The Italian government is in talks with the Louvre Museum to repatriate seven artefacts, suspected to have been looted and smuggled.
The report was first published by the French newspaper Le Monde. Laurence des Cars (Director, Louvre Museum) said that a group of artifacts were currently being reviewed for their provenance. He also added that the museum would handle such cases with ‘rigor’. The director first met with Italian officials from the culture ministry in February to discuss the possible repatriation of certain objects.
Most of the objects in the list came from art dealers which have since been linked to smuggling of looted artefacts. Also, the majority of items were acquired in the 1980s and 90s, when the Louvre had very lax rules around the provenance of art. The two primary names on the list were Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina. Both Medici and Becchina were convicted of fraud in 2005.
However, the catalog of the artifacts they sold – acquired from Medici in 2005 and Becchina in 2001 – served as the basis for creating the current list. The Italian officials handed over this list to Louvre in September last year. Over the months, the list has narrowed down to seven artifacts that are most likely to be repatriated. These include a 5th-century black amphora and multiple Greek vases from the 4th-6th century BCE.
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In recent years, art institutions in USA and Europe have been putting a renewed focus on the repatriation of stolen art and cultural artifacts. In France, repatriation is a tricky subject because the state holds authority over all art being displayed at public museums, including the Louvre Museum.
