Will the famous Athlete of Fano finally return home, i.e. the sculpture attributed to Lysippos still kept at the Getty Museum in Malibu in the United States? According to the European Court of Strasbourg there is no doubt, the rights of possession of the Hellenic masterpiece, together with those of 15 other Greek statues, belong to our country and it has practically established this through a sentence that rejects the appeal that had been presented by same Paul Getty Foundation in 2018 against the ruling of the Court of Cassation, which had in turn confirmed a confiscation and restitution order issued by the Pesaro court in 2010.
FROM HAND TO HAND
The life-size work is one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries to have occurred in the Mediterranean and is also probably the most precious artefact in the hands of the American museum which for decades has used any pretext to avoid losing it.
Found in 1964 off the coast of Fano by a group of fishermen, the statue was stolen and clandestinely changed hands several times before ending up in those of Paul Getty in 1977. The American Foundation bought it from the German antiquarian Heinz Herzer who had dealt between the other things also of the restoration of the same. Herzer in turn had purchased it from Bernard Ashmole, then custodian of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum. Ashmole is said to have spoken directly to John Paul Getty about the statue during a visit to the billionaire’s UK home in Surrey.
Getty took a direct interest in the purchase, first asking for all the relevant documentation, including the documents from the trial of the Italians who had stolen it. This documentation must have convinced the Getty Museum to purchase it, convincing itself that Italy could not make any claims as the same artefact was found in international waters and above all it has never been part of the Italian cultural heritage, but rather of the Greek one . This is the thesis that the Getty Museum supported when appealing to the European Court in Strasbourg in 2018, which instead with its ruling found the complete opposite.
On the other hand, it is enough to study history to know what connections there were between Greece and the adjacent peninsula, now known as Italy. In its ruling, the Strasbourg Court recognized the legitimacy of the action undertaken by the Italian authorities to recover the work of art, underlining that the protection of a country’s cultural and artistic heritage also represents a priority from a legal point of view. The judges pointed out that various international norms establish the right to combat the illicit purchase, import and export of goods belonging to the cultural heritage of a nation, suggesting in this sense that the Getty Foundation behaved «in a manner negligent or not in good faith in purchasing the statue despite being aware of the requests made by the Italian State and the efforts undertaken for its recovery”.
TREASURES RECOVERED
Among other things, the evidence presented by the Italian State to the Court of Pesaro in the 2010 trial had amply documented that John Paul Getty was fully aware of the criminal proceedings underway in Italy and that Herzer himself was under investigation. Hence the finding, from part of Strasbourg, that the decision of the Italian judges to proceed with the confiscation of the disputed property “was proportionate to the objective of guaranteeing its restitution”.
Will Lysippos’ Athlete return to Italy? It’s not said yet. Both sides now have three months to request that the case be heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court for a final decision. Guaranteeing “renewed determination to have the statue back in Italy soon”, the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, added that since he held office “several hundred works from the United States and 750 from the United Kingdom have returned to Italy” and that ” activities continue to achieve the return of various stolen artefacts from the Louvre museum, as well as for the return to Italy of the Doryphoros of Stabia from the Minneapolis museum”.
