Pellegrini has helped prosecutors track down numerous stolen works of antiquity. With blood oozing from its wounds, the body is carried off by the angels of death and sleep," he says.įrancesco Bartocci, a 70-year-old farmer, is the last living member of the gang of tomb raiders who dug up the Euphronios vase in Cerveteri, a once-great Etruscan city about an hour's drive north of Rome. "It's the battlefield of the Trojan War, the death of the warrior Sarpedon, son of the god Zeus and a mortal woman. Maurizio Pellegrini, an art expert, says the scene painted on the vessel was described by Homer.
In its new home, Rome's Villa Giulia museum, the Euphronios vase has been given a place of honor in a glass case with special cool lighting. In 2008, after long and difficult international negotiations, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art handed the "hot pot" back to Italy, the land where it was dug up.Ī new book, The Lost Chalice, traces the story of the looted vase's travels from a tomb in Italy to Switzerland to New York and back to Italy through the labyrinthine world of smugglers and shady dealers in an illicit trade that fed a network of American collectors and institutions. The story of the theft - and ultimate return - of a magnificent ancient vase painted by Euphronios, the greatest Greek vase artist of antiquity, is a gripping tale that has helped to cripple the illicit international art trade.
"The Lost Chalice" by Vernon Silver/Wiliam Morrow It was finally returned to Italy in 2008, after it made its way into the collection of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 2,500-year-old Euphronios vase, which depicts a battle scene from the Trojan War, was dug up and illegally taken out of Italy in the 1970s.
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