Objects of inspection

ROME -- Like a high-stakes poker game played over a long distance, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Italian government are each waiting for the other side to reveal what it knows about decades of suspicious purchases of ancient art.

The Italian investigators sit on one side of the table, their cards held close to the vest. Just what have they got? Can their hand prove what so many have said for years: that the MFA bought art looted from Italian archeological sites?

So far, the MFA's leaders haven't blinked. They insist they have no proof that any works in their collection were stolen before being sold or donated, even as the evidence mounts against them. Yet after years of ignoring a host of claims, the MFA now knows it must face the accusers. This week, museum director Malcolm Rogers said he and other MFA officials will probably head to Rome in late April to meet with Italian cultural officials.

All along, the Italians have insisted they want to know more.

''I say, if you really want to be in good faith, you must show me your files," says Maurizio Fiorilli, the attorney representing the Italian government in its pursuit of looted art.

For those who think he's bluffing, consider that the same pool of evidence Fiorilli often refers to has already forced the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return objects once thought untouchable.

That evidence led to a court case against a pair of prominent art dealers and virtually ended the career of former Getty curator Marion True. Now, the Italians want to talk to the MFA.

But they're not quite ready to tip their hand, especially when it comes to the objects they say the MFA should give back.

The list is always changing. There are the three objects -- the two-handled jar, painted bath vase, and marble statue of Sabina -- registered in the thick case file used last year to convict Italian dealer Giacomo Medici of art smuggling. There are the 26 other works Italian investigators believe should never have crossed the ocean and ended up in Boston. That list was leaked to reporters earlier this year, though now the Italian police refuse to discuss it publicly.

And then there are the more than 1,000 MFA objects linked to Robert Hecht, the dealer now on trial in Rome. Colonel Ferdinando Musella, chief of the Carabinieri Special Unit for the Protection of Artistic Patrimony, has pegged those as potentially looted.

''The museums, I think, are saying, 'You come to us with the evidence. We have no obligation to put out evidence,' " says DePaul University law professor Patty Gerstenblith, cochairwoman of the American Bar Association's cultural property committee. ''Italy's ultimate hand to play is to sue the museum."

So what is at stake? How many ancient bowls, pots, and statues will the Italians formally ask for when they meet with the MFA?

''I don't know, I swear," says Maurizio Pellegrini, a researcher at the Villa Giulia antiquities museum here and the prosecution's expert witness in the trial of Hecht and True. ''We are still working on it."

''You have to ask Musella," adds Giuseppe Proietti, head of Research, Innovation and Organization at the Ministry of Culture, referring to the investigator. ''I don't know."

Musella, who rarely grants interviews, declined to provide such a list when asked for one repeatedly over the last two weeks. Then he stopped talking to the press altogether.

American museums, historically dismissive of claims on even their most questionable materials, have found they can't ignore the Italians any longer. They know, from the conviction of Medici, that the Italians have proof that antiquities were stolen by looters from archeological sites and then sold to American museums.

Much of the evidence comes from raids of Medici's Swiss warehouse and Hecht's Paris home. The raids took place in 1995 and 2000. The Globe has also learned that Swiss police coordinated a similar raid of a property owned by Fritz Burki, a dealer who has sold work -- including the almost 6-foot tall Sabina statue -- to the MFA.

The raids turned up an assortment of records that investigators say can link artworks sold to museums with ones looted from archeological sites -- a clear violation of a 1939 statute requiring dealers to get government approval before moving a piece to another country.

The raids also brought in between 4,000 and 10,000 Polaroids of artworks in varied condition, including many showing works covered in dirt, presumably after being excavated. Archeologists say these snapshots were taken to give dealers the ability to authenticate a work by showing it literally after it was pulled from the ground.

The Polaroids were also easy to pass around, allowing a dealer to interest clients. Now, the pictures are evidence, used in court to show that Medici, Hecht, and other dealers knew where the pieces came from, namely sites in Italy.

It might seem only natural for a major museum to know where the objects it buys came from. But in the past, acquisition committees simply accepted the word of a curator and dealer vouching for a piece's legitimacy. The Sabina statue, currently on view in the MFA's Roman gallery, for example, is listed as simply being from a ''private collection in Bavaria" before coming into the possession of Burki, in 1979, when it was sold to the MFA.

''It's shameful," says Pellegrini, holding a printed-out image of the Sabina from the MFA's online database.

Pellegrini is sipping black coffee in the cafe of the Villa Giulia, a state museum for antiquities with a collection of ancient works far outnumbering those found at the MFA. Before addressing the Hecht case, Pellegrini talks of wishing to modernize the museum. He would love to have computers in the galleries, which the Villa Giulia can't afford right now. As for the MFA pottery under suspicion -- much of it from the Apulian region of the country -- he shrugs.

''We don't really need it," admits Pellegrini.

For the government officials, the issue is different. They say they have a legal duty to push for the return of any looted objects.

''Our law says you must return archeological artifacts from Italy," says Proietti, the Ministry of Culture official.

Proietti says he would like to work out an agreement similar to the one signed by the Met last month. The museum will return 21 objects -- most famously a set of silver believed to have come from the Morgantina archeological site and the Greek vase known as the Euphronios Krater. Italy will then offer the Met loans of works of equal value from the state collection.

The MFA deal could happen quickly. Proietti notes that it took less than four months from the first meeting with Met director Philippe de Montebello to strike a deal.

Proietti talks tough only when asked what will happen if the MFA resists the circumstantial evidence and demands to know exactly where the suspicious pieces came from.

''If they want proof, then we will go to court," he says.

For years, a group of archeologists and Italian investigators have contended that the MFA has been woefully inadequate in revealing information about the provenance, or history of ownership, of many of its ancient pieces.

The Getty trial, however, has emboldened Italian authorities. Last month, they announced a visit to Boston to begin an inquiry into the MFA matter. That hasn't come to be, though Musella, the chief investigator, says ''the mission is still going forward."

This pattern of seemingly conflicting information, unclear evidence, and news leaks is not a Keystone Kops kind of thing, according to Susanna Spafford, the attorney representing Medici, who is appealing his conviction. She says it is a strategy used by the Italians to keep the accused off balance.

In an interview in her law office a short walk from the Ministry of Culture, she says that Paolo Ferri, the courtroom prosecutor in the Hecht and Medici trials, is particularly aggressive.

''We could never understand how many photographs they got in Medici's warehouse," says Stafford. ''In interviews, they said 10,000. Then it became 20,000 and 4,000. Ferri has this technique. He has everybody under investigation. Then he picks some people and starts a trial. The others are kept in fear."

So how many MFA objects are up for debate?

The Italians say they're not trying to be coy.

''It depends on the point of view," says Pellegrini, the key witness for the Italian prosecutors. ''If we see objects of the ones we have photos of, that's one list. If we see, from the museum, the object was sold by Hecht, that's another number. If they acquired an object from Hecht legally, they should know who sold it to Hecht."

But the MFA, in most cases, doesn't. A 1998 examination of MFA records by the Globe showed that 61 of 71 classical objects acquired from 1985 to 1987 had no history of prior ownership.

Those holes have spurred Italian investigators to push museums to open their internal records.

In his office last week, Fiorilli, the government attorney, repeatedly deflected questions away from the MFA matter. ''We are still preparing the dossier," he says.

But Fiorilli eagerly darted around the room, pausing only to remove his glasses and hold a pocket-size dictionary up to his eyes when at a loss for an English word, to show off the type of evidence he acquired to close two of his recent cases.

In particular, he emphasized the Met agreement, because the Italians consider it a model for other museums.

Fiorilli rifles through the thick file on his lap. It includes a statement given by former Met director Thomas Hoving to the Carabinieri during an interview in New York City, a study by archeologist Malcolm Bell, entries from a journal seized from Hecht, photographs of various objects before they were restored, and Hecht's bill for the Krater.

Then Fiorilli heads over to his computer, clicking through images of seized photos kept stored on about a dozen CDs.

''We have a lot of documentation," Fiorilli says. ''The difficulty is we have to compare the documentation with the items that are in the collections."

It's unclear how much Hecht's diary will play into the negotiations with the MFA. Seized in the raid of his home, the diary is a rambling document that recounts events over decades of art dealing.

Hecht has insisted that the volume is a fictionalized account of his life meant for later publication. Yet prosecutors used it in the Medici case to show that the dealers knew the origin of specific pieces, including the Krater.

The Globe acquired a copy of the diary, which states that Hecht and Cornelius C. Vermeule III, the MFA's now retired antiquities curator, were good friends. In the pages, Hecht writes of tangles with investigators, trips to see dealers, and ''Marion" -- the former Getty curator on trial with him. He tends to abbreviate names. ''C.V." is Vermuele. ''W. Robinson," whom Hecht attacks, is Globe reporter Walter Robinson, whose 1998 articles detailed the practices of dealers and major museums.

There is little talk of specific objects at the MFA, though.

The Italians say they have enough evidence. There are the pictures seized in raids, more than a dozen of which were viewed by the Globe through several sources in Rome.

Meanwhile at the Villa Giulia, Pellegrini shows off the kylix, or cup, the Getty had to return. It is in a case at the end of a stone-floored gallery.

''It's like a Caravaggio, or a Van Gogh," Pellegrini says, explaining why the cup, made up of little more than a handful of put-together pieces, is so important.

How did he feel when he got it back? He pauses before saying, simply: ''Satisfied."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. Sofia Celeste assisted with this report.