archeology
noonFebruary 21, 2022 – 3:53 pm
Request for an international letter of letters to return to Italy the precious statue stolen in the 1970s by a trafficker of works of art, which passed through Munich and ended up in the United States
Of M. San.
The magistrates of the Court of Torre Annunziata ask for the return to Italy of the Doryphoros, a statue of the ancient Stabiae stolen in the mid-seventies by the international trafficker of works of art, Elie Boroswki, and purchased in 1984 by the Mia museum (Minneapolis Institute of Art) in Minnesota, United States, where it is still on display. The Dorifero of Stabiae a work of exceptional historical and artistic value, recognized unanimously by the scientific world as the most precious Roman copy of the Greek original in bronze, of inestimable value, which was purchased by MIA for a declared price of 2,500,000 US dollars.
Request for assistance
This morning, the Public Prosecutor’s Office submitted to the competent Judicial Authority of the United States of America the request for international judicial assistance for the execution of the confiscation decree, issued last January 19 by the judge for the preliminary investigations of the Tribunal of the Roman statue. of the Doriforo di Policleto, coming from clandestine archaeological excavations carried out in the territory of Castellammare di Stabia and illegally exported abroad. The request for international letters rogatory was formulated on the basis of the mutual assistance treaties in criminal matters between the Government of the Italian Republic and the Government of the United States of America. The investigations carried out allow us to affirm, with absolute certainty, the illicit provenance of the Doryphoros statue and its belonging to the patrimony of the Italian State. The same Museum of Minneapolis has recently confirmed the Campania provenance of the archaeological find in question. In an email sent on April 29, 2021 by Frederica Simmonsfunzionaria del museo di Minneapolis (curatorial department assistant for the Department of Decorative Arts, Textiles, and Sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Art), a Gabriel Zuchtriegel, current director of the Archaeological park of Pompeii, Simmons said that the Doryphoros exhibited in Minneapolis was found in the area near Naples, around the 1930s, before being exported to Lugano (Switzerland). Mia paid a down payment of 800 thousand dollars to grab the statue of the Doriferous. And the leaders were aware that there was an investigation on it that had also concerned the ascertained illegal export abroad of 5 frescoed panelscoming from the Roman villa of Numerius Popidius Florus in Boscoreale and currently exhibited at Paul Getty Museum in Malib in Los Angeles, for which another request for international judicial assistance formulated by the same Torre Annunziata Prosecutor’s Office is pending.
The museum assesses the risks
Investigative acquisitions have shown that the export of the frescoes from Boscoreale was organized and managed by the same international trafficker of works of art, Elie Borowski, from whom the US museum of Malib subsequently bought them. The statue of Doryphoros of Polykleitos was long chased by Italian and Munich investigators. In the course of the investigative activity it emerged that Elie Borowski had also played a role in the illegal exportation of the Roman statue of the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, which was initially exhibited at theAntikenenmuseum in Monaco, on which a seizure was ordered on February 3, 1984 by the State Attorney of the Court of Munich, then revoked on June 27, 1985 by the Attorney General at the Court of Appeal of Munich. Those in charge of the time at the Minneapolis Institute of Art were aware of the statue’s origin. in fact, the existence of an articulated correspondence entered into to evaluate the opportunity to purchase the precious find was ascertained. what emerged from the documents transmitted by the US Judicial Authority which testify how the relative economic terms were assessed on the acquisition at Mia, as well as the legal risks deriving from the evident clandestine nature of the Doryphoros, already burdened by numerous legal events and by the request for restitution advanced by the Italian authorities. But the prestige and the qualitative leap that the museum would have obtained with the purchase of the precious artefact prevailed over them. The letters concerned both the negotiations directly conducted with Borowsky, and the evaluations and considerations that the various bodies within the Minneapolis museum expressed with reference to the opportunity to proceed with the purchase of the statue, its price and the criticisms connected to its origin.
21 February 2022 | 15:53
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