COURT ORDERS GETTY MUSEUM TO RETURN BRONZE

An Italian judge ruled yesterday that the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles must hand over a rare bronze statue, Victorious Youth, that has been at the heart of a four-decade-long dispute, according to the New York Times.

Judge Lorena Mussoni decreed that the statue—found by Italian fishermen in the Adriatic in 1964 and bought by the Getty in 1977 for just under four million dollars—must be “confiscated from the museum” and transferred immediately to the Italian government, which the ruling identified as its rightful owner.

Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for the government, praised the decision, which he said was a confirmation that the Getty “had not acted in good faith when they bought the statue.” The Italian justice ministry must now make a formal request to American authorities to execute the court order.

The second- or third-century BCE sculpture of an athlete, best known as the Getty Bronze, was excluded from a 2007 agreement between Italy and the Getty for the return of forty artifacts that Italy said had been looted, pending the court decision. The Italian culture ministry said on Thursday that it hoped the Getty would now review that accord and that it would return the statue “in light of this ruling.”

In a statement the Getty expressed its disappointment in the ruling and said the court order was “flawed both procedurally and substantively.”