Missing in Action: Provenance Minefields in the Market of Armour and Ceremonial Masks from Antiquity 

(Tempo di lettura: 17 minuti)

INTRODUCTION – THE EVOLUTION OF PROVENANCE FROM A “PLUS” TO A REQUIREMENT

Widely neglected until the turn of the XXI Century, over the past twenty five years provenance research has slowly but firmly evolved into a cornerstone of due diligence within the art and antiquities markets worldwide. For decades, provenance had customarily been reported in sales and marketing documents only when the identity of the previous owner brought added value in terms of importance and, consequently, desirability of an object. The absence of legal requirements for the trade to preserve business records beyond 7 to 10 years and for private buyers to keep any records at all certainly did not provide fertile ground for provenance research, while at the same time giving rise to the existence of millions of legally owned “orphan objects” devoid of documentation recording their ownership history and, ultimately, their origins. Wars, revolutions, natural disasters, fires and countless other destructive events – including the mere passage of time – have resulted in the destruction, dispersion and, more generally, loss of archives and records, if any. This implies that an object with little or no recorded provenance is not necessarily fake or illegal.

Although ownership history is now considered a key element in the assessment of the licit or illicit nature of an item and its authenticity, it is not at all uncommon to encounter, even within the high-end segment of the market, artworks or objects publicly available for sale presenting dubious, weak or inexistent provenance. Equally, it is not uncommon for these items to find a buyer nevertheless: collectors are often inclined to take a considerable amount of risk to obtain their objects of desire. While thousands, and possibly millions, of licit “orphan objects” exist, it is undisputable that the antiquities market is flooded with items of illicit origin, often stolen or excavated illegally. Distinguishing a legitimately owned object with unrecorded or limited provenance from an illicit or highly suspicious one is an extremely difficult task. It is therefore essential that red flags alerting analysts, potential buyers, and authorities about possible issues with the ownership status of an item are properly researched and interpreted before any conclusions are drawn, decisions made or actions initiated.

Provenance revolves around two key elements: prestige/reputation/importance of the previous owners of an object or artwork (the traditional concept of provenance as pedigree, where the identity of a previous owner has the power to increase the interest surrounding an item and therefore its value); and length and continuity of the ownership record (provenance as a chronological indicator of the licit or illicit origin of an object or artwork, and of its authenticity). Elements other than ownership that feed into provenance research are the exhibition history of an artwork or object and the literature in which the artwork or object is mentioned. Both these elements can be, and often are, successfully manipulated for the purpose of laundering illicit items.

PROVENANCE RISK IN ARMOUR AND CEREMONIAL MASKS FROM ANTIQUITY LISTED IN THE CHRISTIE’S “ANTIQUITIES” AUCTION 23881 OF 3 DECEMBER 2025

We have detected, investigated and assessed what we believe to be significant warning signs – and consequently potential risks for buyers, as well as for sellers – in a sale recently held at one of the top-three global auction houses in London during “Classic Week”. In light of our personal interest in armour, our analysis concentrated on five battlefield items and ceremonial masks  – more specifically, three bronze helmets, a cavalry mask, and a gold mask – originally listed for sale within the “Antiquities” live auction 23881 held at Christie’s, London, on 3 December 2025 (68 listed lots in total). Conducted before the sale took place, our investigation focused on the way lots were advertised to the public and on the provenance declared for each of the above lots.

A red flag emerging immediately was the complete absence of a publicly available paper or electronic auction catalogue, a factor able to hamper any retrospective analysis in the event one or more lots were to be withdrawn from the sale. That no catalogue for auction 23881 existed and that none would be created was confirmed by Christie’s in response to the second of two telephone enquiries we made in November 2025. In absence of a catalogue, lots are listed only on the auction house website, which is a dynamic rather than a static source: if an item is withdrawn from sale, an auction house has discretion on whether marking the lot as “withdrawn” and leaving all the relevant info on the website intact, or deleting the lot and all relevant data from what, de facto, is the only existing official source of information about the original list of items to be auctioned. The latter option implies the complete disappearance of the lot from the website, and possibly from the entire internet, unless a third party source has somehow already mentioned its existence. In such a scenario, the fact that an item was withdrawn from an auction can be inferred only by scanning the lots sequence, as a ghost lot number associated with the withdrawn item will survive. 

Other red flags emerged in the form of dubious or weak provenance record of four of the five lots analysed, two of which had been in the controversial Axel Guttmann collection and four of which had ownership history dating back only to the late-1980s or late-1990s, therefore well past the ideal 1970 UNESCO Convention divide. Our doubts regarding the provenance of one of the lots investigated – an extremely rare, possibly unique Thracian gold mask circa 5^th– 4^th Century B.C. that had immediately attracted our attention – were confirmed by its withdrawal from sale at an unspecified date after the early morning of 1^st December 2025. 

The items analysed are presented in this article in decreasing order of provenance robustness. The weaker the provenance of an artwork or object, the higher the risk of a third party intervening with a restitution claim.  Restitution risk on cultural heritage is hardly ever zero: particularly in the field of antiquities, not even robust provenances can effectively shield sellers from the risk of a source state / state of origin disrupting or blocking the sale of an artefact with an unsubstantiated restitution claim vaguely based on patrimony laws, export license requirements, and / or legislation on stolen goods but bearing no consequences for such a claim. 

Restitutions are a minefield for legitimate owners in good faith. In our 2025  paper David vs Goliath: The Fight for Survival of the Legal Art Market in Antiquities against the Superpowers of the States in the Field of Cultural Heritage Protection – The Existential Threat Posed by Sotheby’s v. Greece and Safani v. Italy via Sovereign Immunity, an expanded version of which is in process of being completed, we determined that, in the United States of America, sovereign immunity has recently emerged in the form of legal risk as a significant source of market uncertainty following the dismissal of two landmark legal cases – Howard J.Barnet, Peter L. Barnet, Jane L. Barnet and Sotheby’s Inc. v. the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Hellenic Republic (largely known as Sotheby’s v. Greece) and Safani Gallery Inc. v. the Italian Republic – which between 2019 and 2025 affirmed the principle of sovereign immunity from jurisdiction, in the US, for claims concerning the ownership and repatriation of cultural heritage. Despite what we have determined to be solid provenances, purchases performed in good faith, and the unproven or dubious nature of the relevant sovereign claims, legitimate owners of antiquities who had their property forcibly removed from a scheduled sale or even illegally seized by authorities saw their civil claims dismissed as the States demanding “restitution” invoked sovereign immunity from jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA). Owing to their dismissal, the crucial issue of property (legal ownership) remained unresolved in both cases, resulting in long lasting damage to the owners’ reputation and in the artworks object of dispute becoming forever “tainted” and therefore virtually impossible to sell in the open market, or, as in the Safani case, being “repatriated”.

Documented provenance, good faith and rightful ownership of an antiquity are worth nothing against unproven sovereign claims undermining property that, in absence of jurisdiction, go unpunished and remain forever productive of tainting effects on both the object of the claim via long-lasting uncertainty regarding its legal ownership, and the reputation of its owner: the principle of sovereign immunity for claims concerning the protection of cultural heritage in the US exposes collectors, dealers, museums and art investors to the unpredictable possibility of unproven or dubious sovereign claims with devastating reputational and financial consequences against which no judicial remedy exists at present. At the time of writing, this extremely concerning scenario has materialised only in the United States but could potentially do so also in other jurisdictions where the principle of sovereign immunity from jurisdiction is similarly structured. 

We now proceed to the assessment of the provenance risk embedded in each of the selected lots from the Christie’s “Antiquities” live auction 23881.

Lot 7 

The Greek bronze Corinthian helmet from the Archaic period, circa 650-600 B.C. listed in the “Antiquities” sale as Lot 7 possesses what can be qualified as satisfactory ownership history for an artefact of its kind. Provenance is solid both in length (over 100 years) and quality, featuring a prestigious first recorded ownership pre-dating 1924, solid history of public auctions over seven decades (1956-2025) and consequent, consistent high public visibility. The first recorded owner of the item was George Edouard Warneck (1834-1924), a renowed French naval officer, art dealer and collector married to Caroline Febvre, the daughter of Parisian art collector Alexis Febvre. Warneck’s personal collection was sold at the Georges Petit Gallery, Paris, few years after his death but this specific Corinthian helmet was retained by his son in law Arthur Sambon, a well-known and highly respected historian and specialist of ancient coins, until he passed away in 1947. After his death, the helmet stayed with his family until 1956, when it was auctioned in Paris. It would later be sold at auction again in Paris in 1984 and at Bohnams, London, in 2014.

On the market with an estimate of 90,000 to 110,000 British pounds, the helmet fetched 165,100 GBP at Christie’s during the “Antiquities” sale of 3 December 2025. A positively unsurprising result for this finely decorated helmet, hammered from a single heavy sheet into a doomed form, with an uninterrupted, century-long prestigious ownership history. 

Lots 14 and 38

Significant vulnerabilities existed in the provenance of lots 14 and 38 (pictures 3 to 6), consisting in a Greek bronze Illyrian helmet, Archaic Period, circa 500-420 B.C., listed with an estimate ranging between 25,000 and 35,000 GBP, and a Roman cavalry mask and helmet circa midst 1^st Century AD, listed with an estimate comprised between 100,000 and 150,000 GBP. Both items presented short, post 1970 UNESCO provenances indicating controversial German collector Axel Guttmann (1944-2001) as their first recorded owner (1987 for lot 14; “by 1997” for lot 38).

Amassed beginning from around 1980 and widely considered one of the largest and most important private collections of arms and armour in the world, the Guttmann collection has proved rather contentious. After Guttmann’s death in 2001, his heirs dispersed the collection at Christie’s via auctions held in 2002 and 2004. Large part of the collection was acquired by English financier Christian Levett, who for several years displayed it, along with his own, in a private classical art museum he created in the French town of Mougins. Following a radical shift in his collecting focus from classical art to female artists from the Baroque period to the present day, in 2023 Levett consigned the majority of his museum contents to Christie’s for dispersion in London and New York. The size of the consignment was such that Christie’s organised a series of five different auctions entitled “A Collecting Odyssey”. Among the sales included in the series, “Arms and Armour from the Mougins Museum of Classical Art Part I”, held on 30 January 2024, and the homonymous Part II held on 8 October the same year, both in New York.

Part I of the auction draw immediate attention from cultural heritage professionals. On 18 January 2024, Italian archaeologist and journalist Valentina Porcheddu PhD wrote on Italian newspaper “Il Manifesto” an article entitled “All’asta armi ed elmi di dubbia provenienza al miglior offerente” (Arms and Helmets with Dubious Provenance for Sale to the Highest Bidder) in which she defined the Levett Collection as “problematic” due to the presence of a large number of items resulting from the looting of necropolises located in the former Magna Grecia.  Dr. Porcheddu also noted that in 1995 the Axel Guttmann Collection (later forming large part of the Levitt’s) had been reported by German archaeologist Daniel Graeper as “one of the most scandalous examples of looting of necropolises from Magna Grecia”, and that, more recently, Fabio Isman – author of the book “I predatori dell’arte perduta” (2009) – had indicated that the collection included pieces sourced by Gianfranco Becchina, an Italian art dealer of Sicilian origin operating internationally since the 1970ies through his art gallery Palladion in Basel, Switzerland.  Becchina had been investigated in Rome since 2001 for receiving stolen goods, illegally exporting goods and conspiring to traffic goods; in 2002, in execution of an international judicial assistance request from Italian investigators, Swiss authorities had searched Palladion and other premises, where an enormous “official” catalogue – later called “the Becchina Archive” – containing over thirteen thousand documents and more than four thousand photographs, integrated by a “reserved” catalogue containing the images of other 3,164 items, emerged during the search. Many of the items in the archive originated from Apulia, a southern Italian region that in ancient times had been part of Magna Graecia, and over 90% of them had a single source: convicted tomb raider, and later intermediary, Raffaele Monticelli.  Over 5,000 archaeological artefacts found in five different deposits linked to Becchina and his wife Ursula were seized. The extremely slow pace of the judicial proceedings, however, caused the crimes of which Becchina had been accused to lapse and when in 2011 his case reached the GUP (Judge for the Preliminary Investigations) in Rome the running of the statute of limitations prevented trial.  “Prescrizione”, and the consequent dismissal of all charges against Becchina, did not hamper confiscation though: stating in her decision that the abundant documentation obtained proved that the items seized originated from illegal excavations and that any legitimate provenance was to be excluded, Judge Rosalba Liso ordered the confiscation of over 5,000 of his antiquities. The terms of Judge Liso’s decision are reported in, among other sources, an investigative article by Paolo Biondani and Leo Sisti entitled “Il traffico di reperti rubati per i grandi musei: nei sequestri in USA sono coinvolti anche trafficanti italiani” published on Italian magazine L’Espresso on 30 January 2023. In October 2011 and again in June 2012 Italian appellate courts rejected Becchina’s appeals and confirmed the confiscation. In execution of an order of restitution issued by the Italian Corte di Cassazione in 2012, 5,361  archaeological artifacts with a total value of over 50 million euros were confiscated by the Italian Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (TPC) under operation “Theseus” and repatriated. The confiscation, hailed as the largest recovery of archaeological finds in the world, was publicly announced on 21 January 2015. Separate proceedings initiated in Sicily by the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA) in 2017 brought to the seizure of the entire Becchina estate but all assets seized under those circumstances were returned to his legitimate owner in March 2026 following two successful appeals.

On 24 January 2024, less than a week before the “Arms and Armour from the Mougins Museum of Classical Art Part I” auction, Charles Vincent Sabba Jr, a retired police captain specialised in cultural patrimony protection, published an article on “La Voce di New York” entitled Magna Grecia Artifacts to Be Auctioned at Christie’s May Be of Illegal Provenance and subtitled “These exquisite helmets and armor may be in violation of MOU and should be reviewed before being placed on the block”. Reference was to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the United States and Italy (where Magna Graecia was located in ancient times) prohibiting the sale in the US of any antiquities originating from Italy unless discovered and exported from the country prior to 1970 or possessing a valid export license issued by the Italian Government. Helmets were among the items specifically listed in paragraph 2.D of the Memorandum in force at the time, and concerns arose from the fact that a number of helmets listed in the “A Collecting Odyssey” auction catalogue were described as originating from Magna Graecia and purchased by Axel Guttmann after 1980. Sabba also described the then owner of the collection, Christian Levett, as someone “who has a good reputation as a collector and patron of the arts and has already proven his respectability by returning a set [of] helmets from his collection to Spain that were proven to have been taken illegally from an illicit archaeological site in Northern Spain”. The article noted that this was not the first time that the Axel Guttmann collection was questioned by experts:  in the 1995 edition (gennaio-aprile) of “Bollettino d’Arte del Ministero per i Beni Culturali”, archaeologist Daniel Graeper of the University of Heidelberg had questioned where and when the artefacts in the Guttmann collection were excavated in Magna Graecia (today’s Southern Italy) considered that Guttmann began purchasing large amounts of weapons and armour in 1982. His conclusion was that 174 bronze helmets in the collection were most probably from tombs.

On 30 January 2024, the day before the auction, Dr. Porcheddu returned to the matter with a bold article, again on “Il Manifesto”, entitled “New York, le armi antiche vanno all’asta nel silenzio delle nostre istituzioni” (New York: Ancient Arms to Be Auctioned while Our Authorities Remain Silent),  in which she denounced the inertia of the Italian Ministry of Culture, then headed by Gennaro Sangiuliano, with regard to the imminent sale of Italian cultural heritage of highly dubious provenance.  The subtitle stated: “Tomorrow, the auction of the archaeological finds: at least 15 out of 35 items could have left Italy illegally. According to specialist Alberto Pollastrini “The provenance of the Apulian-Corinthian helmets from the VI and IV century B.C. and of the so-called “Pilos helmets” from the Hellenistic period from archaeological areas of Apulia and Basilicata is indisputable”. The body of the article specified that the 15 suspicious items belonged to the Axel Guttmann portion of the Levett collection, that Italy had proof that the German collector was a client of Becchina, that a Corinthian helmet of archaic type formerly in the Guttmann Collection had been recognised by scholar Christos Tsirogiannis as a former possession of disgraced British antiquities dealer Robin Symes, and that arms and armour specialist  Alberto Pollastrini also identified a Phrygian- Chalcidian helmet in the Levett collection as undoubtedly originating from a southern Italian necropolis of the IV Century B.C.  Dr. Porcheddu also reported that according to archaeologist Simona Modeo  – editor, together with Serena Raffiotta, of the book “Ladri di antichita’ ” – a Corinthian helmet (525-475 B.C.) with an estimate of 300,000 to 500,000 dollars and a provenance indicated by Christie’s as first sold to a private collector by Merrin Gallery, New York, at some point between the end of the 1980ies and the beginning of the 1990ies, was excavated in Sicily, possibly from the archaeological site of Montagna di Marzo, near the city of Enna, an area known for being relentlessly looted by tomb riders.

Notwithstanding the concerns expressed by Porcheddu and Sabba in their articles, with the sole exception of the withdrawal from sale of a Roman bronze breastplate dating to around 300 B.C. owing to possible links of the item with Becchina, the auction went ahead nevertheless, selling 100% of the lots offered and achieving a total of $6.5 million against a pre-sale low estimate of $3.4 million. The highlight of the sale was the “Guttmann Mouse Helmet” – formerly on loan for display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 2018 to 2022 – which fetched $1.2 million. Part II of the “Arms and Armour from the Mougins Museum of Classical Art” sale took place on 8 October 2024 as scheduled, selling 91% of the lots for a total of nearly $3 million. Once again, a clear indication that collectors of arms and armour from antiquity tend to favour quality, rarity and importance over immaculate provenance. 

The controversial nature of the Axel Guttmann collection did not discourage bidders at the “Antiquities” auction held at Christie’s London on 3 December 2025 either. The Illyrian helmet marked as “property from an international collection” offered as Lot 14 sold for 69,850 GBP against an estimate of 25,000 to 35,000 GBP despite provenance indicating Axel Guttmann as first owner in 1987. For some reason, however, Lot 38 – a Roman cavalry parade helmet and mask marked as “property of a private collector” and with provenance vaguely indicating Axel Guttmann as first owner “by 1997” –  did not sell despite appearing in literature published between 1997 and 2017.

Lot 26

The fact that collectors of arms and armour are relatively unconcerned by dubious provenance was confirmed by the sale of Lot 26. The Greek bronze Chalcidian helmet from Magna Graecia, late Classical Period to Hellenistic Period, marked as “property from an international collection” flew off the shelf, selling for 27,940 GBP against an estimate of just 12,000 to 18,000 GBP despite an extremely vague provenance reporting “Said to be Comte de Bressac Collection, France, and sold in London after 1918”, followed by an even vaguer “Art market, Germany” and just one auction in 2001. Geographical provenience from Magna Graecia represented a further risk factor but clearly left bidders undeterred.

Lot 25

Our concerns about the provenance of the magnificent, extremely rare, and possibly unique Thracian gold mask listed as lot 25 of the Christie’s “Antiquities” live auction 23881 held in London on 3 December 2025 (pictures 9 to 12) were confirmed when the artefact, estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000 GBP, disappeared from the lots listing at an unspecified date after the early morning of 1^st December 2025, time at which, in absence of an auction catalogue, we took some last screenshots of the artefact to conduct research on the item out of personal interest.  Provenance for the mask indicated Ariadne Galleries, New York and London, late 1990ies as first recorded owner, and property by the current owner as dating back to 2004. No auctions, no exhibitions, no literature.

The fact that the Thracian Gold Mask was withdrawn from sale on ownership history issues was confirmed by Christie’s in an email sent to us on 7 May 2026 in response to an enquiry we had submitted to the auction house the day before. In its email, Christie’s specified that “the mask was withdrawn to conduct further provenance research”, a sentence broad enough to cover multiple possible scenarios ranging from the current owner / seller simply changing his mind out of caution to the state of Bulgaria, home to the ancient Thracian civilisation, intervening by blocking the sale and demanding restitution of the artefact. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Little is publicly known about this striking mask except for the extremely scarce information formerly reported on the Christie’s website: 27 cm high, dating to circa the 5^th– 4^th Century B.C. and property of a private London collector. The lot description revolved primarily around the Thracian civilisation rather than the mask itself, an element clearly indicating that little is known or can publicly said about the precise origins of the artefact and the circumstances of its discovery.

At the time of writing on 7 June 2026, no trace of this spectacular archaeological find is left on the internet except for a page from the Barneby’s website retaining basic tracking info about the lot (Picture 12). On withdrawing the item from sale, Christie’s removed from its website any image and information regarding lot 25, the existence of which can now be inferred only by the presence of a gap in the sequence of the auction results.

Despite the exceptional nature of the Thracian Gold Mask originally listed as Lot 25 of the Christie’s “Antiquities” sale 23881 of 3 December 2025 and later withdrawn, no relevant literature appears to have been published so far: the present article seems to be the first and only source covering the existence of the mask and the circumstances of its withdrawal from sale. We are in the process of attempting to obtain further information on this outstanding artefact, including its possible identification as a funerary or ceremonial mask. At this stage, potential issues about its authenticity, rather than just provenance, cannot be excluded completely.

CONCLUSIONS

Over the past quarter of a century provenance research has slowly but firmly evolved into a cornerstone of due diligence within the art and antiquities markets worldwide, transforming ownership history from a “plus” into a requirement. This transformation, however, seems to have happened more in theory than in practice:  as proven by the ownership histories of the battlefield items and ceremonial masks listed in the Christie’s “Antiquities” auction 23881 of 3 December 2025, it is not uncommon to encounter, even within the high-end segment of the market, artworks or objects publicly available for sale presenting dubious or weak provenance, and for these items to find a buyer nevertheless. Buyers tend to remain rather adventurous in their purchases and undeterred by provenance risk, with collectors of arms and armour from antiquity continuing to favour quality, rarity and importance over immaculate provenance.