Speed Art Museum will return a goblet crater from Paestum to Italy

A 4th-century B.C. ceramic vase from Paestum will be returned from the Speed Art Museum in Louisville.

It is a goblet krater made in Paestum around 350-340 B.C. that depicts Dionysus on a triclinar while playing cottabo, a game similar to target practice with the wine left at the bottom of the bowl.

The museum purchased the object in 1990 from an art dealer, Robin Symes Ltd, but in 2015 a research assistant employed by the Culture Trafficking Project at the University of Glasgow contacted the Speed Art Museum to provide digital copies of two photocolors of the goblet crater and a Polaroid seized in 1995 during a search by carabinieri at the warehouse in the Geneva Freeport belonging to antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici. The latter was convicted in 2005 on unrelated charges regarding receiving and illegally exporting archaeological goods.

The images confirm the possibility that the crater was stolen during an excavation in violation of Italian and international laws with respect to the ownership and discovery of archaeological material.

The return of this object to Italy is part of a multi-year agreement between the U.S. museum and MiBACT.

Source: Adnkronos

Speed Art Museum will return a goblet crater from Paestum to Italy

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