Italy Using Art Loans To Regain Antiquities

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

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NEW YORK When Italian cultural officials faced off in Rome last month with Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they were gambling that they could make headway on a cause that had stymied them for three decades: getting the Met to give up a krater, or vase, by the fifth-century artist Euphronios, which they say was looted from an Etruscan tomb north of Rome.

 

On the face of things, it hardly seemed likely that the Met would suddenly consider returning an object that had been a prized mainstay of its Greek and Roman galleries for so many years.

 

But the Italians had seized on a new strategy: an offer to replace that work - and others they hope to get back from the museum - with loans of equal or similar value. The museum might even be able to hold on to some of the disputed objects as long-term loans, they suggested.