Italy can seize ancient statue in US, European court says

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Europe’s top human rights court has upheld Italy’s right to seize an ancient Greek statue from a US museum, a significant legal victory in Rome’s decades-long efforts to repatriate the prized artwork.

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Thursday said Italy’s quest to recover the “Victorious Youth” from the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu amounted to “legitimate action”.

The statue, which dates back to 300-100 BC and has been attributed by scholars to the artist Lysippus, is one of the world’s few surviving life-sized Greek bronzes, and depicts a young athlete raising his right hand to his olive wreath crown.

It was fished out of international waters by Italian fishermen in 1964, and purchased for $4mn in 1977 by the J. Paul Getty Trust, founded by the late oil baron and prodigious art collector.

The ruling is the latest twist of a decades-old battle over the statue and deals a stinging rebuke to one the wealthiest art institutions in the US. The ECHR slammed the Getty Trust for “negligence or bad faith” in purchasing the work despite being aware that the Italian government claimed the statute, which disappeared a year after its initial recovery. 

The seven-judge panel said the confiscation order was “proportionate” to the aim of restoring an item that was “part of Italy’s cultural heritage”.

Italian culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano hailed the “unequivocal ruling” as vindication, and vowed to continue “with renewed determination to have the work back in Italy soon”.

The ruling — which can be appealed within three months — is a setback for the Getty Trust, which has long argued that Italy has no valid claim to the statue, given its Greek origins. The museum could not immediately be reached for comment.

The statue is believed to have sunk in a ship carrying it to Italy, after ancient Rome conquered Greece. Centuries later, it was pulled from international waters off the coast of Italy’s Marche region.

It soon disappeared on the black market and was believed to have been temporarily hidden in an Italian cabbage patch and later in a priest’s bathtub, before being put for sale at a Munich auction, where it was purchased by the Getty Trust.

After Getty’s purchase, Italy made multiple legal and diplomatic attempts to intercept the statue — and has continued its recovery quest since. 

In 2010, an Italian court ruled that the government could seize the statue, as the work had been found by an Italian vessel, which gave Rome the rights of ownership.

Eight years later, that ruling was upheld by Italy’s top court, the Court of Cassation, which rebuked Getty for making the purchase “without adequately ascertaining its provenance”.

Italy’s top court cited “the continuum between Greek civilisation, which had expanded on to Italian territory” and validated Rome’s claim to the piece.

The Getty Trust appealed the Italian confiscation order to ECHR, alleging that it violated a fundamental article related to the protection of private property, and again reiterating that it had bought the statue in “good faith”.

However, in its judgment on Thursday, the ECHR sided firmly with Italy, saying Getty had purchased the statue “in the absence of proof of its legitimate provenance” and noting that there is no time limit for the confiscation of “unlawfully exported cultural objects”.

The US is not a signatory to the ECHR, which has no jurisdiction over US authorities or its institutions.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government has made a priority of recovering stolen Italian artefacts, and says it has suspended all collaborations with museums that refuse to abide by confiscation orders issued by Italian courts.

Rome is also pursuing the return of various works now housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, and an ancient Roman copy of a classical Greek statue, the Stabia Doryphoros, or lance bearer from the Minneapolis Museum.