TWO ancient statues stolen in the 1980s from Italian museums are home, thanks in part to a police art squad expert who spotted one of them in a New York gallery while on holiday in the United States.
The bronze statue of the Greek god Zeus, and a marble female torso, both dating from the first century, had ended up in the hands of a collector and a dealer in New York.
The torso, from a small museum in Terracina, south of Rome, was on display in a Madison Avenue art gallery when Michele Speranza, a member of the Italian Carabinieri art squad, spotted it.
''I stopped to look at the gallery window and I recognised the statue,'' said Mr Speranza, 38. ''I thought I had seen it among the photos in our databank of missing art.''
He took a photo with his mobile phone and did some research when he returned to Rome.
''The statue had been given up for lost after being stolen in 1988,'' said General Pasquale Muggeo, head of the Carabinieri art division.
The Zeus was stolen from the National Museum in Rome near the capital's main train station in 1980, and was tracked to a New York collector after a photo of it appeared in a Sotheby's auction catalogue in 2006.
The bronze and the torso are each valued at $£425,000 ($680,000), authorities said.
No arrests have been made. Authorities said the people who owned the statues were unaware they had been illegally obtained.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/i ... rom=smh_ft
Right man, right place, right time...
Right man, right place, right time...
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”