Italian Senate renews call for return of the ‘Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth’

L’Atleta di Fano/Bronze Statue of a Victorious youth, at the Getty Villa

The Italian Senate’s Culture Commission has unanimously approved a resolution to renew the call for the return of the ‘Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth‘ currently in the possession of the Getty Foundation at its Villa in Malibu. The call has also been taken up by the mayor of Fano, Massimo Seri. Seri has been a dogged champion for the return of the Bronze, noting that Italian forfeiture decisions give Italy a right of recovery, and even trying unsuccessfully to make the Bronze a discussion at the Italian meeting of the G20 later this year.

The resolution by the Italian Senate Committee was according the the Art Neewspaper crafted by Senator Margherita Corrado. The resolution will involve streamlining the efforts to seek the return of contested objects of cultural heritage:

[T]o assign a smaller pool of district magistrates to restitution cases “to allow for greater specialisation”, favour the training of magistrates in cultural heritage law, and encourage universities to teach legal archaeology in relevant courses. Furthermore, the government will collaborate with the Rai public broadcasting service to raise general awareness among citizens about restitution through programming, the resolution states.

It is not clear how that streamlining will link up with the current framework created by the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the companion 1995 UNIDROIT Convention, or the various bilateral agreements currently in place. Specialized training and courses at University are a welcome step, but Italy already has world class legal experts at its Universities, so I look forward to learning more about what this new initiative will actually look like. And I’m most interested in the impact of an Italian Senate Committee resolution, and if it will unlock funding and substantial change. If so, it could be a most welcome development for the obligations Italy and other Nations have under International Cultural Heritage Law.

The Art Newspaper also reported on what may be a more impactful mechanism, which would be to shut the Getty out of future efforts. In 2020 an internal culture ministry communication absolutely foreclosed the facilitation of the stunning Torlonia marbles collection: “After the refusal of the Getty Museum to recognise the sentence of the Court of Cassation [. . .] the Ministry has limited relations with the American museum to projects that have already been initiated.”

The ancient greek Bronze, likely made between 300-100 BCE was most likely hauled up by Italian fishermen in the 1960s, on a vessel based in the fishing town of Fano on the Adriatic Coast. A full account of the likely journey of the Bronze can be found in the terrific investigative book on lots of the acquisitions by the Getty Foundation, Chasing Aphrodite by Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino. Italy has persistently asked for its return, and the Forfeiture ruling in Italy’s Court of Cassation gives Italy a domestic right to the return of the marbles.

The only hurdle then would be to have a compatible decision which would be enforced by American Courts. As I wrote in a 2013 Piece for Cardozo’s Arts and Entertainment Law Journal, United States Federal Law has such a mechanism, Italy simply needs to request its application.

James Imam, Italy Strengthens Case for Return of “Victorious Youth” Bronze from Getty Museum in Heritage Feud that Has Lasted Decades, The Art Newspaper, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/victorious-youth-getty-italian-senate [https://perma.cc/296Y-D5X7?type=image] (last visited Jul. 21, 2021).

Lisippo: sindaco Fano, risoluzione Senato aiuta ritorno Italia – Marche, Agenzia ANSA, https://www.ansa.it/marche/notizie/2021/07/19/lisippo-sindaco-fano-risoluzione-senato-aiuta-ritorno-italia_4f3315c4-d193-433f-80a4-ad2545c33632.html [https://perma.cc/5R87-RPVH] (last visited Jul. 21, 2021).

Italy’s Carabinieri Outwits Art Thieves

The Crucifixion, by Pieter Bruegel the Younger, a copy of a similar work by his father (wikipedia commons)

Italy’s art squad, the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, are the pre-eminent art police squad for a reason.

Thieves hoping to steal this work learned that lesson the hard way last week when they attempted to steal this work of art from a baroque church (Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena) in Castelnuovo Magra in Liguria. Working from information that a theft was imminent, the Carabinieri and only a handful of the residents of the town orchestrated and elaborate switch.

They swapped the real painting out for a copy, and that’s what the thieves stole.

The thieves now have a near-worthless copy, and the painting is still safe in storage.

Daniele Montebello, the mayor of the town which has a population of 8,500, said “The original painting was replaced by a copy more than a month ago . . . We were hearing rumours that someone wanted to steal it, so the Carabinieri brought in the fake and installed security cameras.”

Parish Priest Fr. Alessandro Chintaretto, who was reportedly napping nearby when the theft took place, expressed relief the original is safe: “It is a work of rare beauty which expresses a moment of profound faith . . . ”. 

Italian Court Upholds Seizure Order for Fano Athlete

Bronze Statue of a Victorious youth, at the Getty Villa

Will the Getty’s prize bronze return to Italy? On Monday Italy’s Court of Cassation upheld the seizure of the Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth, currently on display at the Getty Villa. Though the legal dispute has taken years, that’s not out of the norm for the amount of time prominent repatriation conflicts take to resolve. The written opinion has not yet been published, but it certainly appears to be a favorable development for Italian officials.

Gaia Pianigiani reported for the New York Times:

After a decade-long legal battle, Italy’s Court of Cassation ruled Monday that the statue should be confiscated and brought back to Italy, rejecting the Getty’s appeal. The decision had not been published Tuesday but a message from a court official describing it was provided to The New York Times.

“It was a very, very long process, but we now hope that we will be able to have it in Italy as soon as possible,” said Lorenzo D’Ascia, a lawyer representing the Italian government.

In a report on ANSA, comments by Italian heritage advocates, ministers and lawyers seemed optimistic:

The top court rejected an appeal by the US museum against a Pesaro judge’s order to confiscate the fourth-century BC bronze statue.
“The Lysippos (as it is known in Italy) must return to Italy, it’s the last word from Italian justice,” Pesaro prosecutor Silvia Cecchi told ANSA after the long legal battle.
Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli told ANSA “now we hope the US authorities will act as soon as possible to favour the restitution of the Lysippos to Italy”.
He said he was happy that “this judicial process has finally ended and the right to recover an extremely important testimony of our heritage has been recognised.
“Let’s hope the statue can soon return to be admired in our museums”.
In June the Pesaro prosecutors announced that the order issued to seize the statue for years disputed by Italy and the Getty Museum in Malibu was “immediately executive”.
“The Lysippos statue must return to Italy,” prosecutors told ANSA, accompanied by Tristano Tonnini, the lawyer for the association “Cento Citta'”, which has been fighting the legal battle for 11 years.
“We expect politicians to play their part,” they said.

For Italy, the path to a successful repatriation of the Bronze could come via an agreement with the Getty. And such an agreement may be more likely to occur with this favorable ruling. The forfeiture can be successfully enforced by a U.S. Federal Court via transnational forfeiture and a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between Italy and the United States. I detailed how such a transnational forfeiture could work in a 2014 article, available here.

  1. Lysippos statue is Italy’s says court, ANSA.it (2018), http://www.ansa.it/english/news/lifestyle/arts/2018/12/04/lysippos-statue-is-italys-says-court_8405f7ad-e1d1-4aef-aa4d-998c98c1a7ec.html (last visited Dec 4, 2018).
  2. Gaia Pianigiani, Italian Court Rules Getty Museum Must Return a Prized Bronze, The New York Times, December 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/arts/design/getty-bronze-italy-ruling.html (last visited Dec 4, 2018).
  3. Derek Fincham, Transnational Forfeiture of the Getty Bronze, 32 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 471–500 (2014), available at https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/caelj32&i=485.
  4. Luis Li & Amelia L.B. Sargent, The Getty Bronze and the Limits of Restitution Symposium: The Cultural Identity and Legal Protection of Art, 20 Chap. L. Rev. 25–50 (2017) (for a discussion of the case from the perspective of the Getty’s attorneys).

Profile of Tsirogiannis by Vernon Silver

This polaroid image of a Bell Krater from teh Medici archive was submitted by Tsirogiannis to Manhattan prosecutors, who seized the krater from the Met in 2017.

If you haven’t yet read the profile of Christos Tsirogiannis by Vernon Silver, you should. Silver wrote a terrific account of the Euphronios Krater called The Lost Chalice, so this extended profile into how Tsirogiannis uses his database, and how auction houses and prosecutors use this information is fascinating. I really recommend you give it a read, but here is a taste:

When he finished clicking through the last of Christie’s 109 lots, Tsirogiannis was ready to dive into his archive. It’s meticulously organized so he can fetch images from one of three major dealers, including Medici, and from galleries and smaller dealers whose photos help him reconstruct who owned what and when. Within each of these libraries, he has folders for about 10 object types, amphorae in one, kylix drinking cups in another. Those in turn are categorized by shape and color. Figurines are sorted by animal type—horses are with horses, boars with boars.

To vet the catalog, he’d made a list of about 15 suspect lots. Then, one at a time, he looked for matches. The laptop screen was filled 14 across with thumbnails from the Medici folder, and Tsirogiannis’s eyes darted left to right as he scrolled through in an intricate game of Memory, where players turn over two cards at a time looking for a pair.

He’d barely begun when he needed to run to a lunch meeting. He would continue the search that evening; we could meet the next day, he said. As we prepared to leave, he deleted the downloaded portion of the archive. Tsirogiannis’s curiosity proved overwhelming. As soon as I left, he logged back in. “These are things that always have priority for me,” he told me later. What he found made him late for his appointment. By midnight, he’d alerted law enforcement on two continents.

The Ancient-Art Vigilante Who Holds the Global Market Hostage, Bloomberg.com, Jun. 26, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-26/if-you-steal-it-the-art-vigilante-will-find-you.
Laura Chesters, Auction house Sotheby’s takes on Greece in landmark antiquities court case, Antiquities Trade Gazette (Jun. 6, 2018), https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2018/auction-house-sotheby-s-takes-on-greece-in-landmark-antiquities-court-case/.
Tom Mashberg, Ancient Vase Seized From Met Museum on Suspicion It Was Looted, The New York Times, Jul. 17, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/arts/design/ancient-vase-seized-from-met-museum-on-suspicion-it-was-looted.html.

 

Operation Demetra and familiar names

The Aidone goddess, likely depicting the Earth goddess Demeter at the Archaeological Museum in Aidone.

Police in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy have announced arrests in a four year investigation named Operation Demetra. The name for the investigation has a bit of history, which it may be worth remembering. Demeter, the ancient Greek Earth goddess was likely depicted in the notorious Getty goddess. The Getty mistakenly referred to her as Aphrodite.

As many of you likely know, the story of this and other illicit acquisitions by the Getty, and the tax fraud perpetrated to pay for much of this is described in the terrific book, Chasing Aphrodite. In a nutshell: The statue was first smuggled from Morgantina. Looters broke her into pieces, and it was acquired by the Getty in 1988 for $18 million. While at the Getty, it was described as the finest classical piece of sculpture in North America, perhaps even outside of the Mediterranean and Europe.  She was brazenly referred to for a while as the Getty Goddess, before ultimately being returned to the small archaeological museum at Aidone after evidence of the statue’s theft and connection to organized crime groups in Sicily helped build a case for return. Aidone and this part of Sicily are covered in wheat fields, the choice of using Demeter for a codename, goddess of the Earth and the wheat harvest was certainly intentional.

These objects were likely looted from archaeological sites in Sicily, and the investigation recovered an astounding 25,000 objects including coins, statues, and pottery fragments.

One of the individuals arrested was Thomas William Veres in London, a man of Hungarian origin antiques dealer who has long been involved in trafficking illicit material from Sicily to other parts of Europe and abroad. Police told reporters that:

The London art merchant Thomas William Veres commanded a transnational criminal holding that was able to traffic considerable quantities of Sicilian archaeological artifacts . . .

He was prominently featured in a case of another Sicilian antiquity, the Gold Phiale case. In 1991 Veres helped transport an ancient Greek Phiale (plate) to Switzerland where it was sold to Michael Steinhardt for $1.2 million. Veres was referred to by Federal prosecutors as a Swiss art dealer. Veres and another art dealer, Robert Haber, revealed how little faith they had in the licitness of the gold plate when in the purchase agreement with Steinhardt thy agreed that:

If the object is confiscated or impounded by customs agents or a claim is made by any country or governmental agency whatsoever, full compensation will be made immediately to the purchaser.

Steinhardt’s customs agent failed to accurately disclose the purchase price and the location of the plate, which ended up setting an important precedent for customs forfeitures and the use of civil forfeiture by Federal prosecutors in the United States for securing the return of illicit material.

It likely came as no surprise then to many who follow the antiquities trade that the name William Veres appeared in the news reports of arrests stemming from Operation Demetra. That investigation reveals a massive looting, smuggling, and counterfeit operation involving the movement of authentic and inauthentic material across borders, where histories were fabricated, and sales routinely took place.

John Phillips & Justin Huggler, Italian Police Smash £30m International Ancient Artefact Smuggling Ring, The Telegraph, Jul. 4, 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/04/italian-police-smash-40m-international-ancient-artefact-smuggling/.

Italian Court Again Orders Seizure of the Victorious Youth

Bronze Statue of a Victorious youth, at the Getty Villa in 2007

“sequestrare l’Atleta di Lisippo ovunque si trovi”

Translation: Seize the Athlete of Lysippos, wherever it is found.

A court in Pesaro on June 8 has for the third time ordered the seizure of the Bronze Statue of a Victorious Youth, currently in the possession of the Getty Foundation. The Getty Foundation purchased the Bronze in 1977 for approximately $4 million dollars. The Getty has maintained that the Bronze was found in international waters in the Adriatic Sea. Italy though has long sought the return of the Bronze on the grounds that the fishermen who pulled the Bronze up in their nets were required under Italian law to report the discovery, that the Bronze became subject to Italian heritage law when it was brought ashore, and that it was abused and smuggled before ultimately being acquired by the Getty.

The difficulty of course will be can an Italian court successfully seek the assistance of an American court to enforce this forfeiture order. I have argued that yes, it could. Italy via its Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with the United States could trigger a transnational forfeiture that if successful would be a powerful tool on the part of nations of origin.

The Getty though may decide to appeal this decision, and I’ll defer to Italian attorneys the question of whether those appeals have merit. To be sure though, Italian officials are continuing to aggressively use their own courts to seek the return of this rare Bronze.

Fincham, Derek, Transnational Forfeiture of the Getty Bronze (August 22, 2013). Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 32, 2014. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2238204 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2238204

ANSA, Lysippus must be seized wherever it is, http://www.ansa.it/english/news/lifestyle/arts/2018/06/08/lysippus-must-be-seized-wherever-it-is-4_6ed58f7c-9127-44f8-8fa4-f4e599a91b8a.html, 8 June 2018.

Il giudice dà torto al Getty Museum: sequestrare l’Atleta di Lisippo ovunque si trovi, Il Messaggero, https://www.ilmessaggero.it/primopiano/cronaca/ordinanza_sequestro_lisippo_atleta_getty_museum_malibu_tribunale-3785377.html, 8 June 2018.

 

The Met’s latest forced return of looted art

A Paestan Krater, which was connected to the Medici Polaroids

Yesterday Tom Mashberg reported in the NY Times that the Met would be returning this Greek krater to Italy. The Met has returned many objects to Italy in recent years, because they have been looted from tombs and archaeological sites before being smuggled abroad.

In 2014 this krater was linked by researcher Christos Tsirogiannis to Polaroid photos which had been seized from the Geneva warehouse of Giacomo Medici.

The interesting aspect of the story here appears to be the very slow response on the part of the Met to questions presented by Tsirogiannis. Tsirogiannis told the NY Times that the evidence: “[S]uggested that the item was disinterred from a grave site in southern Italy by looters,” before it passed on to Medici.

Medici was an antiquities dealer, convicted of trafficking in illicit cultural objects, and many objects which passed through his gallery/collection/storehouse have been deemed illicit. Reached by Mashberg for the story, Medici said:

[H]e had no recollection of having handled the vase in question. “Absolutely not,” he said. He said he had been released from house arrest last year after serving half of an eight-year sentence that was shortened by time off for good behavior and a two-year amnesty provision granted to all Italian prisoners.

“I am a free man,” Mr. Medici said. “I went on trial, it lasted years, I was convicted for some of the objects” that Italian prosecutors believed had been looted, “and now I have nothing more to do with the justice system. The story is finished.”

Continue reading “The Met’s latest forced return of looted art”

Greek pot set for return thanks to photo archive

“Attic Red-Figure Nolan Amphora, ” a dual-handled vessel dating from 470 B.C.E.

Tom Mashberg reported last week for the New York Times that this red figure amphora will be sent to Italy because of a connection with Gianfranco Becchina.

The match was made thanks to the work of researcher Christos Tsirogiannis, who linked the object with some of the thousands of photographs he has been given access to by Italian authorities. The object was voluntarily relinquished by the gallery, the Royal-Athena Galleries, which have a showroom in Manhattan.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., in a press release stated: Continue reading “Greek pot set for return thanks to photo archive”

We Visited Morgantina and Aidone, they were great

This June I had the chance to visit the town of Aidone in Southern Sicily. It’s a town that I’ve written and thought a lot about, so when we had the opportunity to pop up from teaching in Valletta for a long weekend, we jumped. Its fame comes as the result of a series of looting scandals.

The village and the archaeological site has been written about a great deal, but I haven’t come across many who have actually visited the site and the Muesum. For decades, the site it represented in a tangible way the competing interests of illicit looters and archaeologists. Archaeologists would excavate during the summer, looters would raid the site after they left. Year after year the cycle continued.

If you are reading this you probably have some strong feelings about where the Dea di Aidone (aka the Getty Goddess) should reside. This short essay is a collection of my own thoughts about the ancient site of Morgantina and the nearby town of Aidone.

To give a bit of the history as I understand it, the island of Sicily was subject to the control of many Mediterranean civilizations, and Morgantina’s history reflects this. Morgantina was founded perhaps seven or eight centuries before Christ. At some point it came under the control of Syracuse. Much of what now exists at this site reflects a city at the edge of the ancient Greek world. At some point in the third century BCE Morgantina may have chosen to throw their lot in with Carthage, a choice which likely proved costly when it was finally captured by Rome. Morgantina may have fallen on hard times, and the city itself seems to have been largely deserted by the First Century CE.

IMG_3996
The baths at Morgantina. Notice the painting on the walls

Thesite has been the subject of a number of archaeological excavations, mainly by American archaeologists, and also the target of antiquities looters who ultimately sent objects on through the illicit black market in antiquities. Many of the most beautiful items looted ended up in American Museums, notably the Getty and the Metropolitan Museum of art. This seems to me to be a notable correlation. How is it an accident that most summers for the last 60 years have seen american archaeologists digging at Morgantina, and also the museums of the United States acquiring works from the very site. Assigning blame to the archaeologists who dig there, the local officials for protecting the site, or the museum curators who

A detail from one of the 16 pieces of the "Morgantina Silver"
A detail from one of the 16 pieces of the “Morgantina Silver”

acquire this material seems unproductive for this short essay. But visiting the Museum in Aidone and the site of Morgantina I was struck by what a colossal policy failure the looting represents.

Continue reading “We Visited Morgantina and Aidone, they were great”

Italy reached an agreement with the Glyptotek

Contents of a tomb from the Sabine Hills, north of Rome
Contents of a tomb from the Sabine Hills, north of Rome

Italy and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum in Copenhagen on Tuesday announced an agreement for the return of antiquities taken illegally from Italy.

Objects repatriated include the contents of a tomb from near Fara north of Rome. Those objects had allegedly passed through Robert Hecht, a familiar name to those who follow illicit antiquities. Hecht passed away in 2012, and had been the subject of a criminal trial in Rome in 2005, allegedly for dealing in illicit antiquities.

Robert Hecht described buying the Etruscan chariot from Giacomo Medici:

Continue reading “Italy reached an agreement with the Glyptotek”