The Underwater Heritage of the Riace Bronzes: Ethics, Provenance and the Art Market in Ancient Rome and Today

Abstract

The art market as we know it developed during the Hellenistic period (third to first centuries BCE) with the looting of classical Greek sculptures and paintings by the invading Roman armies. The most renowned works were appropriated by the generalissimos for their luxury villas, whilst the rejects were converted into liquid assets by selling them to the world’s rich at the first ever art auctions. Art collecting and connoisseurship were born, and with a diminishing supply of available Greek originals, copies became a major substitute market. Replications of original bronze sculptures were created in cheaper marble, whilst interior decorators enriched walls with frescoed versions of renowned ‘old master’ Greek easel paintings.

This paper focuses on the remarkable Riace Bronzes, two ancient statues of nude warriors. They were discovered by amateur scuba-divers off the coast of the toe of Italy in 1972, and reported to the local Carabinieri as murdered corpses. They were almost certainly Greek bronzes looted by Roman armies, and various binary oppositional dilemmas arose the moment they were brought to the open air. Are they of immortals or mortals? Are they Greek originals or later Roman copies? Should they be left as they were found, or restored? Who owns them now—Greece or Rome? Where should they be displayed—to attract tourists to the impoverished Italian South where they were rediscovered, or in Florence or Rome? What is the nature of their reception as heroic nude males? The paper casts light on a number of ethical issues concerning reception, attribution, provenance, legal title, conservation and display.

Art historian, author, and Programme Director for the Masters Degree in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London where he leads units on Ethics and the Art Market and Professional Practice & Art Appraisal; he also lectures on Classical Art and Architecture.