadvertently impact other ongoing investigations. Other times, the agreed-upon press statement skims over the nominal information involving the handlers of the object for privacy considerations, or when the return is of a voluntary vs. criminal forfeiture.  

Names can also be left out when the collector or museum who previously held ownership of the artefact or artwork has consented to its seizure and civil forfeiture, but has insisted on confidentiality provisions as part of their agreed-upon settlement whereby they relinquish all rights and titles. In tandem, sometimes these settlements can carry stipulations which clearly state that by relinquishing said object, doing so in no way should be deemed as an admission of culpability, liability, or guilt. 

But what if you want to know more? And why we teach our researchers that OSINT gathering is a useful tradecraft, not reserved for the sneaky world of spies.  

One of the things ARCA strives to impart to its art crime trainees is the need to explore and research beyond what seems obvious.  To look beyond the low hanging fruit of a happy, but perfunctory, going home press release to what you might be able to find and interpret from unrelated sources.  This is useful for provenance researchers as knowing more about an object's handlers can (sometime) tell us more about other artworks or artefacts which should also be explored. 

To advance their provenance research skills, we teach our trainees how to conduct structured intelligence analysis, using a variety of techniques to efficiently gather and utilise the wealth of information readily accessible from disparate news sites, academic articles, blog posts, social media sites, search engine result pages (SERPs), and other public-facing digital assets.  We do so because true OSINT is more than just taking a stab at scrolling-through the first page of ranked Google hits. 

The European Commission defines open-source intelligence (OSINT) as the practice of collecting and analysing information gathered from open sources to produce actionable intelligence. 

At ARCA we provide our participants with opportunities to test their abilities in practical and advanced image and video analysis and verification, as well as fact-checking and analysis of information, disinformation, and misinformation.  These types of intelligence gathering can support, for example, national security, law enforcement investigations and even due diligence when vetting potential art and artefact purchases.  At its very core, OSINT investigations look for open (source) data which was created for one purpose but when combined with other data, shed's additional or unforeseen light on otherwise hidden topics. 

To illustrate how our researchers can glean more details on an object's circulation within the art, antiquities, and rare book market utilising only open source techniques, last month we had them start with the clues found in the July 18, 2023 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announcement on the restitution of the  Columbus letter titled Epistola de insulis nuper inventis, Rome, Stephan Plannck, after 29 April 1493, Goff C-757 

I asked our researchers to explore a rudimentary hypothesis of whether this object's handlers might or might not be problematic art market actors and to back that up with their explorations.  I also asked them to try and explore who the collector might be who discreetly relinquished the Columbus document, and was he (or she) of the ilk known to satisfactorily vet potential acquisitions such as this historic document.

We started by documenting the July 2023 HSI-ICE announcement which featuring Special Agent Mark Olexa, who served as the lead case agent in this ten+ year investigation into the thefts of several historic incunabula stolen from Italy. 

His post appeared on Twitter on July 18th. 

For over ten years, #HSI has collaborated with international partners to investigate a rare stolen 15th Century Christopher Columbus letter.

On Wednesday, they return it to its rightful owners – the people of Italy. pic.twitter.com/j555wjeSnl

— Homeland Security Investigations (@HSI_HQ) July 18, 2023

In this video we see footage of the what has come to be referred to as a Columbus Plannck I incunabulum, included the screen shot captured below.  Pay attention to the annotations marked in red, as these will provide confirmations that we will come back to later. 

From a November 14, 2019 Stipulation and Order IN RE: Columbus, Christopher, Epistola de Insulis Nuper Inventis, Case No. 20- ROME, Stephan Plannck after 29 April 1493, Goff C-757, we learn that: 

"In or around May 2003, INDIVIDUAL purchased the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana's Columbus Letter-Plannck I from a rare book dealer in the United States for a sum of money."

A later United States Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware press release, dated January 22, 2020, states that this Plannck I edition of the Columbus letter has been valued in excess of $1,300,000, and is an exceptionally rare first edition that only mentions the King of Spain, while the second edition, commonly known as Plannck II, acknowledges both King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.   This press release speaks to the good faith purchase of the document by the collector, stating:

"a collector acting in good faith unknowingly purchased the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana’s Columbus Letter-Plannck I letter from a rare book dealer in the United States."

Also useful, Italian newspaper Corriere del Veneto geolocates the collector's home when describing where the Columbus document was discovered: 

"ritrovati i racconti di Critoforo Colombo rubati alla Marciana: erano a casa di un collezionista di Dallas"

 The key phrase being "in the house of a Dallas collector." 

Added to our earlier data of the document being found in "the collection of a privately owned library" we now can assume, if the Italian article is accurate, that the collector maintains a private library, in a home, located in the city of Dallas.

An excellent article by Nicholas Schmidle published on December 8, 2013 in The New Yorker gives us a pretty thorough rundown of Richard Lan, of Martayan Lan Inc., in New York City, who sold at least Christopher Columbus incunabulum in and around this same period. Talking about Lan's controversial relationship with notorious Italian book thief and forger Massimo Marino De Caro, writing 

"Despite these incidents, De Caro’s rise in the rare-book market continued largely unimpeded, as he obtained one remarkable book after another. Perhaps his most important client was Richard Lan. De Caro told me, “He was paying a high price for books, and he had the best customers in the world.” In 2004, Lan paid two hundred and forty thousand dollars for two of the Vatican books—first editions of Galileo’s “Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences” and “The Assayer”—and a 1611 copy of Johannes Kepler’s “Refraction.” Around this time, Lan also paid De Caro five hundred and eighty thousand dollars for a copy of the letter that Christopher Columbus sent to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493, announcing the discovery of the New World. De Caro was beginning to think that Lan would buy anything from him."

In May 2012, De Caro, the former director of the Girolamini Library in Naples, was sentenced in Italy to 7 years imprisonment and a lifetime exclusion from public office following an expedited trial in Italy for the embezzlement of hundreds of stolen volumes from the Girolamini Library in Naples as well as thefts and forgeries impacting other libraries throughout Italy. 

Given that a Columbus incunabulum, stolen from the Vatican Library had already been identified as sold by De Caro to a New York dealer who turned out to be Richard Lan, then on to collector Robert David Parsons, an actuary from Atlanta, the anonymously described book seller involved, who is now deceased, becomes more interesting. 

But what about the Texas collector with a private library in him Dallas home?

Further exploration turns up several articles describing the expansive, and sometimes controversial, art and historical documents collection of Harlan Crow, a conservative billionaire, who recently gained unwanted attention for having been the secret benefactor of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  Many articles refer to his ownership of an unique Christopher Columbus letter, but none of them, that we reviewed, provided imagery for comparison purposes.  

In one article, posted to the website InCollect discussing some of Crow's extraordinary pieces, we find another important clue, as the website describes the Texan's rare Columbus incunabulum as follows:

The document collection contains a first edition of the much sought-after “Columbus Letter.” Printed in Rome on April 29, 1493, this firsthand account of Columbus’s 1492 voyage of discovery was translated from his letter to the Spanish court. The Crow copy is the only version in private hands in North America; eleven other copies are located in institutional libraries in the U.S. such as the New York Public Library and twelve more are in European collections including the Vatican’s.

Given that the Harlan Crow Library copy is reported (and not proven) to be the sole extant Latin Stephan (Stephanus) Plannck (Planck) quarto written “To the Most Invincible King of the Spains” [Ad Inuictissimum Regem Hispaniarum] listed as being in private hands, our next step was to confirm through OSINT means, if it was  possible, that the one described and depicted in various restitution announcements could be the same document reported as being part of Crow's private collection in Dallas. 

Circling back to our screen grab from the HSI- ICE restitution tweet, we already had clear, high resolution images of the object which had been returned to the Italian authorities.  Now we just need to see if we could find an available image of the Columbus letter which was part of Crow's collection.  

Retrieving a 2019 web page, hosted by the Bullock Texas State History Museum, we were able to document, through images, exactly what Harlan Crow's Columbus incunabulum looks like.  In a comparison of the two, we can see that both the HSI-ICE image and the museum's photos of Crow's incunabulum both have matching traits, including a unique blue binding and slight page blemishes visible on two of the respective folio leaves.

Likewise a video presented of the object's return home published on Youtube also shows similarities in the fading of the ink's patterns.

Through this exercise, we can demonstrate that taking the time to scratch a bit beneath the surface of press announcements, and then systematically collecting analysing, and interpreting publicly available information from a wide array of sources, we can begin to further explore some interesting puzzle pieces.  Ones that might lead to an interesting thread or two worth pulling regarding how many other suspect manuscripts and rare books, stolen by De Caro, were purchased by Richard Lan, and in turn, did Lan sell other material to Harlan Crow, or others which can be traced back to thefts traceable to Massimo Messina De Caro's crime spree, or might still be in circulation in the rare text and manuscripts market in the United States.  

By:  Lynda Albertson, CEO of the Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art

OSINT Bibliography

The Amelia Conference: 

Held in the beautiful town of Amelia, Italy, the seat of ARCA’s summer-long Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection, the Association’s 12th annual Amelia Conference will be held the weekend of June 23-25, 2023 with a networking cocktail opening the event for all Amelia Conference attendees and speakers. 

At the heart of the conference will be two days of panel sessions, on Saturday and Sunday, June 24-25, 2023, devoted to presentations selected through this call.

Geared towards international organizations, national enforcement agencies, academics, cultural institutions, and private sector professionals in the art and antiquities fields, the Amelia Conference follows a long-established commitment by the Association to examine contemporary issues of common concern in an open, non-combative, multi-disciplinary format in order to promote greater awareness and understanding of the need for better protection of the world’s cultural patrimony.

2023 Call for Presenters: Session Formats and Topics

Given the success of the Amelia Conference over the past decade, it is important to recognise the growing interdisciplinary and international nature of this emerging field, the growing complexity of art and heritage crime, and the disciplines and subject matter experts who follow along and contribute within their areas of speciality.  With that in mind, this year’s conference will build upon topic-specific sessions designed to stimulate discussion and share learning on a series of topics of common concern. Some conference panels may feature more active panel debate about a session topic, or present various and/or contrasting perspectives about a topic. Each panel session will last approximately 75 or 90 minutes and will include a number of oral presentations with some time dedicated for interactive discussion.

ARCA welcomes presentation proposals related to the conference’s art and antiquities crime theme from individuals in relevant fields, including law, policing, security, art history, art authentication, archaeology, or the allied art market.  Presenters with topics related to the following areas are particularly encouraged to submit a speaking proposal this year highlighting the following issues of common concern:

Strengthening international cooperation in the fight against illicit trafficking, Do MLATs and ILORS work? And is this formality always useful?

Organised crime and illicit trafficking.

Recent successes in the field and what we can learn from them collectively.

The Elephant in the Room: How museums can proactively address problematic art in their collections.

Consciousness raising vandalism as a form of protest in museums. 

Digital and technology-facilitated approaches to combatting illicit trafficking: Do automated web-scraping tools work for combatting art crime?

Solving societal issues using Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) – 

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) continues to grow in acceptance and use beyond the traditional military and law enforcement sectors. How has it been applied to combatting art and antiquities crimes.

Recent convictions: Art crime’s bad boys (and girls) and what we can learn from their prosecutions. 

Each selected presenter will represent a coherent and clearly focused presentation of 15 to 20 minutes maximum on a topic of common concern, that combined with presentations given by co-panelists, are designed to provide significant insights into the topic or theme and to stimulate thoughtful, not combative or antagonistic, discourse.

We very much look forward to receiving presentation proposals on the aforementioned or alternative art and antiquities crime topics, noting that panels may change or be altered based on speaker availability.

Abstract and CV Submission Deadline: March 30, 2023

Abstract Word Limit: 400 words, excluding abstract title, presenter/co-presenter names and affiliations

Abstract Selection Process

Each submitted abstract must be accompanied by a CV. The abstract review process will be conducted blind, i.e. all author names will be removed before the abstract before being sent out for peer review. The abstract itself will be reviewed and scored by independent reviewers who have expertise in the specific session’s identified subject area.

Peer Reviewers apply the following criteria to judge abstract submissions 

I. Quality and Originality (1 to 5)

Abstracts containing significant new findings or presenting concretised information or new approaches will be given higher scores than those that merely serve as a chronology of, or modifications to, older findings or routine topics of dischord.

II. Importance (1 to 5 pts)

This criterion addresses the importance of the presentation or research in terms of covering new ground and in advancing knowledge in the art crime and cultural heritage protection field.

III. Presentation (1 to 5 pts)                                                                              This criterion addresses how well the specific research question(s) and objectives, methods used, primary results, facts ascertained, etc., are explained, rather than simply titling the topical subject itself. A clearly written abstract follows a logical order (e.g. aims, methods, outcome of investigation or analysis).

FINAL NOTE 

All accepted participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses, however, accepted conference presenters will have their attendance fee waived and will be invited to be ARCA’s guest for the Amelia Conference icebreaker cocktail on 23 June 2023.

Penelope Jackson has done it again with The Art of Copying Art. This is a hard book to put down.  She makes a strong case for the better appreciation of copies. She points out that copies tell their own stories, and add to our appreciation of the rich complexity and knowledge of art.  

Her style of writing is appealing to non-art aficionados.  She clearly states propositions and then relentlessly pursues the subject, presenting detailed evidence, allowing the material to speak for itself. Consequently, the reader has time to reflect on the permutations, and make up their mind.  Typical of Jackson’s writing, she extensively footnotes her material, creating a rich resource for further investigation. Where questions remain, she frankly admits to this. 

Jackson has a knack for choosing art related subjects that are little considered, bringing out fresh reflections and new perspectives.  This is her third, general art “themed” book. The first, Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters the New Zealand Story (Awa Press, 2016) was something of a trailblazer. She revealed largely unknown (even to New Zealanders) accounts of New Zealand art theft, reflective of international stories and trends. Her second book Females in the Frame Women, Art, and Crime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) looked at the role of female actors in art crime, focusing on their often different intentions from male perpetrators. To my knowledge, this topic had not previously been explored.  Indeed, I am aware that it has opened up fresh perspectives for study of female criminological behaviour.

How then, does her latest book add to this field? The Art of Copying Art again, is written for general consumption. Divided into nine chapters, each one is thematic. Chapter 1, “A Case for Copies”, makes the argument for studying copies.  The following chapters then develop themes. Chapter 2 “Apprentice Artists”; chapter 3 “Copies for the Colonies”; chapter 4 “Paintings-Within-Paintings”; chapter 5 “Education and Entertainment”; chapter 6 “Copies in Public Collections”; chapter 7 “Protecting the Past”; chapter 8 “Cash for Copies”; and then a summation in the last chapter, “Afterword: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff”. The substantive part of the book is some 220 pages and amply illustrated. 

Originals and copies of Adele Younghusband’s Floral Still Life (1958 and 2016) and Ida H Carey’s Interior (1946 and 2016) in ‘An Empty Frame: Art Crime in New Zealand’ exhibition (2016–7). Image Credit: Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato

We tend to forget, that prior to photography, scanning, and photocopies, the only way art could be known was through copies. Throughout history, many artists have only had access to signature artworks this way, lacking the visceral advantage of being exposed to the “real thing” in terms of context, quality, and scale. Thus, subsequent developments in art have been sometimes been affected by access to only inferior, or incomplete copies of signature works.  I found chapter 3 particularly instructive.  It explores the role played copies of artworks in the colonies, in terms of educating localised population to key works of art. Obviously some copies were better than others, and this led to the various developments discussed in the book. Chapter 4 is equally thought provoking.  It discusses the extent to which lost masterpieces are only now known through copies, sometimes by being referenced in other artists’ paintings. A rich resource for art historians looking to scope, study, locate, and better appreciate those lost works!

Front and Verso of William Dargie's The Wattle Portrait (1954). Collection of National Museum of Australia, Canberra Image Credit: National Museum of Australia, Canberra

Jackson makes the point that our current fixation with autograph, unique works, is a modern phenomenon (chapter 9). Painters sometimes operated workshops, reproducing their signature works for further distribution to collectors. Such copies were prized, often as equals to autograph works. It is only in more recent times that our mania for unique expression, and proved authenticity, has made copies seem somehow uninteresting, and second rate. Jackson points out even though this view prevails, the retention of copies remains important. What is a fake, forgery, or a mere copy, often rests on expert opinion. Whilst an institutional collector may recategorise a collected work as a copy, further study and science can reverse this judgment. Also, as Jackson argues that fakes and frauds also have a legitimate place. They remain a source of fascination and are necessary for historical context. An illustration of this this are van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers, that are now collectable in their own right  Thus the destruction of fakes and forgeries (as presently dictated by the French State) comes at a cost.  It not only risks destroying unproven authentic works, but damages our sense of art history. This is perhaps a point that requires more emphasis when we ponder on policing art crime.

It is a strength of this book that the content suggests further fields for consideration. With our present preoccupation fixation with authenticity, we tend to forget that masters’ copies of earlier artists’ masterpieces were often more valued (and valuable) than the historic original.  This was under the belief that the later copy enabled the “genius” inherent in the earlier work to be further developed and interpreted. Especially, when it came to issues of developing original concept, or designo (entails fidelity to an original concept). Think Rubens’ copies of Titian, and (perhaps) Van Gogh’s copies of Delacroix and Millet.  I would have welcomed such a more in depth discussion surrounding this issue. However, this is not a criticism.  As Jackson herself would no doubt point out, she has had to contain her subject matter to some 220 pages.  

I would strongly recommend this book for those interested in art, as well as those with a general interest in cultural history. The work is equally, if not more important, than her Females in the Frame.  It makes a robust argument for the better appreciation of copies as a field of study, collection, and educated enjoyment. 

Book Review by: