From tomb to museum: the story of the Sarpedon Krater — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:06when I was in high school one of my
3. 0:07favorite objects to visit at the
4. 0:09Metropolitan Museum of Art was a Greek
5. 0:11Vase by an artist whose name is
6. 0:14euphonious this vase is decorated by
7. 0:16euphonias with a scene from the Trojan
8. 0:19War sarpedon a son of Zeus has died in
9. 0:22the battlefield and one thing that the
10. 0:24Greeks were afraid of if they died on
11. 0:26the battlefield was that their bodies
12. 0:27would be neglected so Zeus has sent two
13. 0:30Messengers The Wing Dei sleep and death
14. 0:33to take sarpedon back home they're
15. 0:35lifting him up so that his torso is
16. 0:38exposed to us so that we can see the
17. 0:40beautiful delicate work in that abdomen
18. 0:43and the Greeks thought that actually the
19. 0:45best time to die was when you were young
20. 0:47and beautiful you'd never have to know
21. 0:48the indignities of getting old and the
22. 0:50painters Express that not only through
23. 0:52the beauty of the human body the
24. 0:54definition of the musculature but also
25. 0:56in a particularly signal Greek way
26. 0:59representing the face as Serene even in
27. 1:02the face of death and imperfect profile
28. 1:05and you can tell eeros must have been
29. 1:06very proud of this face because he
30. 1:08signed it right across the top on one
31. 1:10side of the head of Hermes the messenger
32. 1:12god who is guiding sarpedon's Soul
33. 1:15euphronia painted me like the pot is
34. 1:18speaking and the viewers of this pot
35. 1:20would have read these texts out loud
36. 1:23there's no such thing as reading
37. 1:24silently in the ancient world so you can
38. 1:26imagine them drinking wine talking about
39. 1:29hypnos synthe anitos and euphronios this
40. 1:31pot is in exceptionally good condition
41. 1:33and that's especially clear in the
42. 1:35decorative banding that surrounds the
43. 1:38major freeze where we see the figures
44. 1:40there are these beautiful palates where
45. 1:42the drawing remains wonderfully sharp
46. 1:44which is even more incredible when you
47. 1:45consider that euphronia would have
48. 1:47painted this very quickly before the pot
49. 1:49dried too much and we can see the
50. 1:51individual lines would have been laid
51. 1:53down with a syringe to make a bead of
52. 1:55color and we're seeing it in a state
53. 1:57that is not very different from the way
54. 2:00it would have been seen when it was
55. 2:02first made about 2500 years ago which is
56. 2:05why this pot was so sought after when it
57. 2:08came onto the market in 1972 the
58. 2:11Metropolitan Museum of Art paid a
59. 2:13million dollars for this phase the
60. 2:15director of the Metropolitan said that
61. 2:16this phase was so important it would
62. 2:18rewrite art history he thought the
63. 2:20drawing was the quality of a Picasso of
64. 2:22a Leonardo D Vinci it is a stellar
65. 2:25example of attic red figure vase
66. 2:27painting a style that we believe this
67. 2:29artist introduced and that allowed for
68. 2:32the detailed representation of the human
69. 2:35body that was so important to the Greeks
70. 2:37as they moved towards the Classical
71. 2:39period And the reason it's so well
72. 2:40preserved is it spent those 2500 years
73. 2:43in a tomb in the Italian town of treter
74. 2:47it was purchased by the ancient atrans
75. 2:50and buried so the pot was made near
76. 2:52Athens and was exported bought by an at
77. 2:56truscan that is the culture that existed
78. 2:58just before Rome and it was buried in a
79. 3:00tomb the atesin are known for their
80. 3:02elaborate burials which preserve things
81. 3:05like this for us but which provide a
82. 3:07very tempting Target for Tomb robbers
83. 3:09who try and find things in at truscan
84. 3:11tombs to sell on the Art Market and
85. 3:13that's exactly what happened in the
86. 3:15early 1970s when a thief identifies a
87. 3:18tomb and begins to dig they're looking
88. 3:20for the most valuable Treasures which
89. 3:22means that they're willing to destroy
90. 3:24everything else that they find along the
91. 3:26way tomb robbery does irreparable harm
92. 3:29not only to object but to archaeological
93. 3:31evidence for example we don't know
94. 3:34whether the owner of the Tomb ever used
95. 3:36this face or not because by the time it
96. 3:38got to the Metropolitan Museum it had
97. 3:39been cleaned and put back together if
98. 3:41archaeologists excavate a tomb they can
99. 3:44see the residues on the inside of
100. 3:45pottery to see whether they held a last
101. 3:48funerary meal and that knowledge is lost
102. 3:50permanently it will never be recovered
103. 3:52this incredibly important vase could
104. 3:54have been even more valuable by
105. 3:56analyzing residues and pottery found in
106. 3:58tombs we can do things like track
107. 4:00ecological conditions see what climate
108. 4:03change has been like from 2500 years ago
109. 4:06to the present so how did the pot make
110. 4:07its way from a previously unknown tomb
111. 4:10to the Greek and Roman galleries of the
112. 4:12Metropolitan Museum of Art and then back
113. 4:14to Italy and where it is now it all
114. 4:16started with a car crash police when
115. 4:18investigating F that a glove box was
116. 4:20stuffed full of photographs of dirty
117. 4:22broken Antiquities and after doing a lot
118. 4:24of investigating they eventually found
119. 4:26he was part of a smuggling ring that was
120. 4:28headed by a figurine named jako medich
121. 4:31who had a warehouse in Switzerland
122. 4:33filled full of Antiquities and filled
123. 4:35full of records records of this vase
124. 4:37being sold to a dealer who sold it to
125. 4:40the Metropolitan Museum of Art this vase
126. 4:42actually changed more than art history
127. 4:44it changed the way that we understand
128. 4:46these elaborate networks of illicit
129. 4:48trade prior to the purchase of this vase
130. 4:51there have been plenty of looted
131. 4:53Antiquities bought by American museums
132. 4:55but nobody really cared the museums knew
133. 4:58that they're probably
134. 5:00but this face caused so much publicity
135. 5:02it was so beautiful people wanted to
136. 5:03know more about it and then they were
137. 5:05horrified at the thought that this
138. 5:07ancient culture was being destroyed in
139. 5:09order to produce a few Masterworks like
140. 5:11this in American museums the museum
141. 5:13should have known better but they were
142. 5:15offered a cover story that offered just
143. 5:17enough plausible deniability that it
144. 5:20allowed the museum to turn a blind eye
145. 5:23which was at this historical moment not
146. 5:26so uncommon true the story they got was
147. 5:28that this face had been owned by a
148. 5:30Lebanese art collector and that his
149. 5:32grandfather had bought it in London in
150. 5:34the early 19s but they really should
151. 5:36have asked more questions so the Vay
152. 5:38ended up at the Met on a lovely pedestal
153. 5:40in the middle of the Greek Galleries and
154. 5:42the Met was rightfully very proud of it
155. 5:44but our awareness of the damage that is
156. 5:46done by grave robbing develops in the
157. 5:49next couple of decades and this phase
158. 5:51becomes increasingly problematic and
159. 5:53once the Italians rated that warehouse
160. 5:55in Switzerland there is no longer any
161. 5:57deniability for the men one of the the
162. 5:59things that the Italian authorities
163. 6:01found in this Warehouse was a Polaroid
164. 6:03of mediche proudly posing next to the
165. 6:06sarpedon base in the Metropolitan Museum
166. 6:08uh interestingly the way that
167. 6:10international law works there was no
168. 6:12legal right for the Italians to reclaim
169. 6:15this vase but the public relations
170. 6:17aspect of it was so bad that the met in
171. 6:192006 did return it to Italy when the
172. 6:22vase was repatriated that is when it was
173. 6:24returned to Italy it went into the atrin
174. 6:27museum in Rome with a lot of comp
175. 6:29Ceremony this was a great achievement by
176. 6:31the Italian law enforcement agencies it
177. 6:34was ultimately returned to chetry the
178. 6:37town where it was dug up from illegally
179. 6:39so many years ago so now instead of
180. 6:41millions of people seeing it thousands
181. 6:44of people do what is our responsibility
182. 6:47now in the modern world where should
183. 6:49objects reside and another thing that
184. 6:51changes that question is the issue of
185. 6:53the technological reproductions we can
186. 6:56make and so maybe our Technologies do
187. 6:58change the equ
188. 7:00of course looking at a reproduction is
189. 7:02never going to be as good as looking at
190. 7:03the original but if we look at
191. 7:04reproductions we're not increasing the
192. 7:06risk of looting so I think the sacrifice
193. 7:09of looking at reproductions is
194. 7:11worthwhile to make sure that these sites
195. 7:14aren't looted anymore that we never lose
196. 7:17the archaeological information that goes
197. 7:19along with the beauty of these ancient
198. 7:20images
199. 7:28[Music]