FROM the moment they were dug out of their forgotten tombs early in the 19th century, ancient Greek vases moved art lovers to lyrical expressions of delight. One Grecian urn inspired John Keats to write the famed lines: " 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." In the next century the vases aroused the collector's instinct in the late William Randolph Hearst. He began buying in 1901, owned 400 when he died 50 years later. Last year New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art bought 65 of the Hearst vases, which have...
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