ROME – A European court on Thursday upheld Italy’s right to seize a prized Greek statue from the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, ruling that Italy was justified in trying to recover an important part of its cultural heritage and rejecting the museum’s appeal. .
The European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR, ruled that Italy’s decades-long efforts to recover the Malibu-based Getty’s “Victorious Youth” statue were not disproportionate.
“Victorious Youth,” a life-size bronze dating from 300 BC to 100 BC, is a highlight of the Getty Collection. Although the artist is unknown, some scholars believe it was made by Lysippus, Alexander the Great’s personal sculptor.
The bronze, which was taken from the sea in 1964 by Italian fishermen and then illegally exported out of Italy, was purchased by the Getty in 1977 for $4 million and has been on display there ever since.
Getty appealed to the European court after Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation in 2018 upheld a lower court’s confiscation order. The Italian court rulings were part of the country’s years-long campaign to recover antiquities looted from its territory and sold to museums and private collectors around the world.
The Getty argued that its rights to the statue, under a European human rights protocol on the protection of property, had been violated by the Italian campaign to recover it.
The European court ruled Thursday that no such violation occurred. And he went even further, stating in English what the Italian revocation had determined: that the statue was part of Italy’s cultural heritage, that international law strongly supported Italy’s efforts to recover it, and that the Getty had been, at best, hypotheses, negligent when he purchased it without properly investigating its origin.
“This is not just a victory for the Italian government. It’s a victory for culture,” said Maurizio Fiorilli, who, as a lawyer for the Italian government, led Italy’s efforts to recover its looted antiquities and, in particular, the Getty bronze.
The Getty has long defended its right to the statue, saying Italy has no legal right to it. The museum vowed Thursday to continue the legal battle to keep it.
Despite Thursday’s ruling, “we believe that Getty’s nearly fifty-year public possession of a work of art that was neither created by an Italian artist nor found on Italian territory is appropriate, ethical and consistent with American and international law ,” the museum said in a statement. declaration.
Among other things, the Getty argued that the statue is of Greek origin, was found in international waters and was never part of Italian cultural heritage. It cited a 1968 Court of Cassation ruling that found no evidence that the statue belonged to Italy.
Italy argued, and the court of cassation later concluded, that the statue was in fact part of its own cultural heritage, that it was brought ashore by Italians aboard a ship flying the Italian flag and was exported illegally without any customs declarations. or payments.
Thursday’s ruling by the Strasbourg, France-based ECtHR was a chamber judgment. Both sides now have three months to request that the case be heard by the court’s Grand Chamber for a final decision and Getty said he was considering such an appeal.
Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano praised Thursday’s ruling as an “unequivocal decision” that recognized the Italian state’s rights and ownership of the statue.
“Following today’s decision… the Italian government will restart contacts with US authorities for assistance in implementing the confiscation order,” he said.
ECHR decisions are binding on states that are parties to the court. The US is not a party, but has a tradition of judicial cooperation with Italy. Italy asked the US Attorney General to enforce the confiscation order in 2019. The ECtHR ruling noted that the “proceeding is still pending.”
Sanguiliano reinforced Italy’s campaign to bring home its looted treasures and noted that Italy recently ceased cooperation with foreign museums that do not recognize Italian confiscation orders.
Recently, Italy banned any loans to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, following a dispute over an ancient marble statue believed to have been looted from Italy nearly half a century ago.
The Getty appealed to the ECtHR arguing, among other things, that Italy’s 2010 confiscation order constituted a violation of its right to enjoy its assets and that it would be deprived of that right if US authorities carried out the seizure.
The ECHR, however, strongly reaffirmed Italy’s right to continue the protection of its cultural heritage.
“The court further considered that, owing, in particular, to the negligence or bad faith of the Getty Trust in purchasing the statue, despite being aware of the claims of the Italian State and its efforts to recover it, the confiscation order was proportionate to the objective of guaranteeing the return of an object that was part of Italy’s cultural heritage”, said the summary of the decision.
The statue, dubbed the “Getty Bronze,” is a signature piece of the museum. Standing around 1.52 meters tall, the depiction of a young athlete raising his right hand to a wreath of olive trees around his head is one of the few life-size Greek bronzes to survive.
The bronze is believed to have sunk along with the ship carrying it to Italy after the Romans conquered Greece. After being found in the nets of Italian fishermen who were trawling in international waters in 1964, he was reportedly buried in an Italian cabbage patch and hidden in a priest’s bathtub before being taken out of the country.
The statue resurfaced in Germany in the early 1970s in the possession of a German art dealer, identified in court documents as Mr. HH, who held it on behalf of a company based in Liechtenstein.
In 1972, advisors to J. Paul Getty, American oil magnate and art collector, began negotiations with Mr. HH to purchase it. The ECHR ruling reproduced court documentation showing that Getty himself wanted to be sure he could obtain legal title to the statue.
But the ECtHR’s ruling states that the Getty’s advisers did not go far enough to determine whether the sellers legally acquired and exported it from Italy. He stated that they were based on the legal opinions of the sellers’ lawyers, who “had a clear interest in presenting the provenance as legitimate”.
Citing lower court rulings, the ECtHR judges ruled that the Getty Trust had “very strong reasons to doubt the legitimate provenance of the statue.” Still, when they went ahead and purchased, they acted “at least negligently, if not in bad faith.”
It stated that the Getty could not expect to be compensated for the statue since it “accepted, at least implicitly, the risk that the statue might be confiscated.”
Italy has successfully recovered thousands of artifacts from museums, collections and private owners around the world that it says were looted or illegally stolen from the country. A museum was recently opened to house them until they can be returned to the regions from where they were looted.
The most important work to date that Italy has successfully brought back is the Euphronios Krater, one of the finest ancient Greek vases in existence. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which bought it for $1 million in 1972 from an art dealer later accused of acquiring looted artifacts, returned it to Italy in 2008.
It was not immediately clear what would happen next to “Victorious Youth,” although Fiorilli said it was now up to U.S. courts to enforce the Italian confiscation order.
“It’s not about guaranteeing the right to property, it’s about guaranteeing the internationally recognized value of each nation’s right to protect its cultural heritage,” Fiorilli told The Associated Press by phone.
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