European court upholds Italy’s right to seize prized Greek bronze from Getty Museum, rejects appeal
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 reclaim an important part of its cultural heritage and rejecting the museum’s appeal. The European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR, determined that Italy’s decades-long efforts to recover the Victorious Youth statue from the Malibu-based Getty were not disproportionate.
Victorious Youth, a life-sized bronze dating from 300 B.C. to 100 B.C., is one of the highlights of the Getty collection. Though the artist is unknown, some scholars believe it was made by Lysippos, Alexander the Great’s personal sculptor.
The bronze, which was pulled from the sea in 1964 by Italian fishermen and then exported out of Italy illegally, was purchased by the Getty in 1977 for $4 million and has been on display there ever since.
The Getty had appealed to the European court after Italy’s high Court of Cassation in 2018 upheld a lower court’s confiscation order. The Italian legal rulings were part of the country’s yearslong campaign to recover antiquities looted from its territory and sold to museums and private collectors around the globe.
The Getty had argued that its rights to the statue, under a European human rights protocol on protection of property, had been violated by Italy’s campaign to get it back.
The European court ruled on Thursday that no such violation had occurred. And it went even further, affirming in an online, English judgement what Italy’s Cassation 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 negligent when it bought it without properly ascertaining its provenance.
“This is not just a victory for the Italian government. It’s a victory for culture,” said Maurizio Fiorilli, who as an Italian government attorney had spearheaded 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 had no legal claim to it. The museum vowed Thursday to continue the legal battle to keep it.
Despite Thursday’s ruling, “we believe that Getty’s nearly 50-year public possession of an artwork that was neither created by an Italian artist nor found within the Italian territory is appropriate, ethical and consistent with American and international law,” the museum said in a statement.
Among other things, the Getty has argued that the
nd statue is of Greek origin, was found in international waters and was never part of Italy’s cultural heritage. It has cited a 1968 Court of Cassation ruling that found no evidence that the statue belonged to Italy.
Italy argued, and the Cassation court later found, that the statue was indeed part of its own cultural heritage, that it was brought to shore by Italians aboard an Italian-flagged ship and was exported illegally, without any customs declarations or payments. Thursday’s decision by the Strasbourg, France-based ECHR was a chamber judgment. Both sides now have three months to ask that the case be heard by the court’s Grand Chamber for a final decision and Getty said it was considering such recourse. Italy has recently ceased cooperation with foreign museums that don’t recognize Italian confiscation orders, banning loans to the Minneapolis Institute of Art following a dispute over an ancient marble statue believed to have been looted from Italy almost a half-century ago.
The Victorious Youth, nicknamed the Getty Bronze, is a signature piece for the Getty. Standing about 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall, the representation of a young athlete raising his right hand to an olive wreath crown around his head is one of the few life-sized Greek bronzes to have survived.
Italy has successfully won back thousands of artifacts from museums, collections and private owners around the world that it says were looted or stolen from the country illegally. It recently opened a museum to house them until they can be returned to the regions from where they were looted.