Italy recovers 600 stolen antiquities
The United States is returning stolen Italian works of art worth $65 million, promising to return the loot «to where it belongs.» Italy is celebrating the return of 600 antiquities that were stolen and sold years ago and recovered as a result of criminal investigations.
Italy on Tuesday celebrated the return of about 600 antiquities from the United States, including ancient bronze statues, gold coins, mosaics and manuscripts worth 60 million euros ($65 million), that were stolen years ago, sold to museums, galleries and collectors in the United States and returned as a result of criminal investigations, writes The Guardian.
The presentation was attended by US Ambassador Jack Markell, Matthew Bogdanos, head of the antiquities unit of the New York District Attorney's Office, as well as employees of the Department of Homeland Security Investigations USA, the leadership of the Italian Ministry of Culture and the artistic detachment of the Carabinieri.
It was the latest presentation of the results of Italy's decades-long effort to recover antiquities that were looted or stolen from its territory by Tombaroli tomb robbers and sold to antiques dealers, who often falsified documents of provenance to resell the loot to high-end buyers, auction houses and museums, it noted. The Guardian.
Markell said Washington, D.C., intends to return the stolen loot “to where it belongs,” as a sign of respect for Italy and its cultural and artistic heritage.
“We know that preserving this history requires care and vigilance, and that's why we do what we do,” he said, adding that the US is keeping a close eye on the art dealers' latest target, Ukraine.
According to The Guardian, the latest acquisitions from the United States did not include the ancient Greek bronze statue “Victorious Youth,” which became the subject of a years-long legal battle between Italy and the Getty Museum in Malibu, California. The valuable figurine recently made headlines again when the European Court of Human Rights strongly upheld Italy's right to confiscate it, confirming that it had been illegally taken from Italy.
Matthew Bogdanos and Homeland Security officials declined to comment on whether “Victorious Youth” was returned, saying it was part of an ongoing investigation.
Among the most valuable artefacts on display on Tuesday was a fourth-century silver coin depicting the god of wine Dionysius on the island of Naxos, which was stolen from an illegal excavation in Sicily before 2013 and smuggled into Britain. Bogdanos said the coin, which was listed for $500,000, was found in New York last year as part of an investigation into a prominent British coin dealer.
He said other items were returned from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and some prominent New York philanthropists who donated artifacts to his collection that were found to have been stolen.
Among the returned artifacts were , dating from the ninth to second centuries BC, also included a life-size bronze figure, bronze heads and several Etruscan vases, The Guardian writes. Other items, including 16th- and 19th-century oil paintings, were stolen from Italian museums, religious institutions and private homes in well-documented thefts, the Carabinieri said.
Matthew Bogdanos, who formed an alliance with the art department of the Italian Carabinieri as they tried to recover antiquities stolen in Iraq after the US invasion, said Washington makes no distinction between items taken during illegal excavations or those stolen in thefts: they all amount to to looting.
“Robberies happen at the local level,” Bogdanos said. “The locals know when the guards show up and they know when they leave. They know when guards are protecting certain objects and not others. They know when scientific, proper, approved archaeological excavations are being conducted, and then they know when those archaeological sites are closed, for example for the winter or due to lack of funding.”
Given this, he said, There will always be looting. “Our job is to minimize this, increase the risk to those who may be involved in this traffic, find them guilty and, if necessary, sentence them,” Bogdanos said.