Fano, 3 May 2024 – Can return in Italythen to Fano, the statue of Lysippus. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg also agrees with our country and recognizes Italy’s right to confiscate and request the restitution of theAthlete from Fano: the work, attributed to the Greek sculptor Lisippos, ended up in the nets of a Fano fishing boat in 1964, and exhibited from 1977 to Getty Museum in Malibu, California. Just yesterday the Court of Strasbourg unanimously rejected the appeal presented by the Paul Getty Museum Foundation for violation of property protection.
Thus, yet another attempt by the Getty Museum to block the confiscation order of the statue “wherever it is” issued first by the Court of Pesaro and then definitively confirmed, in 2018, by the Court of Cassation, failed.
Yesterday there Court of Strasbourg has established that Italy has the right to confiscate and request the return of the Athlete from Fano. “A great victory – he comments Silvia Cecchiwho in the role of Public Prosecutor followed the entire legal battle – because the Court has the appeal was rejected not recognizing any disproportion between the Italian judicial provision and Getty’s conduct”.
At this point you should move on international letter rogatory for the restitution of the Lisippo, presented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pesaro in 2019. “Currently explains Dr. Cecchi – the letter rogatory is in the pre-legal phase being examined by the Washington Attorney General’s Office which, however, has not yet promoted any recovery action against the Getty”.
“At this point – he points out the lawyer Tristano Tonnini, which followed the judicial process on behalf of the Le Cento Città association which in 2007 presented a complaint to the Pesaro Prosecutor’s Office against the Californian museum – all the appeals brought by the Getty were rejected”.
After judgment from the European Court at a national level, action could be taken both on a legal and political-diplomatic level to identify “win to win” solutions. Hypothesis that the lawyer Tonnini does not exclude at all, so much so as to relaunch “the creation and implementation by the Getty of a great museum in Fano that can accommodate the statue”.
What has already happened in other parts of the world could be replicated in the Marche city. “I think of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which was founded in New York – underlines Tonnini – but which brought great prosperity to all of the Basque Country, or the Louvre in Abu Dhabi (the result of the agreement between the Emirates and the French government – ed.) “. “The ruling of the European Court in Strasbourg – he underlines the president of the Marche Region Francesco Acquaroli – has recognized a sacrosanct right, that of the protection of cultural and artistic heritage as a legitimate aim of a nation. The hope is to soon see the victorious Athlete attributed to Lysippus back in his Fano”. The Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano makes it known that he “wants to continue our action with renewed determination, to soon have the statue back in Italy: the European Court of Strasbourg recognized the rights of the Italian State with an unequivocal ruling”.
