American investigators have returned to Italian authorities 42 archaeological works looted and sold in contraband, during a ceremony organized in New York, Tuesday, August 8.
These 42 exceptional pieces – some 2,500 years old – have a combined value of 3.5 million dollars (3.2 million euros). “We continue to repair the damage caused by decades of very well organized antiquities smuggling networks through Italy”welcomed, in a statement, Alvin Bragg, New York State Attorney for the Borough of Manhattan.
Mr. Bragg, stating that “more than 200 works had been returned” in Rome since taking over as head of the Manhattan prosecution in 2022. Carabinieri General Vincenzo Molinese hailed “the great success of the investigation thanks to an Italian-American collaboration”.
More than 1,000 objects returned to nineteen countries
Among the works found and returned is a vase from the Italian region of Puglia dating to 335 BC It had been stolen from a burial site in southern Italy before being smuggled abroad by a trafficker of Italian art, Giacomo Medici, according to the New York justice.
This chalice which was used to mix water and wine had been recovered by a “fallen British art dealer, Robin Symes, who later cleared it via [la société d’enchères] Sotheby’s in London ». The work was seized in July from a private collector in New York.
Two Etruscan-era tile paintings from 440 BC were looted in central Italy in the 1980s before ending up with Robin Symes, who sold them in 1992 for 1.6 million dollars to a couple of New York collectors, Shelby White and Leon Levy. Worried about the provenance of the works, White and Levy returned them in 1999 to Symes, who kept them in New York until last March.
In the cultural and economic capital of the United States, kingdom of grandiose museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the extremely wealthy auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the Manhattan prosecutor’s office has been leading a campaign since 2017 to return works looted from around the world between 1970 and 1990, smuggled into Europe and the United States and seized from museums and private collections in New York.
Under the aegis of the prosecutor Bragg, more than 1,000 pieces for 185 million dollars were returned to nineteen countries, including Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece, Turkey or Italy.