Looting Matters: Italy continues to celebrate the return of antiquities

SWANSEA, Wales, Oct. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the latest exhibition of antiquities to be returned to Italy.

An exhibition celebrating 40 years of the Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale opened in Rome at the end of September 2009. The Carabinieri unit has played a key role in the fight against the destruction of archaeological sites in Italy to provide items for the worldwide antiquities market.

The exhibition is housed in the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. The museum is located in a structure by the river Tiber that was originally constructed in the 130s AD as the mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian. It then became the repository for the ashes of subsequent emperors and their families until the early third century. The mausoleum, close to the Vatican, became a papal fortress.

The exhibition, 'L'Arma per l'Arte: Antologia di meraviglie', has some 60 exhibits including 17 antiquities. The show continues the theme of the 'Nostoi' exhibitions in Rome (and later Athens) to celebrate the 'Homecoming' of over 100 antiquities from North American public and private collections.

The first eleven pieces are antiquities that surfaced on the market and were purchased by museums and private individuals. Pride of place is given to the Athenian red-figured wine-mixing bowl (krater) showing the death of Sarpedon outside Troy. The dead hero is being lifted from the field of battle by representations of Sleep and Death while Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods, guides the way. The piece was once owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and its acquisition in 1972 drew attention to the issue of looted antiquities.

One of the exhibits appropriate to the location is the marble statue of Sabina, the wife of Hadrian. Sabina was acquired by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 1979. It was purchased from Fritz Burki of Zurich, Switzerland, the conservator who has been linked to many of the recently surfaced antiquities. The agent for the sale was Robert E. Hecht who is currently on trial in Rome alongside Marion True, the former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Two of the exhibits were once owned by major North American private collectors. A marble statue of Tyche once formed part of the collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman. It was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1996. An Etruscan black-figured water container (hydria) was returned by Shelby White.

A bronze statuette representing the personification of Victory--a figure stolen from the archaeological store at Herculaneum in 1975 and recovered from a North American dealer in 2007--is symbolic of the triumph of Italy's move to stop the loss of its archaeological heritage.

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SOURCE Looting Matters