The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is set to return a group of Orpheus sculptures that were illegally excavated to Italy in September.
The ‘Sculptural Group of a Seated Poet and Sirens’, also known as ‘Orpheus and the Sirens’, is a set of terracotta figures that was made between 350 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E. in Tarentum, Italy.
“Thanks to information provided by Matthew Bogdanos and the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicating the illegal excavation of ‘Orpheus and the Sirens’, we determined that these objects should be returned,” said Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum.
The museum has removed the objects from public view. It is also working with the Italian Ministry of Culture to arrange the return of four other objects in the near future.
‘Orpheus and the Sirens’ removed from public view
These include a second-century AD colossal marble head of a divinity and a second-century AD stone mold for casting pendants, according to a press release.
The Getty will also return an oil painting titled ‘Oracle at Delphi’ (1881) by Camillo Miola and a fourth-century BC Etruscan bronze thymiaterion.
The first three of these objects were acquired by J. Paul Getty and the Getty Museum in the 1970s, and the fourth was obtained in 1996. None of these objects have been on public view in recent years.
“We value our strong and fruitful relationship with the Italian Ministry of Culture and with our many archaeological, conservation, curatorial, and other scholarly colleagues throughout Italy, with whom we share a mission to advance the preservation of ancient cultural heritage,” Potts added.
Elsewhere, London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens has agreed to transfer the ownership of its Benin bronzes to Nigeria. These were looted by the British during the Benin Expedition of 1897.
Images: Getty Museum
