by InTrieste
Italy celebrated the repatriation from the United States of 60 looted artworks and artifacts worth $20 million at the beginning of this year, in the culmination of a joint investigation by the Carabinieri police force for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (TPC) and the District Attorney’s Office of New York.
Most of the plundered treasures — which included a Herculaneum fresco that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and a marble head of Athena dating from circa 200 BCE — were first turned over to Italy by US authorities back in September.
Some of the recovered works had previously been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, most notably the marble Athena head, valued at $3 million. Other priceless finds included a white-ground terra-cotta kylix, or drinking cup, from the Etruscan period; a series of Corinthian helmets, bronze plates and sculptures; and a double-spiral brooch estimated to date from between 1100 and 1400 BCE.
A portion of the recovered antiquities — including the long-awaited Herculaneum fresco, whose pursuit by Italian authorities began back in 1997 — is believed to have been pinched from archaeological sites by “tomb raiders” who trafficked the goods to art dealers, private collectors, auction houses, galleries and museums.
Some of these works had ended up in the collection of billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, who made headlines in 2021 after receiving an unprecedented lifetime ban on purchasing antiquities.
Italian efforts to recover plundered patrimony are ongoing and wide-ranging. Molinese gave a rundown of still-incomplete year-end statistics on the TPC Carabinieri’s work at the conference, noting that in 2022, at least 1,227 counterfeit items had been seized, 74,748 archaeological and paleontological goods had been recovered, 288 cultural thefts had been reported and 2,088 investigations of antiquities institutions and vendors had been carried out.
