Object Repatriation
Stolen Pompeiian Wall Fresco Recovered 
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Standing Woman. Roman from Boscoreale, ca. 1st Century A.D. Fresco. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. |
By STAN PARCHIN
July 10, 2009
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on June 1, 2009 the seizure of a stolen Pompeiian wall fresco from an unidentified Manhattan auction house. The subject of an extensive INTERPOL investigation, Italy reported the work as missing 12 years ago. It was located by New York's Art Loss Register.
The rectangular image of a Roman woman, one of six panels painted on plaster and later placed within a modern wooden frame, was purloined with its five companion pieces from an excavation office in Pompeii. Italy announced the antiquities' theft on June 26, 1997.
The Carabinieri, Italy's cultural patrimony police, disclosed the recovery of the first five frescoes, all from an archaeological site in the Neapolitan province of Boscoreale, earlier this year.