Getty to return illegally excavated Orpheus sculptures, some of museum's greatest antiquities, to Italy
The J. Paul Getty Museum is returning its Orpheus group of sculptures — a culturally significant group of nearly life-size terra-cotta figures known assome of the museum’s greatest antiquities — to Italy. The objects, which have been determined to have been illegally excavated and exported, will be sent to Rome in September. The institution is coordinating with Italy’s Ministry of Culture to send four other objects back as well at a future date.
“This piece is being returned pursuant to an ongoing and active criminal investigation,” the spokesperson said in an email, “which uncovered the antiquity was illegally trafficked.” The $550,000 Getty paid in 1976 is equivalent to around $3 million today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator.
“It is a very important work. I’d even say one of the most important in the [Getty Museum’s] collection,” Getty Museum director Timothy Potts said in an interview. “So it will be a loss as to what we can represent about the art of the ancient classical world, in this case southern Italy in the late fourth century B.C.”
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