Victorious Youth
Encyclopedia
Ancient Greek sculpture
Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages. They were used to depict the battles, mythology, and rulers of the land known as Ancient Greece.-Geometric:...
, made between 300 and 100 BCE, in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
, Malibu, California. On its first rediscovery Bernard Ashmole
Bernard Ashmole
Bernard Ashmole, CBE, MC was a British archaeologist and art historian , who specialized in ancient Greek sculpture. He was Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of London, 1929-1948...
and other scholars attributed it to Lysippos
Lysippos
Lysippos was a Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. Together with Scopas and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the three greatest sculptors of the Classical Greek era, bringing transition into the Hellenistic period. Problems confront the study of Lysippos because of the difficulty of...
, a grand name in the history of Greek art; modern concerns are less with such traditional attributions than with the original social context: where the sculpture was made, for what context and who he might be.
Discovery
The sculpture was found in the summer of 1964 in the sea off FanoFano
Fano is a town and comune of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort 12 km southeast of Pesaro, located where the Via Flaminia reaches the Adriatic Sea...
on the Adriatic coast
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...
of Italy, snagged in the nets of an Italian fishing trawler, the "Ferri Ferruccio". After some furtive offering on the antiquities gray market and vigorous competition with the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, it was acquired by the Getty Museum in 1977.
The sculpture may have been part of the crowd of sculptures of victorious athletes at Panhellenic Greek sanctuaries like Delphi
Delphi
Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...
and Olympia
Olympia, Greece
Olympia , a sanctuary of ancient Greece in Elis, is known for having been the site of the Olympic Games in classical times, comparable in importance to the Pythian Games held in Delphi. Both games were held every Olympiad , the Olympic Games dating back possibly further than 776 BC...
. His right hand reaches to touch the winner's olive wreath on his head. The powerful head has led viewers to see it as a portrait; the head was cast separately from the lithe body. The athlete's eyes were once inlaid, probably with bone, and his nipples are in contrasting copper.
The precise location of the shipwreck, which preserved this object from being melted down like all but a tiny fraction of Greek bronzes, has not been established; it seems most likely that a Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
ship carrying looted objects was on its way to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
when it foundered. The statue has been roughly broken off its former base, breaking away at the ankles, a sign that it was not removed with the care of an entrepreneur with a Roman connoisseur in mind as a purchaser.[?]
The Italian government has made claims for the return of the sculpture, which the museum has refuted as unfounded.
Controversies with Italy
The Getty Museum is involved in a controversy regarding proper title to some of the artwork in its collection. The Museum's previous curator of antiquitiesAntiquities
Antiquities, nearly always used in the plural in this sense, is a term for objects from Antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures...
, Marion True
Marion True
Marion True is the former curator of antiquities of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she studied at New York University and has a PhD from Harvard...
, was indicted in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in 2005 along with Robert Hecht Jr.
Robert Hecht Jr.
Robert Emmanuel Hecht Jr is an American antiquities dealer. He is currently on trial in Italy on charges of conspiring to traffic in looted artifacts....
on criminal charges relating to trafficking in stolen antiquities. The primary evidence in the case came from the 1995 raid of a Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
warehouse which had contained a fortune in stolen artifacts. Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici
Giacomo Medici (art dealer)
Giacomo Medici is an Italian art dealer convicted in 2004 of dealing in stolen ancient artifacts. His operation was thought to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and...
was eventually arrested in 1997; his operation was thought to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market".
In a letter to the J. Paul Getty Trust
J. Paul Getty Trust
The J. Paul Getty Trust is the world's wealthiest art institution with an estimated endowment in April 2009 of $US 4.2 billion. Based in Los Angeles, California, it operates the J. Paul Getty Museum, which has two locations, the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Pacific...
on December 18, 2006, True stated that she is being made to "carry the burden" for practices which were known, approved, and condoned by the Getty's Board of Directors. True is currently under investigation by Greek authorities over the acquisition of a 2,500 year old funerary wreath.
On November 20, 2006, the Director of the museum, Michael Brand
Michael Brand
Dr Michael Brand is an art scholar from Australia. Throughout his career, Brand has specialised in the art of Asia, in particular Indian art....
, announced that twenty-six disputed pieces were to be returned to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, but not the Victorious Youth.
In an interview to the Italian national newspaper Corrierre della Sera on December 20, 2006 the Italian Minister of Cultural Heritage declared that Italy would place the museum under a cultural embargo if all the 52 disputed pieces would not return home overseas. On August 1, 2007 an agreement was announced providing that the museum would return 40 pieces to Italy out of the 52 requested, among which the Venus of Morgantina, that will be returned in 2010, but not the Victorious Youth, whose outcome will depend upon the results of the criminal proceedings pending in Italy. On the very same day the public prosecutor of Pesaro formally requested that the statue be confiscated as it was unlawfully exported out of Italy.
External links
www.lisippo.org - Website of the cultural organisation who want the statue back to FanoFano
Fano is a town and comune of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort 12 km southeast of Pesaro, located where the Via Flaminia reaches the Adriatic Sea...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. www.patrimoniosos.it (Getty Museum) Victorious Youth NPR, "Italy, Getty Museum at Odds over Disputed Art" 20 December 2006. (Los Angeles Times), Jason Felch, "The Amazing Catch They Let Slip Away": 11 May 2006
Newspaper articles
"The Getty’s mea culpa" by, managing editor of the magazine Archaeology at the UNESCOUNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
website Il Getty non restituisce le opere. Rutelli: «Cultural embargoe», by Pierluigi Panza, Corriere della Sera
Corriere della Sera
The Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...
, November 14, 2006 Il Getty Museum non rende le opere richieste, Corriere della Sera, November 23, 2006 Rutelli attacca il Getty. Dubbi su 250 opere, di Paolo Conti, Corriere della Sera, November 24, 2006 Rutelli-Getty, secondo round - “Non esponete opere rubate”, La Stampa
La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
, November 24, 2006 Il Getty pronto a restituire la «Venere» Ma non restituirà il Lisippo., Corriere della Sera, November 26, 2006 "L'Italie joue le bras de fer avec le Getty Museum", di Richard Heuzé, Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
, December 26, 2006 "No Lisippo, no Bernini", La Stampa
La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
, July 11, 2007