On June 4, Christie’s New York is pleased to offer an exquisite Roman statue of the goddess Tyche (estimate on request). Standing 31 ½ inches high, and executed in the rarest of materials: porphyry. The statue was formerly in the private collection of Dr. Elie Borowski, collector and connoisseur of ancient art, who acquired it in 1967. It was on loan to the sculpture museum Liebighaus in Frankfurt, Germany from 1980-1986, and later exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto from 1986-1991.
“This is the most spectacular and beautiful sculpture that I have ever had the pleasure to work with,” says G. Max Bernheimer, International Head of the Antiquities department. “The fact that it’s still in impeccable condition, makes it all the more exceptional.”
Network raises many disturbing questions that go unanswered. For example, we are told that in 1968 an arrest warrant was issued for Elie Borowski alleging that he had received large numbers of illicitly dug up antiquities. Then we learn that the document had been "destroyed." When? By whom? Surely it wasn't the only copy. Were there transcriptions of related proceedings or depositions?