Italy on Tuesday expressed gratitude for the return of about 600 artefacts from the United States – ancient bronze statues, gold coins, mosaics and manuscripts worth 60 million euros ($65 million) that were looted years ago and sold to American museums, galleries and collectors, then recovered following a criminal investigation.
The presentation was attended by U.S. Ambassador Jack Markel, Matthew Bogdanos, head of the New York District Attorney’s Office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, and members of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations, along with senior officials from the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Italian Police Artistic Unit.
It was the latest announcement in a decades-long Italian effort to recover antiquities that had been looted or stolen from Italian territory by “tombaroli” (grave robbers) who sold the objects to antiquities dealers, who often falsified or doctored provenance records and resold them to high-value buyers, auction houses and museums.
Markel said Washington DC is committed to returning the stolen loot “to where it belongs” as a sign of respect for Italy and its cultural and artistic heritage.
“We know protecting this history requires care and vigilance, which is why we’re doing it,” he said, adding that the United States was keeping a close eye on Ukraine, the latest target for art traffickers.
The latest seizures from the United States did not include the ancient Greek bronze statue of “Victorious Youth,” the subject of a decades-long legal battle between Italy and the Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif. The priceless statue was recently thrust into the spotlight again after the European Court of Human Rights strongly upheld Italy’s right to seize it, reaffirming that the statue had been illegally exported from Italy.
Bogdanos and Department of Homeland Security officials declined to comment on whether or when the Victory Youth would be returned, citing the ongoing investigation.
Among the most valuable artifacts on display Tuesday was a fourth-century Naxos silver coin depicting Dionysius, the god of wine, that was looted from an illegal excavation site in Sicily and smuggled into Britain before 2013. The coin, which was on sale for $500,000, was discovered in New York last year as part of an investigation into a prominent British coin dealer, Bogdanos said.
He said other items returned from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and from prominent New York philanthropists who had donated art to the museum’s collection also turned out to be stolen.
The relics, dating from the 9th to 2nd centuries BCE, included life-size bronze statues, bronze heads and Etruscan vases. The rest of the items, including 16th- and 19th-century oil paintings, were stolen from documented museums, religious sites and private homes in Italy, the Carabinieri said.
Bogdanos, who worked with Italy’s Carabinieri art unit to recover antiquities stolen in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, said Washington made no distinction between items taken in illegal excavations and those stolen in burglaries, equating it all to looting.
“Looting is endemic,” Bogdanos says. “Local people know when the guards are in and when they are out. They know that the guards are guarding certain places and not others. They know when scientific, proper, approved archaeological digs are taking place, and they know when those digs are closed for winter, or for lack of funding, or whatever.”
Given that, he said, looting is always going to happen.
“Our job is to minimize that, to increase the risk for people involved in this trafficking, to convict them and, where appropriate, sentence them,” Bogdanos said.
