In all the coverage of the #MeToo movement and its use of powerful anti-patriarchy imagery from the flight of Medea, as depicted on the South Italian vase above, circa late 5th/early 4th century B.C.— I have yet to see any mention that said vase, now at Cleveland Museum, lacks provenience. Meaning it was looted—acquired by Bunker Hunt from Bruce McNall, who got it from Bob Hecht, who got it from Giacomo Medici, etc. The intact vase sold for $360,000 at the June 19, 1990 Hunt/Sotheby’s “auction of the century,” which I covered for The Economist, with much of the other ancient art for sale lacking provenience as well.
Nevertheless, just prior to the Hunt/Sotheby’s auction Cornelius Vermeule—longtime curator of classical art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—expressed his desire for the Medea to me this way:
“I’d kill for [lot] number 14.”
Following is an excerpt from my 2006 article posted at Scoop Media about the Medea calyx krater:
“The Medea is believed to have been sold to former Rodeo Drive dealer, Bruce McNall, by Bob Hecht. McNall has written in his book, Fun While It Lasted, that he got virtually every piece he sold to Bunker and Herbert Hunt from Hecht. Hecht’s principal supplier was Giacomo Medici.”
As far as I know, Italy has not demanded repatriation of the now priceless krater from Cleveland. Why not?
The Hunt collection catalogue, Wealth of the Ancient World, describes the Medea detail on the vase this way:
“Side A. MEDEA’S DEPARTURE. In the upper center Medea rides off in a chariot drawn by two crested, bearded and spotted serpents. She is dressed ornately in a Phrygian helmet and a cross-girded chiton under which is a tight-fitting long-sleeved garment in a pattern of light and dark diamonds. Around her is a large and boldly colored nimbus, which is perhaps present as an attribute of her grandfather Helios who has given her the chariot she drives and/or as a symbol of her ascent into another realm, a function of the nimbus in several other South Italian vase paintings.”
Medea, by the way, was not “a Black individual,” contrary to a recent article in The Conversation about #MeToo/Medea by Marie-Claire Beaulieu, an associate professor of classical studies at Tufts University.
Medea of Athenian dramatist Euripides was the daughter of the king of Colchis. The kingdom of Colchis would be in what is today the country of Georgia, next to Turkey. According to the Sotheby’s/Hunt auction catalogue, Medea was Asian and wore a Phrygian helmet to “denote her Asian origin.” Phrygia was the kingdom of Midas—that would be present day Turkey.
Phrygian scholar Elizabeth Simpson says there is indeed a “(mis)interpretation” regarding Medea in The Conversation article. She also wonders about the rest of the looted pieces now in the Cleveland Museum collection.
OSCILLATIONS 