The Cesnola brothers (Luigi and Alessandro Palma di Cesnola)

Some of the Cypriot antiquities that reached London and Turin in the 1870s and 1880s are recorded under the name of both Luigi Palma di Cesnola and Alexander Palma di Cesnola, who each dug at Cypriot sites¹. What was written about the two together falls into three parts: an attack on both in print, a London exhibit of Alexander's finds, and the Turin gifts that cannot be divided between them.

The accusation of 1884

In 1884 the Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft printed "Alterthumsfälscher auf und mit Cypern" by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, himself an excavator and seller of Cypriot antiquities¹. He wrote that the brothers gave false findspots in great numbers. Many of Luigi's pieces labelled Golgoi and Kurion, he said, had not been found at Athienou or Episkopi, and neither had many of Alexander's from Salamis, between Ayios Sergios and Enkomi¹.

He added two claims about Alexander. According to Ohnefalsch-Richter, Alexander showed him how he built whole statuettes from fragments, and Alexander's former foreman Lazari offered him glue left over from the same work¹. Of the two brothers he gave the "lion's share" of the deceptions to Luigi, the elder, while holding that Alexander's findspot statements and restorations were no less unreliable¹. He also announced a forthcoming book by J. de Morgan against Luigi¹.

These are one rival's statements, and no court ruled on them. The same issue reported a separate civil suit, Feuardent against Luigi Cesnola, then being heard at the United States Circuit Court in New York¹. A footnote in the Mittheilungen of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, also of 1884, says that Menant and Perrot treated Cypriot cylinder seals inadequately, both having relied on the brothers' notes of provenance⁸.

London and Turin

At a meeting of the British Archaeological Association, Cecil Brent showed Cypriot vases from the second sale of the Lawrence-Cesnola collection, together with gold earrings from tombs Alexander had excavated in the Salamis district². A skull from Golgoi, labelled CXXII and probably given by Luigi about 1870, and nine skulls from Alexander's Salamis excavations of 1878 and 1879, given in July 1881, went to the Royal Academy of Medicine in Turin. Alberto Gamba's catalogue of 1886 entered the two gifts as one acquisition of 13 skulls; ten survive⁵.

In 1972 the Institute of Anatomy passed 66 funerary objects from these gifts to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Turin. Forty-four are now attributed to the Palma di Cesnola collection, ranging from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman period, and their publishers say they cannot tell which brother gave which⁵. The Turin exhibition catalogue of 2021 credits a White Painted lagynos (inv. 4018) to Luigi's collection of 1870 and a Matt Red cup from Throni (inv. 4039) to Alexander's of 1877. Three sigillata lagynoi (MAE20, MAE22, MAE44) it gives to "Luigi or Alessandro"⁶.