words by Gabi Logan
In a ceremony late last week at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C., the U.S. government returned seven pieces of art—two Ancient Greek ceramic vessels, a Roman sculpture, three pages ripped from thirteenth-century choir books, and a Renaissance painting—to the Italian government. The pieces had all been stolen or looted and illegally taken out of Italy.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Italian Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero attended the ceremony, representing their respective countries. Napolitano handed over the artefacts on behalf of the U.S. government, saying "these beautiful objects belong to you, the people of Italy."
In recent years, the Italian government has made a concerted effort to reclaim stolen and looted works of art. Six of the pieces returned last week were identified by the Italian Carabinieri, who have been poring through auction catalogues and art dealers’ websites in search of missing artefacts.
The ceramic vessels, both featuring Attic red-figured painting and dating back 2,000 years, were looted from archaeological sites in Italy, while the statue, a two-faced head or Janiform herm, was illegally excavated. All three pieces have been linked to Gianfranco Becchina, an Italian national with suspected ties to the mafia, who is currently under investigation by the Carabinieri’s cultural heritage unit.
“Leda e il Cigno” (Leda and the Swan), the recovered painting, is a rare example of Renaissance oil-on-copper painting. Investigators tracked down the painting, which was imported with false documents, when it was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York. Though the painting was sold for $1.6 million, the buyer rescinded the purchase in light of the investigation.
A rare book dealer in Portland, Oregon, relinquished the three choir book pages when confronted by authorities. One page had been stolen from a monastery in Siena in 1975, another from a church in Pistoia in 1990, and a third was part of a previously unresolved customs investigation.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has recovered more than 2,000 artefacts in similar investigations since 2007, including a sixteenth-century Italian painting stolen during the Nazi occupation that was returned last month.
