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An ancient Apollo statue landed in Cleveland and touched off an international outcry

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Hicham and Ali Aboutaam readily admitted to gaps in the Apollo's ownership record. From what they were able to determine, the statue was owned by a German family in the early 1900s. World War II forced them to flee, leaving their belongings behind.

In the 1990s, a surviving member returned to the family estate after the fall of East Germany. In the backyard lay a pile of debris. He could only make out the bronzed head of a young man, a sculpted hand, the outline of a lizard.

The man vaguely recalled seeing the statue in the garden as a child, but he knew nothing of its history. Believing the cost of repair would be greater than its value, he sold the statue to a Dutch dealer in 1994, who in turn sold it to another collector, who then sold it to the Aboutaams in 2001 with the understanding that he'd remain anonymous.

"It's the sort of story that could be true," says David Gill, professor of ancient history at Swansea University in Wales. "But we also know from the Medici history that it's the same sort of story that was often invented to cover up."

Equally suspect were the Aboutaam brothers. The same year Bennett bought the Apollo, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Hicham for trading in looted Iranian art. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a $5,000 fine.

Then an Egyptian court convicted Ali in absentia, sentencing him to 15 years for smuggling art to Switzerland. Aboutaam appealed and the conviction was later dropped. But the stain on the brothers' name remained.

"The [Aboutaam] name regularly pops up in association with people I'd call suspect," says Neil Brodie, a Stanford historian. Most dealers, he says, would be acutely "suspicious" of anything that passed through the brothers' hands.

Bennett dismissed the allegations. He'd been dealing with the brothers for years. In his experience, they'd been nothing but forthcoming and ethical.

But to ease suspicion, the Aboutaams granted Cleveland a year to study the Apollo's history. The museum spent thousands on forensic tests, and allowed scholars and historians to examine the materials. The German man who found the statue signed an affidavit testifying to his backyard discovery. The International Art Loss Register in New York, which tracks stolen art, found no claims on the piece. And research revealed that the statue had been fitted with a new base in the past century, proving that it hadn't been recently lifted from a tomb.

The findings were definitive: The statue was authentic. "Short of finding a vase that says Praxiteles made this, I don't think you could get much more certain about its origins," says David Mitten, a Harvard art history professor. "I think it's the most important classical Greek sculpture to come to a museum since World War I."

Bennett was glad to be part of the process. "I feel humbled really that I had a role in bringing it to Cleveland," he says.

The museum paid a reported $5.2 million for the Apollo and placed it proudly in the middle of its interior garden court. Visitors from around the world came to witness the statue.

The Louvre even called, asking whether it could borrow Apollo for a Praxiteles exhibit. In the art world, there was no greater honor. Cleveland readily agreed, even putting off its own international symposium on the statue.

And that's when the grenade landed.

In December 2006, a French news agency quoted an anonymous source within the Greek Ministry of Culture, who claimed the Apollo had been stolen. The piece hadn't been found in a backyard in Germany, the official declared, but "was probably sold illegally after it was found in the 1990s by an Italian vessel in international waters between Italy and Greece." No other details were offered.

Bennett was astonished. The claim was "so absurd I had to smile about it," he says. The museum's research showed no sign that the statue had spent time underwater.

Cleveland offered to share its research with Greek officials, but they weren't interested, Bennett claims. Instead, they threatened the Louvre. If the museum showcased the Apollo, Greece would take back 19 pieces it was loaning for the exhibit.

It seemed the initial crusade over stolen art had turned into something of a strong-arm game. Greece was no longer interested in producing evidence to back its claims. Museums were in retreat, and the Greeks were prepared to capitalize for the audience back home.

"This debate has nothing to do with scholarship and real curatorial work," says Harvard's Mitten. "It's just political aggrandizement."

Art writer Guy Weill Goudchaux concurs: "Greek nationalism is now threatening the freedom of exhibition curators. This is surely intolerable. It is time that the great museums of Europe and America made a united stand against cultural blackmail."

But the Louvre bowed out. With apologies to Cleveland, the Praxiteles show commenced without the only work believed to have been rendered by Praxiteles' hands.

The defeat still causes Bennett to seethe. So when the Italians also came calling, asking for dozens of pieces back, Cleveland was in no mood for concessions.

The Carabinieri's Tutela Patrimonio Cuturale, the Italian police force charged with prosecuting art theft, were also playing hardball, using legal pressure, ultimatums, and threats of blacklisting against American museums.

"The Italians wanted to make it very clear that [curators] have totally ignored their professional responsibilities," says Gill, who supports Italy's quest. "They decided to take actions that reminded [museums] quite forcibly that there's been wrongdoings, that they hadn't been diligent in the way they acquired archaeological objects."

Others called it by a different name: bullying.

"Italy found a very advantageous strategy of intimidation," says Harvard's Mitten, who believes American curators acquiesced too readily. "They buffaloed and blackmailed museums for things they had no title to. The only way to deal with these people is to play hardball with them."

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