European explorers rediscovered the place in the 19th and early 20th centuries and pillaged it, carrying off thousands of manuscripts and paintings stored in the so-called Library Cave.
Sitting next to Kovarsky on a living room sofa, surveying the living-room walls lined with his paintings, the hallway beyond, with paintings stored in racks, I said to Kovarsky, "You have done so much work," to which he replied, "I am told that there are six hundred paintings here.
I mean, look at all these paintings stored away doing nothing".
The cost of insuring paintings stored at the Geneva facility has doubled over the last three years, Brett estimates.
His second wife Mary Seton, who devoted her widowhood to tending the flame of his memory, had died, the Tate and St Paul's had put his paintings into store and the Compton building had begun its long, slow decline.
Some paintings are stored alongside clippings from the day's news; all are logged on a 100-year calendar.
Nataas refused, but it was no use: the two stolen paintings were stored on his bus soon after the robbery.
"We didn't know until the pictures appeared on the Internet about the hoarding situation, or how the paintings were stored," Ms. Provost said.
Heath's daugher, Clio, from whose collection the works came, is plainly bemused about the conditions in which the paintings were stored.
Contrary to some reports the paintings were stored in an orderly fashion with framed pictures stacked on shelves as if they were in a museum storeroom, while some 1,285 unframed works were piled in drawers.
