Italy demands return of six artworks from the Louvre

Italy's Ministry of Culture is demanding the return of six artworks from the Louvre, alleging they were illegally removed from the country. The pieces include an amphora bought at Sotheby's in 1990 from a suspicious collection, terracotta Nereids that passed through Switzerland without proper checks, 4th-century BC vases, a terracotta head of Heracles, and an architrave from the church of San Nicola di Bari in Avezzano, Abruzzo, which disappeared after the 1915 earthquake. The architrave was offered to the Louvre in 1935 by antiquarian Edgar Altounian, initially refused, then sold during Nazi occupation to the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Düsseldorf for 300,000 francs. After the museum was bombed, French troops brought it to Paris, and it has been displayed at the Louvre since December 1983 as a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance. Italy argues the Louvre failed to report the piece's presence. Since 2018, negotiations between the museum and the Italian ministry have failed, and the Rome tribunal has ordered confiscation of the works, considering them state property. Louvre director Laurence Des Cars has been summoned to court to defend the museum's position. The move aligns with Italy's intensified efforts to recover illegally removed cultural property, which in 2023 saw the repatriation of 750 artifacts from England and 600 from the United States.