Orpheus, the mythical singer, seated on a throne, achieves the impossible with his music.
The evil sirens in front of him, sculpted not with fish tails, but half-bird anatomies, remain spellbound.
They fall silent; the Argonauts are safe.
Orpheus and the Sirens, the sculptural group from the 4th century B.C., a triumph of beauty and perfection, has returned ‘home’, having been stolen in the 1970s from an archaeological site in Taranto, and subsequently acquired by The Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.
The work has been recovered, thanks to the complex investigative activity in Italy and abroad by the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Command (TPC), coordinated by the Taranto Public Prosecutor’s Office, with the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and Homeland Security Investigations (H.S.I.).
Having only landed in Italy on Tuesday, the life-size terracotta figures are already taking centre stage at the Museum of Saved Art inside the Roman National Museum, where they will be on display from September 18 to October 15, before being transferred to the Taranto Archaeological Museum where they will become part of the permanent collection.
“Yet another extraordinary masterpiece of art that had been illicitly stolen from the Italian State, and that is now once again a part of our heritage,” commented Culture Minister Dario Franceschini.
But also, added the Commander of the CCPTC, Roberto Riccardi, “one of the most important recoveries in the history of the Carabinieri, and in the history of Italy”, into which “organised crime” had sunk its claws, and for whose inestimable value Riccardi cites the “8 million US dollars travel insurance.”
