The ‘Statue of Zeus Enthroned’ was handed over in a ceremony in the US in the presence of the Italian Consul General and Italian police who carried out the investigation that led to the statue's return.
The Getty Museum bought the 75-centimetre-high statuette, believed to be of Greek origins, in 1992 from Americans Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.
The museum’s director, Timothy Potts, said the Italian government came across a fragment that it believed belonged to the sculpture at the Getty, and Italian authorities tested the theory on a visit to the museum in 2014.
“The fragment gave every indication that it was a part of the sculpture we had,” Potts said in an interview.
“It came from the general region of Naples, so it meant this object had come from there.”
Given that there was no documentation of export, the museum made the decision to repatriate the statuette to Italy.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that at the time the Getty purchased the statue, the museum’s senior antiquities curator was Marion True, who was later indicted by the Italian government for conspiracy to traffic in illegal antiquities and resigned from the museum.
In 2007, True’s replacement Michael Brand announced the museum would return a number of disputed objects to Italy.
The museum’s policy is that when a foreign government submits compelling evidence that an object in its collection was put on the antiquities market illegally, it will attempt to return the object.
The ancient statuette will now be moved to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.
With ANSA
