RARE ANTIQUITIES FROM ITALY ON LOAN TO THE MET

As part an agreement reached with the Italian government in 2006, in return for the repatriation of several antiquities from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection that were thought to have been looted, Italy has recently loaned a small trove of rare works from its own public collections, reports Randy Kennedy for the New York Times.

An important ancient Greek kylix, or drinking cup, and a recently excavated ancient Roman dining set known as the Moregine Treasure, made up of twenty silver objects––one of only three such sets from the region of Pompeii known to exist and a set that has never before traveled out of Italy––are now on display in the Met’s galleries. They will remain there for four years, while a set of Hellenistic silver pieces from the third century BCE, which the Met agreed to return, have been sent back to Sicily. They will be on view there for four years before rotating back to New York.

Previous loans to the Met under the agreement were made in 2006 and 2008. The terra-cotta kylix now on view is one of the most famous surviving works originating from the region of Sparta. Dated between about 575 and 560 BCE, it shows two wind gods, the Boreads, rushing to punish a group of harpies. The silver dining set, buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, was excavated in 2000 at Moregine on the outskirts of Pompeii, where its owner, who probably died in the eruption, saved it by hiding it underground in a wicker basket.