[CPProt.net] Give us back our chariot, Umbrian villagerstell the Metropolitan Museum

[MusSecNetworkCulPropProtNet]

  Give us back our chariot, Umbrian villagers tell the Metropolitan Museum
By Bruce Johnston in Perugia
(Filed: 30/01/2005)

A tiny Umbrian village is taking on the mighty Metropolitan Museum in New
York, claiming that one of its most exalted exhibits, an Etruscan chariot,
was illegally exported from Italy 100 years ago.

The sixth-century bronze and ivory chariot, the pride of the museum's
Etruscan collection, was originally sold to two Frenchmen by a farmer who
dug it up in a field at Monteleone di Spoleto, near Perugia, in 1902.
 	
Mr Durastanti and chariot
Nando Durastanti with a copy of the chariot now in New York

According to family lore, the farmer received two cows in exchange. The
local mayor, Nando Durastanti, believes that he actually swapped the
chariot, one of the world's greatest antiquities, for 30 terracotta tiles.
It was later dismantled and illegally exported from Italy, concealed in a
grain shipment.

Dealers from Florence sold it to the Metropolitan in New York in 1903 -
allegedly with the help of the financier JP Morgan, who would later become
the museum's director - but Mr Durastanti says that the museum has no right
to keep it.

"That chariot is rightfully ours and they've got to give it back," he said
last week. "There's no question. We've got a very good case.

"It belongs to our territory and was illegally exported from the country.
When it was taken out of Italy, the issue was even raised in parliament in
Rome."

The museum had failed to provide proof of ownership, or that Italy had
approved its export, he said.

Said to be the only Etruscan chariot ever found intact, the 14ft by 4ft
vehicle, showing scenes from the life of Achilles in relief, was part of a
burial treasure.

It was found with the remains of two humans still sitting inside, along with
two drinking cups, which helped date it to 530BC. The farmer, Isidoro
Vannozzi, is said to have stumbled across it while digging a wine cellar. He
hid the treasure in his barn, fearing that the authorities would confiscate
it.

The village council in Monteleone (population 662) has instructed solicitors
to demand its return from the Metropolitan "to its place of origin and
people".

Tito Mazetta, a lawyer based in Atlanta, Georgia, who is representing
Monteleone, wrote an initial letter to the Metropolitan, demanding that the
chariot's "uniqueness" and cultural importance meant that it should be
returned.

Sharon Cott, the vice-president of the museum and its chief legal counsel,
said that the Metropolitan "respectfully declined" to give up the exhibit.
"The Metropolitan has owned the chariot for over 100 years, long after any
legal claim could be timely brought," she argued.

The museum hoped that Italian dignitaries would attend the opening of its
new Roman galleries in 2007, of which the chariot would be the centrepiece.
But that would be out of the question, she said, if Monteleone "insisted on
pursuing its futile claim" or "adopted some other adversarial posture".

Undeterred, Mr Mazetta sent a second letter last week, saying that
Monteleone had the backing of Italy's Commission for Public Education and
Antiquities, the Umbrian regional government and 37 cities and towns in the
region.

He claimed that Morgan, who became the Metropolitan's director in 1904, had
been instrumental in illegally obtaining the chariot.

Citing the case of an Atlanta museum, which two years ago handed back to
Egypt a mummy exported to America in 1864, and Italy's decision to return an
18th-century Ethiopian obelisk plundered by Mussolini, he challenged the
museum to make a "great and civilised gesture worthy of a great institution.

"What makes me so indignant is the offensive way these people viewed Italy,"
Mr Mazetta said last week. "They treated the Italians like so many Indians,
flinging a few trinkets at them, knowing they didn't have the power to fight
the likes of powerful people like JP Morgan.

"At the time, the museum's president, director and trustees, a group of very
sophisticated, informed and powerful people, knew full well of the illegal
provenance and understood the historical significance of the chariot. But
they rode roughshod over the law anyway."

According to Mr Mazetta, the sale or export of antiquities unearthed in
Umbria, and later in unified Italy, was banned from 1821, while from 1903
new legislation declared them to be "government property".

Mr Mazetta said that when Mr Vannozzi sold the chariot, he did so against
Italian laws, meaning that subsequent buyers had also broken the law and
were in receipt of stolen property.

Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the museum, said that Monteleone's claim was
"like Italy saying it now wants France to give back the Mona Lisa. It's too
late to discuss," he said.

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