Tempelsman Sculptures Return to Italy

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: February 26, 2008- New York Times


After a long battle two rare sixth-century B.C. marble sculptures that
once belonged to the New York businessman Maurice Tempelsman go on view
Tuesday at Italy’s presidential palace. For nearly 30 years rumors
circulated that tomb robbers had dug up the statues on a hillside in the
ancient Greek settlement of Morgantina in Sicily. After amassing
evidence that they were looted, Italian investigators began seeking a
handover of the acroliths — statues usually made with wooden torsos but
with stone heads and extremities — in the late 1980s. Mr. Tempelsman, a
diamond importer perhaps best known for having been the companion of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, remained unswayed until the Italian
government threatened to sue him, an official said Monday. “He hadn’t
wanted to give them up because he’d paid for them; that’s what he told
me,” said Mario Bondioli Osio, who formerly headed of an Italian
commission that sought to recover the country’s lost cultural patrimony.
Mr. Tempelsman, who was said to be traveling and unavailable for
comment, bought the acroliths from the London dealer Robin Symes in 1980
for a reported $1 million. In 2002 Mr. Bondioli Osio, Mr. Tempelsman and
the University of Virginia worked out a deal under which Mr. Tempelsman
would give the university partial ownership of the statues for five
years and then cede them entirely. On Jan. 1 the acroliths — their
wooden bodies long ago lost, leaving two heads, three hands and three
feet — became the property of the university, which promptly returned
them to Italy. The statues, one of which is shown above, arrived in Rome
on Friday along with nine classical antiquities from the private
collection of the New York philanthropist Shelby White that were ceded
to Italy in January under a separate pact. Italy says Ms. White’s
artifacts were also looted from Italian soil.

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