Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Case Of The Purloined Letter And The (Allegedly) Stolen Bible, Part Two.

Detail From: T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

Ask any bookstore owner or librarian which book is most frequently stolen from their shelves, and the answer is likely to be: "The Bible." Surprising perhaps, but as bookstore owner Steve Bercu told the New York Times: "Some people think the word of God should be free." But even that doesn't entirely explain it. The manager of an Oregon Christian bookstore complained of Bible snatching despite the fact that the store gives anyone who asks a free copy. But even given the apparent legions of light-fingered gospel grabbers, this recent news headline packs a wallop: Armenian Church Sues Getty Over Stolen Bible Pages.

A lawsuit pits Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, a branch of the oldest national Christian Church in the world, against the J. Paul Getty Museum, one of the wealthiest and most influential art museums on earth. The dispute: who is the rightful owner of seven pages ripped from a 13th century illuminated manuscript known as the Zeyt’un Gospels. In the civil complaint filed by the Church, the Getty is said to be "wrongfully in possession" of seven key pages of the holy book, known collectively as the "canon tables of the Zeyt’un Gospels," which the museum "knew, or should have known, were stolen." (Strangely enough the legal document (.pdf file) in its entirety is available from--of all places--Harvey Levin's online gossip rag, tmz.com.)

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The redress sought by the Armenian Church proves that the Bible in question is not exactly the kind the Gideons leave in every nightstand at your local Motel 6: they are suing the Getty not only for the return of the disputed seven pages, but also for punitive damages in the amount of $105 million dollars. The Zeyt’un Gospels are not just a cultural treasure to Christians in Armenia: they are a reminder of the horrific death toll and nationwide devastation wrought by the 1915 Armenian genocide, and are even thought to possess supernatural magic powers.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The Church writes in their legal filing that during the darkest days of the Armenian genocide the Zeyt’un Gospels were "paraded...through every street in Zeyt’un in order to create a divine firewall of protection around the entire city." Sadly, this Biblical force field failed to repel the invading Turks, and the Gospels were given to "descendants of an Armenian royal family" for safekeeping in 1915. The family in possession of the magical text did survive the genocide, as did the book itself. It was eventually returned to the Church in 1928. But because the manuscript had been in limbo for over a decade, in 1948 the Church sent it to a trusted source for authentication. When it was returned, seven pages were discovered to have been torn out.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The identity of the thief remains a mystery, but the pages eventually ended up in the hands of an unidentified private collector in the United States. In 1994, the pages were lent to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City for display in an exhibition, Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts. Here they were seen by representatives of the Getty, who subsequently purchased them for the Museum's antiquity collection.

The Getty's website describes the seven pages of the Zeyt’un Gospels held in their collection as: "made in the scriptorium at Hromklay for Katholikos Constantine I in 1256, [they] are the earliest signed work of T'oros Roslin, the most accomplished illuminator and scribe in Armenia in the 1200s. These canon tables were separated from the manuscript at some point in the past and eventually acquired by the Getty Museum, while the rest of the manuscript is in a public collection in Armenia." The vague language used to describe the history of these pages makes it sound like they just accidentally slipped out of the binding and got lost. As if that happens all the time. Churches just lose track of the most important pages of their sacred religious texts, and they turn up in a museum 7,000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic sixty years later.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

For it's part, the Getty claims it is "confident that it has legal ownership of these pages, known as Canon Tables, which have been widely published, studied and exhibited." That the pages were purchased only "after a thorough review of their provenance," and that "the lawsuit is groundless and should be dismissed." All of which might be easier to swallow if the Getty hadn't already had numerous legal problems, with both Italy and Greece demanding the museum return looted antiquities. In fact, a former curator of antiquities at the Getty has been the object of a five-year-long (and counting) criminal trial in Italy, charged with conspiracy to traffic in illicit antiquities and receiving stolen goods.

The Getty has also been known to indulge in what has become a fairly common practice for museums unsure of the ownership background of ancient works: "antiquity laundering." Pieces with shady backgrounds start out in private hands for some years, then are loaned to a prestigious museum for a high profile exhibition. Photos and descriptions of the pieces are published in an exhibit catalog, and presto!, provenance is established. Of course this never accounts for how the items were removed from their country of origin in the first place. The Getty has in at least one case purchased an entire collection of questionable antiquities from a private collector, with the only published "provenance" being two exhibit catalogs produced when the items were on loan: one from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the other from (you guessed it) the Getty itself.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

But the Getty is far from the only museum getting its hands dirty through dubious dealings in the antiquities market. According to a June 3, 2010 article in the New York Times, a just released 14-page legal notice from the public prosecutor’s office in Rome, states that J. Michael Padgett, antiquities curator at the Princeton University Art Museum, is the focus of a criminal investigation for "the illegal export and laundering" of Italian archaeological objects. And many other American museums have recently repatriated antiquities with questionable provenance to their homelands to avoid facing the kind of legal action now plaguing the former Getty curator.

T'oros Roslin (active:1256 - 1268)
Canon Tables of the Zeyt' un Gospels, 1256.
Tempera colors, gold paint,
and ink on
parchment.

(Image Courtesy Of The J. Paul Getty Museum.)

The former director of the Getty, John Walsh, summed up the problems with the antiquities market best when he called it a field "not only full of dubious material but full of untruthfulness and deceit of every kind." Part One of this piece dealt with a return of a stolen national treasure where everyone involved came out smelling like a rose. However the court case between the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America and the J. Paul Getty Museum turns out, it seems certain somebody is going to wind up stinking like the famous corpse flower at another California temple of the arts, The Huntington Library.
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