Italian Court Orders Seizure of Getty Museum's Greek Bronze StatueBy STAN PARCHINFebruary 11, 2010 Greek. Statue of a Victorious Youth (300-100 B.C.). Bronze with copper inlays. H. 151.5 x W. 70 x D. 27.9 cm (59.6 x 27.6 x 11 in.). J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection. An appeals court in Pesaro, Italy ordered today the immediate seizure of the J. Paul Getty Museum's Statue of a Victorious Youth (300-100 B.C.), an ancient Greek bronze work at the center of a decades-long repatriation controversy. The museum will appeal the ruling to the Court of Cassation in Rome. Judge Lorena Mussoni overturned a 2007 decision by another Pesaro magistrate who rejected Italian claims to the statue. She ordered that the work, also known as the Getty Bronze, be returned to Italy as soon as possible. She said the antiquity became state property when it was fished out of the Adriatic Sea near Fano in 1964. Its sale by art dealers to the Getty Museum for almost $4 million in 1977 constituted a criminal act. Other trafficking charges in the case lapsed under the statute of limitations. They were also no longer applicable because the fishermen who discovered the Getty Bronze and the art dealers who sold it are deceased. The J. Paul Getty Trust issued a statement regarding the Pesaro court's decision. It said in part, "The Getty is disappointed in the ruling. The court’s order is flawed both procedurally and substantively. No Italian court has ever found any person guilty of any criminal activity in connection with the export or sale of the statue. To the contrary, Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, held more than four decades ago that the possession by the original owners ‘did not constitute a crime.’ The Getty will vigorously defend its legal ownership of the statue.”
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