Getty Museum told to hand over 'Victorious Youth' by Italians, again

A naked youth stands with his weight on his right leg, crowning himself with a wreath, probably olive. The olive wreath was the prize for a victor in the Olympic Games and identifies this youth as a victorious athlete. Found in the sea in international waters, the statue is one of the very few life-size Greek bronzes to have survived. The statue, believed to have been recovered from the Adriatic Sea in 1964, has long been at the center of a legal and cultural battle between Italy and the Getty Trust, with Italy demanding its return under claims of illegal export. In 2021 the Italian senate approved a resolution that could pave the way to restitutions as politicians call for return of the ancient Greek bronze also known as Atleta di Fano.

Italy’s highest court ordered the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2018 to return an ancient Greek bronze statue. The ruling by the Court of Cassation in Rome was the latest round in a decade-long, acrimonious dispute over the ownership of the exquisite bronze figure, known as Victorious Youth or the Getty Bronze. The Getty Museum immediately rejected the judgment, saying it had no intention of giving up the fourth century BC statue. The museum bought it in 1977 for $3.95 million from a German art dealer. Italian authorities maintain that the statue was illegally taken out of the country.

A fresh dispute has erupted over the origins of the ancient Greek bronze statue known as Victorious Youth, currently housed at the Getty Villa Museum in Los Angeles, with Italian cultural authorities now questioning whether the statue was created by the famed Greek sculptor Lysippos. Lysippos of the 4th century BC together with Scopas and Praxiteles, is considered one of the three greatest sculptors of the Classical Greek era. Experts suggest the famed statue is a copy of Lysippos's work.