For the Torre Annunziata court, the statue was illegally excavated in the 1970s
The Torre Annunziata prosecutor has asked the US authorities to confiscate the Doryphoros of Stabiaone of the few surviving copies of the original of Polykleitos which is currently in the collections of the Minneapolis Museum of Art. To report it is the agency Ansa.
The statue, a Roman copy of the Greek original, one of the best preserved, is in Pentelic marble and almost 2 meters high. It was purchased in 1986 for 2.5 million dollars by a Swiss art dealer based in Toronto, according to whom, according to documents of the time, it was found off the Italian coast in the 1930s.
But the version of the Torre Annunziata court is different: the disputed Doryphoros would have been clandestinely excavated in the mid-1970s by order of Elie Borowski, collector of antiques in relationships with many well-known art dealers involved in the illegal trafficking. Borowski, who died in 2003, would have paid one hundred million lire at the time for the statue. The Minneapolis museum has announced that it has not received official contacts: “If and when we are, we will review the file and respond accordingly.”
The Doryphoros attracted the attention of the Italian authorities in the early 1980s, when it was first exhibited at the Glyptothek in Munich. Italy then asked Germany to confiscate it but in 1984 the Bavarian Court of Appeal let it go to the USA. If repatriated, the Doryphoros will have a place of honor in the archaeological museum of Castellammare di Stabiaassured the mayor of the city Gaetano Cimmino.