Painted Clay and Paper Trails: Tracing a 200-Year Chain of Custody

From Napoleon’s younger brother to Duke

Two people looking at a vase on a table
Nicole Braun (right) with Nasher curator Katherine Werwie

The following is a summary of a story that originally appeared on the Duke Law website.

In 1829, a single archaeological discovery set an unexpected story in motion. Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s younger brother, unearthed a painted Greek amphora in Etruria and presented it to the visiting Duke of Buckingham. That gift launched a 200‑year journey in which art, law, and collecting intersect, eventually leading the vase to a Duke Law student charged with telling its story.

Second-year law student Nicole Braun calls herself a “history nerd and art nerd,” and her work at Duke’s Nasher Museum of art lets her be both. As what’s called an object provenance researcher, she applies the legal research skills she’s learning at Duke Law to trace the ownership histories of artworks and document that they entered the museum collection “legally and ethically,” she explains.  

Braun sees provenance as a key to understanding an object’s deeper meaning. This recent project traces the amphora’s path from Lucien Bonaparte’s excavation through a series of changing owners before it reached the Nasher in 2006: debt-ridden English dukes, a social reformer, a Scottish dog breeder, a Cuban count, and a circle of Duke Medical School faculty. “It’s a puzzle,” she said, “and that is what I love about law, how you take pieces and fit the story together to show what you want to prove.”

This work is also shaping her future. Braun is exploring a career that blends art, intellectual property, and emerging questions surrounding AI and fair use. 

Yet one mystery remains unsolved. The vase was auctioned in 1872, but its buyer and its whereabouts afterward are still unknown. Braun is optimistic that the missing chapter can be found. “I know I will come back to the Nasher for as long as they will have me,” she said.

Read more about the journey of this Greek vase, where every stop adds a new layer to its story, on the Duke Law website.