Portrait Of An Illegal Antiquities Trade

Much of the classical ancient art sold in recent decades is believed to have passed through the hands of three men – Giacomo Medici, Robert E. Hecht Jr. and Robin Symes. They “acquired items that had been illegally removed from Italian tombs and used fake ownership histories, rigged auctions and relied on frontmen to sell the objects with a veneer of legitimacy. Italians say they have traced more than a hundred looted artifacts handled by the dealers to the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a dozen other major museums and private collections in the U.S., Europe and Asia.”