Another Return for the Getty

This one’s been bursting all over the newswires for the past few hours … plenty of coverage, but the incipit to the LA Times version (plus their photo) seems to be most of the info that’s circulating now:

In its latest effort to return wayward ancient artworks to their rightful owners, the J. Paul Getty Museum will send a Roman fresco fragment to Italy. The fragmentary panel, a roughly 36-by-32-inch section of a wall painting made in the third quarter of the 1st century BC, joined the museum’s collection in 1996 as a gift of New York collectors Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.

The museum — which has returned 39 antiquities to Italy since 2007 — listed the fragment as “at some risk of forfeiture” and stated its appraised value at the time of donation as $150,000 in a 2005 internal assessment, compiled during an investigation of objects that might have been illegally exported.

But Getty officials didn’t decide to repatriate the fragment until about a year ago, when an image of it appeared in a catalog published by the Italian Ministry of Culture, said Karol Wight, the Getty’s curator of antiquities. The catalog included a “conjectural reconstruction,” she said, suggesting that the fragment and two others previously returned to Italy — one by the Los Angeles museum, also donated by the Fleischmans; the other by New York collector Shelby White — were once part of the same artwork.

“We saw the diagram and recognized immediately that the proper thing to do would be to contact the ministry and begin the process of deaccessioning and arranging to return the piece to Italy,” Wight said.

The ragged-edged fragment recently removed from display at the Getty Villa portrays a greenish landscape and buildings, seen through two framed windows. Whether it and the two other fresco pieces actually belong together or were painted in separate, similar scenes will probably remain a mystery. No one knows the original location of the painted wall that might have contained the recovered sections or what the entire artwork depicted, Wight said.

Back in January 2008, David Gill wondered whether the Getty would be returning this piece (which seems to match up to a couple of other pieces … see photos at DG’s site) …