Articles by: Judith Harris

ROME – Culture sneaks onto the agenda when least one might expect it. In a leaked tape recording of a private conversation, Premier Silvio Berlusconi revealed to a female acquaintance, the professional escort Patrizia D’Addario, that “thirty Phoenician tombs from 300 BC” had been discovered on his property near Olbia in Sardinia.

The political opposition to the center-right government has raised a question in Parliament because under Italian law all such findings are automatically state property, and any discovery of archaeological sites must be formally declared to the authorities. Was this?

Questioned on this by Corriere della Sera today, archaeologist Andrea Carandini, who heads the scholarly board of counsellors for the Cultural Heritage Ministry, hypothesized, “I am sure that he [the Premier] will have declared them to the local superintendency.”

However, a statement by the National Association of Archeologists suggested otherwise: “If confirmed, this represents an important finding for the study of Phoenician expansion throughout the island, completely unknown to the scientific community”

 The scholarly issue is important because until now the Olbia area had been considered founded by overseas Greeks. Since no large necropolis exists without a nearby township, the new findings of Phoenician origin would change history, literally. 

Elsewhere the Euphronios kalyx krater—that’s the one former Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Hoving dubbed the “hot pot”—continues to stir up a sizzling debate in Italy.

This exquisite krater showing the death of the warrior Sarpedon is the Sistine Chapel of Greek pots, an unexcelled masterpiece. It was made by the potter Euxitheos and painted and signed by Euphronios, leader of the group of artists who transformed black-figure vase painting to the far more sophisticated red-figure during the golden age of Athens in the early Sixth Century BC.

The vase, as was suspected even in 1972, was stolen from a tomb at the ancient Etruscan site of Cerveteri, on the seacoast due north of Rome. It was illegally marketed to the Met by Robert Hecht, today an octegenarian, who is still on trial in Rome along with the Getty Museum’s former curator Marion True. Although Hecht claimed the pot had come from Beirut, in all likelihood he received it from the local Giacomo Medici, whose conviction for trafficking in looted objects was upheld July 15 by a Rome appeals court. (The court dropped his sentence from to eight years in prison, and he is free pending appeal to the Cassations Court, Italy’s highest.)

 In his book Making the Mummies Dance (Simon & Schuster, 1993) Hoving admitted to feeling a “near-sexual pleasure” when the million dollar purchase on behalf of the Met was concluded in 1972, “just underneath the crack in the door of the pending UNESCO treaty which would drastically limit the trade in antiquities.”

Today the hot pot is back in Italy, returned with apologies from the Met, with fanfare, and placed briefly on exhibition in the Quirinal Palace before being put on permanent view in the Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia in Villa Borghese in Rome. This venue was chosen because the Villa Giulia museum houses all the greatest treasures of Etruria in Italy, and particularly from tiny Cerveteri.

However, grumbling from American art lovers has followed. “I used to be able to walk ten minutes and see it,” moaned one disappointed New Yorker. Writing for the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman observed, “Italians don’t seem to care” about the treasure in their presence—that is, they care less than the New Yorkers do. The implication is that restitution was a mistake; that the krater was basically better off in New York, and that the Euphronios is just one more pot, hot or cool, in  Italy, blessed with so much stuff that it does not know where to look first, or bother to look. Besides, as another serious academic observed, in Italy it is hard to find out where things are in the museums.

Reacting to the criticism in the New York Times, Culture Minister Sandro Bondi proposed that the hot pot be taken on a “road show” (his words) throughout Italy. 
Bondi’s opponents (one of them, anyway) seem to agree. Speaking at a conference on cultural property held in Rome in mid-July, Bondi’s predecessor as minister and political rival from the center-left, Francesco Rutelli, who also happens to be a former mayor of Rome, blamed the present government for failing to have given sufficient publicity and air space to the objects repatriated so far from not only the Met, but from the Boston Fine Arts Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Getty in Malibu.

 In this context, the Culture Ministry has formalized creation of an office that will promote “valorizzazione” (public fruition) of the cultural heritage—that is, make the object more visible, more profitable to the Ministry and museums, currently underfunded because of current government reductions in the ministry budget.

      
In other words, both present and former culture ministers are in basic agreement with the critics in the U.S.—that publicity (that “road show”) is the way forward, and that the beni culturali can be profitable businesses. Not surprisingly, one Italian citizen, Paola Lucia, has proposed renting out the Euphronios vase.

At this point the distinguished archaeologist Prof. Salvatore Settis, director of the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa, Carandini’s predecessor as head of the Culture Ministry’s oversight board, weighed in. Writing in the daily La Repubblica July 23, Settis pointed out that the restitution of the hot pot and similar looted artifacts is based upon “the intrinsic nature of the public worth of the objects, and on their pertinence within an indivisible context linked to the place where they were found.” Renting cultural property to a foreign institution, Settis went on to say, would alter the very principle upon which the restitution was made, since the the return of an object would be requested in order to commercialize it—and in future no museum would dream of returning objects looted from Italy. 

The Euphronios krater goes on view from September 22 through January 30, 2010, in Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome together with fifty-nine other objects recovered through the work of the Carabinieri Fine Arts squad, the Comando Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, celebrating its fortieth year of activity. Besides the "hot pot," on exhibit are  the ancient Roman group of the Capitoline Triad of gods (the only known examplar), Raphael's "Portrait of a Gentleman" and paintings by Bellini, Van Gogh, Renoir and Cezanne.

    ROME. So now we know the names of the real protagonists of the G8 meeting, underway at L’Aquila, the beautiful, ancient city so sorely tried by the death-dealing earthquake April 6, which killed almost three hundred people. No, it’s not the world leaders discussing poverty and climate change, no no-global demonstrator, no party girl nor paparazzo.

The A-list begins with the residents of L’Aquila’s tent towns, victims of the quakes, who lost their homes and, this week, have been more or less locked into their tents for reasons of G8 security.  And indeed the L’Aquila mayor has repeatedly complained that the townpeople have been cut out of events, literally. Others have complained that, “like highway cafeterias where you have to go through endless corridors to find an exit,” roads at L’Aquila that took three minutes to drive now take a half hour because of the imposition, for PR motives,  of lengthy detours that require all comers to drive past reconstruction projects.

Other unseen protagonists: the firefighters, kept closer to (possible) action: one firefighter is assigned to each head of state as responsible for his evacuation in case of an emergency of any kind.  Carla Bruni, who arrived in the Abruzzo today in company with George Clooney. Clooney upstages everybody.

Next comes President Obama’s mother-in-law. This being a country where la suocera occupies a crucial role in society, commentators here, and especially women who happen to occupy that same role, were delighted that the President would bring her along. In Rome grannie took the girls to Giolitti’s, a few steps away from Parliament, for ice cream cones. The owner invited the

girls into the kitchen to help make more ice cream. Delighted, they did. Needless to say, photographers were not far away, and the photos showed the elder Obama daughter, Malia, pretty in loose shorts and a T-shirt printed with a huge peace symbol.
 

Michelle Obama herself won kudos and endless written and radio reports for her arrival in a sleeveless yellow frock with a big green flower pin at one shoulder. Tomorrow afternoon at 4 pm the President and his wife will return to Rome for a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI.   
 

Speaking of PR, you can already hear the sighs of relief coming from the organizers of the G8 because, so far so good, nothing untoward has taken place. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has had bad luck with previous G8 meetings: at the one held at Naples in 1994  he was served with notice that he was under investigation for corruption. In 2001 in Genoa riots left one demonstrator dead, and the city suffered severe damage. At this G8 venue rioters cannot get close to the damaged and suffering city, whose functioning access roads are easy to seal off. As a result, the no-globals were demonstrating mildly in Rome yesterday, where ten were arrested on more or less easy terms like “obstruction of justice,” meaning not getting out of the way of the police fast enough.
 

Finally, the foreign press has been a major protagonist, seen by the Berlusconi camp as his enemy, incited by radical leftists at home to speak for them. And how they have spoken—and not only the Murdoch-owned Times of London. For weeks the foreign press world-wide has carried detailed reports of sleazy parties attended by young girls and more than one paid female “escort,” hosted by the Prime Minister until the wee hours of the morning. While he and his PR people have downplayed all this on various grounds (right to privacy especially), the issue entered the public domain because of a devastating open letter from his now estranged wife.
 

There is no doubt that many foreign publications and broadcasters have treated Mr. Berlusconi harshly, even the Vatican has belatedly weighed in urging a return to morality. This week’s French magazine L’Express puts a grinning Berlusconi on its cover under the headline, “Enquête sur le bouffon de l’Europe, Berlusconi” (Investigation into the Buffoon of Europe). The British Times on Line shows a smiling Berlusconi holding a sign that says “G8”, the 8 shaped by a girl’s brassiere. In the US, CNN carried an interview with the confessed, very beautiful escort-for-hire, who has detailed her two nights with the Premier. And so on, and on, to Spain and even Asian publications.
 

      For this reason at yesterday’s G8 press conference following the meeting, reporters were not permitted to ask questions—any questions, not even on the issue of the day, climate change.
 

The real question behind the scenes has been whether these seismic events regarding Mr. Berlusconi’s private life hamper his ability to deal with his peers at the G8. Indeed, one British newspaper picked up a report that in the G8 Italy might be dropped and replaced with Spain. Asked about this, one of his most senior colleagues and supporters in the Senate said, rightly, that this was technically impossible. (In any case, that would seem unlikely, for the G8 is being enlarged to include more countries.) However, he acknowledged, choosing his words carefully, any leader’s prestige or lack thereof influences the way his peers negotiate with him. 

Because of Mr. Berlusconi’s control over his own three national TV networks and two of the three state networks of RAI, one question being raised on the talk radio shows here is whether or not Italy has freedom of speech. It is true that political censorship of newspapers and news magazines does not exist, but only 20% of the public gets its news from written materials. The remaining 80% take what they can get from TV, and TV is to some extent visibly manipulated. The RAI TG1 blackout of reporting of the sleaze events at Mr. Berlusconi’s homes in Rome and Sardinia has brought complaints from the oversight body of RAI; combined with the foreign press reports, it puts Mr. Berlusconi in the comfortable role of victim of foreign devils.

A careful tracking of RAI TV shows manipulation as well as omission. At Viareggio, last week, where a train running off the tracks carried a load of gas that exploded in a devastating fire, the Prime Minister arrived and was greeted with boos and catcalls. On TV, however, there was applause which sounded artificial. In fact, a news report the following day reported that it was artificial. Secondly, the Italian Prime Minister attended a recent meeting of European foreign ministers, even though his own foreign minister was there. On that evening’s state-owned RAI TV news Channel 1 his presence was duly reported, illustrated by footage of a previous meeting, not with foreign ministers, but with heads of state (and hence more prestigious). The footage, in other words, had nothing to do with the event, and the actual foreign ministers meeting had been plainly used an excuse to show Mr. Berlusconi in a world leadership role.

ROME – “Rubbish,” is how Premier Silvio Berlusconi yesterday described the ever more poisonous news reports in a scandal now in its fifth week. “I got rid of the rubbish crisis in Naples, and I can get rid of this.”


    But not just yet. The larger fact is that the “rubbish” has begun to cling, to the point that the growing malaise in the broader public cannot be ignored, even by those who favor a center-right government. As the editorial writer of  the business daily Il Sole 24 Ore opined today, “The sense of dismay [smarrimento, translated in Dante as ‘lost in a dark forest’] about the private affairs of the Premier is becoming palpable, and the wall built around him by his friends and defenders is getting ever higher.”


    This morning for the first time the Conference of Italian bishops, the CEI, weighed in with an editorial in their daily newspaper Avvenire, in which Mr. Berlusconi is urged to “respond to public opinion,” over allegations that paid female escorts have attended the Premier’s parties.  “As soon as possible there should be sufficient clarification to clear the air of the most pressing questions, which are being raised not only by political adversaries, but also from that part of public opinion which is not prejudicially adverse to the Premier,” said the editorialist. The current media storm at home and abroad has left the public at large “feeling lost,” the Catholic daily continued, asking rhetorically whether Mr. Berlusconi has so far defended himself as best as possible, and if he has had the best possible people defending him.


    The sense behind the wording is clear: Mr. Berlusconi has failed to offer a convincing defense, perhaps, to be charitable, because he has been ill advised.


    Neither the teenager Noemi and the birthday party business, nor Mr. Berlusconi’s irate estranged wife’s public complaints touched off a similar reaction. What made the Catholic Church in Italy enter this unsavory fray are new judicial investigations, which risk seriously tarnishing Mr. Berlusconi’s personal reputation.


    Magistrates in Bari have launched two separate inquiries into allegations of possible corruption attempts by a rich 35-year-old businessman, Giampaolo Tarantini, who dealt in hospital supplies and party girls, some of whom were hired and air-shipped to the Italian Premier’s personal residences in Rome and Sardinia. Put another way, the hypothesis is that political party favors were swapped for party girls. The inquiry has so far led to a half dozen paid female escorts, the most important of whom is former calendar girl, Patrizia D’Addario. As Corriere della Sera revealed Tuesday, D’Addario told the investigating magistrate in Bari that businessman Tarantini promised her E 2,000 for spending the night at the Premier’s residence in Piazza Grazioli, hard by Palazzo Venezia in Rome, but that she quit the party to stay instead at a hotel, and so was paid only E 1,000. (Reportedly her being denied a certain building permit further put her pretty nose out of joint.)


    For so far unknown reasons D’Addario wore a concealed tape recorder to that Palazzo Grazioli party. The two taped bobbins she turned over to the investigators have not been transcribed so as to avoid their contents being leaked and are locked in a safe of the Guardia di Finanza.


    Some observers here argue that all participants at the Premier’s party are potentially vulnerable, for if one paid party girl can tape the goings-on at a party, so can others, with blackmail a potential risk.


    In the background the Premier faces a number of important events. First is next week’s G8 meeting, to be held at quake-stricken L’Aquila, where the world leaders will be hunkered down in Carabinieri barracks and the press kept at a tidy remove a two-hour drive away on the Adriatic coast. Then there is a forthcoming nationwide referendum which, if successful (most unlikely), could curb the Premier’s power.


    Farther distant in time, and far more important for Italy and its allies, is the future of political Italy itself: the risk of a collapse of the government and the calling of new elections barely a year after the one which gave Mr. Berlusconi a full vote of confidence; the ongoing tug-of-war over possible alterations of the postwar and anti-Fascist  Constitution; and Berlusconi’s ambition to succeed to Giorgio Napolitano in 2013, when the octegenarian President’s seven-year term ends.


    In the wings is Berlusconi’s on-again off-again party comrade in the Partito della Libertà Gianfranco Fini, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, who did not fail to make a cutting remark or two about this latest scandal, to which an angry Berlusconi did not fail to respond.

    

By Italian standards the final tally in all 64,328 polling stations, available early Monday afternoon, gave a fairly low turnout. Nevertheless, almost two-thirds (65.04%) of those with the right to vote did so—even though, indicating an unusual degree of alienation, voters turned in two million damaged and intentionally blank ballots, according to the Interior Ministry.

    

The most highly publicized of the intentionally damaged ballots came when a Neapolitan middle-aged woman voter tore up her ballot in disgust. The reason: when 18-year-old Noemi Letizia, wearing black beachwear (Bermuda shorts and bodice top) showed up with a young man described as her manager-chauffeur and her parents, they were allowed to jump the queue of 100 would-be voters in a Neapolitan-area polling station. The polling station was shut down for ten minutes while Noemi voted for the first time and then air-kissed the attendants. From outside came shouts of “Shame, shame”—not, apparently, aimed at the young lady who has caused Berlusconi so much troublesome gossip, but at the polling officials who treated her like a celebrity and did not make her wait her turn in line.


    Initially Mr. Berlusconi had spoken optimistically of cornering 40% of the vote, a figure he raised in final days to 45%. This morning’s Il Giornale, whose proprietor is Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, reported triumphantly that the PdL share of the vote was “almost 39%.”  In point of fact, the party won under 35.3%, for 29 seats in the EU Parliament at Strasbourg. Only a year ago in national general elections the PdL support was of 38.4%.


    This 3% drop in consensus has several important implications. The most obvious is that the image of the Premier himself (and not, as his supporters claim, of the Italian nation or state), despite the massive media means at his disposal, has been damaged. If anything, public distaste for his flirting with young playmates like Ms. Letizia is the least of it; many here, women as well as men, see this as yet another sign of financial success. “He owns a soccer team and hosts parties with gorgeous women—how can we not envy him a bit?” as one voter told me on the way to the polls Sunday. Another voter told me, “My restaurant owner likes him—he said that under the Prodi government he had to file tax forms.”


    But that is not the whole story. One factor behind the slump in votes for the PdL is the lack of convincing reforms. Another is the economic crisis, which now has Italian families buying less food in the supermarkets. Some voters were shocked by the opening last week of the 101st legal action against Mr. Berlusconi, in this case concerning alleged abuse of military airplanes for personal use. Only two weeks ago British financial wheeler-dealer David Mills was convicted by a Milan court on charges of corruption on Berlusconi’s behalf.


    For the record, the ailing, squabbling Partito Democratico hoved in at 26.13%. But as with the vote for Mr. Berlusconi’s vote, given the circumstances, perhaps this was not a bad showing.


    The problem is that voters are turning away from “Mr. B.”, as he is being called here, in favor of openly protest parties—on the right, Umberto Bossi’s Northern League, which has bounced up to 10.2%, and, on the left, to former magistrate Antonio di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori, which almost doubled its vote to 8%.


    This creates a curious scenario. The renewed vigor of the recalcitrant Bossi, who supports the Berlusconi party in the governing coalition, can only mean trouble ahead. Bossi will now demand more payback by way of those Federalist reforms certain to alienate Berlusconi’s other (and ambitious) supporter, Fini, whose party by tradition is staunchly nationalistic. To combat Bossi and reassure Fini, who has been cautiously taking his distance from Berlusconi, the Partito della Liberta’ may begin negotiating with another small party which it has most recently snubbed, but is waiting in the wings: Pier Ferdinando Casini’s Catholic-oriented Unione di Centro, which won almost 7% of the vote.


    Those with a long memory of Italian politics may notice a familiar  trend. Traditionally the Christian Democratic party of the Sixties and Seventies gained some 35% of the vote—one-third—and the Communist party, 25%, or one-fourth. Analysts like sociologist/historian Giorgio Galli pointed out that this apportioning, election after election, seemed to be physiological, the result of family voting tradition dating back generations which inhibited real change. In order to muster sufficient votes for governing coalitions, the Christian Democrats therefore had to ally themselves with partners with radically different agendas, at the expense of reforms. This long-term trend may still be at work, with the inevitable consequences of difficult shared governance.