Jason Felch (Los Angeles Times) reports the statue, formerly on display at the Getty Villa, was "quietly escorted back to Sicily" last week.
"The 7-foot tall, 1,300-pound statue of limestone and marble was painstakingly taken off display at the Getty Villa and disassembled in December. Last week, it was locked in shipping crates with an Italian diplomatic seal and loaded aboard an Alitalia flight to Rome, where it arrived on Thursday. From there it traveled with an armed police escort by ship and truck to the small hilltop town of Aidone, Sicily, where it arrived Saturday to waiting crowds."
Read the whole article here:
Getty ships Aphrodite statue to Sicily
Yet Another Rusty Helmet Just Surfaces on the Antiquities Market
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Micha...
2 hours ago
What I find strange is that the object was broken up in fragments either before or after excavation. Who restored the statue before the Getty bought it? I doubt that the Getty would buy the fragments (because then the claim that the statue had been situated in a private collection seems even more incredible. Which rich private owner would display fragments of a statue?) and had the object restored by its own conservators.
ReplyDeleteThen the article mentions that the statue was disassembled before being shipped to Sicily. What to think of that? Was the entire statue taken apart again, or merely removed from the socket?
I think it's a good thing that Italy offered to loan about 50 comparable antiquities to the Getty after the repatriation of some of the museums's Italian objects. As the fear of many encyclopaedic museums is to be left without important antiquities (and therefore without visitors) similar deals might encourage them to give back some of the objects they have illegally taken from art-rich countries in the past.