An American man has returned 30 antiquities to Italy after reading a Guardian report about a compatriot who sent 19 antiquities back to their countries of origin amid growing coverage of looted ancient artefacts.
Jay Stanley, who lives in Ben Lomond, California, has handed over vases and figurines dating from the 6th to 3rd centuries BC.
He came across them in a cupboard at the home of his father, John, who died last October. They brought back childhood memories of growing up in Italy: his father was a music teacher and his mother a school librarian, and they lived for 10 years in Naples.
Stanley, a database engineer for an AI startup, has no idea where the antiquities were acquired but suggested they may have been from one of Naples’s open-air markets.
His parents were always taking him to museums, inspiring his passion for history and archaeology, and he realises now that the antiquities may have come from illicit excavations originally as they had no collecting history. He said: “It was in the back of my mind: what am I going to do with these things?”
Stanley found answers in a Guardian article about John Gomperts, from Washington, who last year gave up ancient artefacts he had inherited from his grandmother. Those pieces also had no collecting history, and Gomperts had been concerned about the implications of having potentially looted antiquities in his possession.
He saw the need – both legally and ethically – to return the objects to Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Pakistan respectively in taking the advice of Prof Christos Tsirogiannis, a former senior field archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.
Gomperts had initially turned to Tsirogiannis after seeing his name in an earlier Guardian report about a Roman sculpture that was being auctioned despite its link to a dealer involved with the illicit trade.
Based in Cambridge, Tsirogiannis heads illicit antiquities trafficking research for the Unesco chair on threats to cultural heritage at the Ionian University in Corfu, Greece. Over 17 years, he has identified 1,663 looted objects within auction houses, commercial galleries, private collections and museums, alerting police authorities and governments and helping to repatriate items.
In 2018, for example, Sotheby’s in New York was offering an ancient Greek bronze horse, but Tsirogiannis identified through photographic evidence its links to a disgraced British antiquities dealer. In 2020, Sotheby’s lost its legal challenge and Greece’s culture minister described the court’s ruling as a victory for countries seeking to reclaim antiquities.
Tsirogiannis said of Stanley’s antiquities: “These are 6th to 3rd centuries BC Greek, but from various areas around Italy. I advised him that unprovenanced antiquities of Italian origin should be returned to Italy. He had found out from the Guardian about the Gomperts case, he reached out seeking advice and wanted to return his antiquities.”
He added that although Stanley’s antiquities were not exceptional objects, the principle of returning them was significant. He praised both men for setting an extraordinary example to other owners of unprovenanced antiquities.
Stanley urged other owners to follow his example: “My conscience is clear. That’s the big payoff.”
Asked how his father would feel, he said: “He would completely agree. I’m sure he didn’t realise that they were as old as they are. After Christos mentioned that they’re 2,000 to 3,000 years old, I thought: wow.”
He carefully packaged up the antiquities and delivered them to the Italian embassy in Washington DC, which has thanked both Tsirogiannis and Stanley, writing to the latter: “We are very grateful for your offer to return the pieces to the Italian government for preservation and conservation. We received the pictures which were useful to assess their state of conservation and provenance in order to plan for their future repatriation.”
