The ancient bronze statue, currently kept at the Getty Museum in Malibu, will have to return to Italy. The European Court in Strasbourg decided this.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg rejected the appeal of the Paul Getty foundation, ruling the Italy’s right to confiscate and request the return of the Athlete of Lysipposthe Greek bronze statue attributed to the Greek sculptor and bronze worker who lived in the 4th century BC, and currently preserved at the Getty Villa, the section that houses the antiquities of Getty Museum in Malibu.
Already in 2018 the Court of Pesaro and the Court of Cassation had established the sculpture’s belonging to our country, starting a dispute with the American Museum – already at the center of numerous legal proceedings due to the process with which other ancient finds were acquired preserved there – which today seems to have come to an end.
The Athlete of Lysippos, the discovery in Italy and the clandestine export
Fished up after a very long sleep on 14 August 1964 from a fishing boat passing through the waters of the Adriatic, off the coast of Fano (province of Pesaro and Urbino), in a point of sea called Scogli di Pedaso, the work of art, known as well as Athlete from Fanodates back to a period between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC and was attributed to the Greek sculptor Lysippus or a pupil of his workshop.
The Athlete from Fano is represented in heroic nudityalthough the base and feet are missing, which fell off during the return to the surface or, in ancient times, on the day of the possible shipwreck of the boat carrying the sculpture.
In 1964, the discovery of the Athlete of Lysippos was not reported according to the provisions of the law and therefore, after a few years and following some changes of ownership, it was sold illegally arriving in the United States of America in the summer of ’77. In the same year the Greek work of art was acquired for around four million dollars by the Getty Museum.
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The legal battle, which started in 2007 thanks to the interest of the Le Cento Città association, should now have ended with the ruling of the European Court.
Photo by Getty Museum and another author – The Getty Center, Object 103QSX This image was taken from the Getty Research Institute’s Open Content Program shared via Wikipedia under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal license
