The European Court: Italy has the right to seize the Fano athlete from the Getty Museum in Malibu

There European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) confirmed Italy’s right to seize theAthlete from Fano, a precious bronze found off the coast of Fano, from the Getty Museum in Malibu. With the ruling, the Court thus rejected the Museum’s appeal and established that Italy acted in order to “guarantee the restitution of an object that was part of the cultural heritage”. The ECtHR underlined that Italy’s years-long efforts to recover the statue of the “Athlete of Fano” from Getty they were not disproportionate. In fact, “the Italian authorities acted with the aim of recovering an illegally exported cultural asset”, reports the ECHR.

The Getty had appealed a 2018 Italian High Court ruling that upheld a confiscation order, arguing that its rights to the statue had been violated by the Italian recovery operation. The Court, however, reiterated that the protection of a country’s cultural and artistic heritage “is a legitimate objective for the purposes of the Convention” underlining that “due to the negligence or bad faith of the Getty Trust in purchasing the statue – even though it was knowledge of the claims of the Italian State and its efforts to recover it – the confiscation measure was proportionate to the objective of guaranteeing the restitution of an object that was part of the Italian cultural heritage”.

L’ “Athlete from Fano” is a life-size bronze, dated between the 4th and 2nd century BC, attributed, on an exclusively stylistic basis, to the Greek sculptor Lysippos or to one of his students. The bronze was fished out by chance off the coast of Fano, on 14 August 1964, from an Italian fishing vessel and was purchased by Getty Museum of Malibu in 1977 for 4 million dollars. The Pesaro court ordered its seizure and return in 2010, at the height of the Italian campaign to recover antiquities looted from its territory and sold to museums and private collectors around the world. The Getty has long defended its right to the statue, saying Italy had no claim to it.