Imperial Valley Press

Ancient fresco among 60 treasures returned to Italy from U.S.

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ROME (AP) — A fresco depicting Hercules and originally from Herculaneu­m, a city destroyed along with Pompeii by the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius, was back in Italy Monday, along with 59 other ancient pieces illegally trafficked to the United States.

Last summer, U.S. authoritie­s announced that the fresco and dozens of other trafficked objects, which ended up in private collection­s in the United States, would go back to Italy.

Among the more precious pieces Italian and U. S. officials displayed to journalist­s in Rome is a B.C. kylix, or shallow two-handled drinking vessel, some 2,600 years old. Also returned is a sculpted marble head, from the 2nd century B.C., depicting the goddess Athena.

Italy said the returned works are worth more than $20 million (18 million euros) overall.

The fresco, done in the classic style of Pompeiian art, depicts Hercules as a child strangling a snake.

The returned pieces had been sold by art dealers, ended up in private U.S. collection­s and lacked documentat­ion to prove they could be legally brought abroad from Italy.

Under a 1909 Italian law, archaeolog­ical objects excavated in Italy cannot leave the country without

permission unless they were taken abroad before the law was made.

Among those at Monday’s presentati­on was Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, chief of that office’s unit combatting illicit traffickin­g in antiquitie­s. On this investigat­ion, his office worked jointly with a specialize­d art squad branch of Italy’s paramilita­ry Carabinier­i.

“For Italian antiquitie­s alone we have executed 75 raids, recovered more than 500 priceless treasures valued at more than $55 million,’’ Bogdanos said.

Italy has been a pioneer in retrieving illegally exported antiquitie­s from museums and private collection­s abroad.

The country has been so successful in recovering such ancient artworks and artifacts that it created a museum for them. The Museum of Rescued Art was inaugurate­d in June in a cavernous structure that is part of Rome’s ancient Baths of Diocletian.

Italian cultural authoritie­s are deciding whether to assign the latest returned pieces to museums near to where they were believed to have been ex

cavated. Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiulian­o told reporters that another possibilit­y is having a special exhibition of the returned pieces.

It’s not only Italy that loses pieces of its own history when artifacts are discovered in clandestin­e excavation­s and smuggled off to art dealers for profitable sales. Academic experts, deprived of valuable informatio­n about the context of the area where the objects were originally found, lose out on knowledge about past civilizati­ons.

 ?? ?? A Pompeiian style fresco from Herculaneu­m titled “Young Hercules and the snake,” dated to the I second A.C., is seen on display among other archaeolog­ical artifacts stolen from Italy and sold in the U.S. by internatio­nal art trafficker­s, during a press conference in Rome, on Monday.
A Pompeiian style fresco from Herculaneu­m titled “Young Hercules and the snake,” dated to the I second A.C., is seen on display among other archaeolog­ical artifacts stolen from Italy and sold in the U.S. by internatio­nal art trafficker­s, during a press conference in Rome, on Monday.

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