![]() Cicero's speech influenced Enlightenment European thought and had an indirect impact on the modern debate about art repatriation. Ī precedent for art repatriation was set in Roman antiquity when Cicero prosecuted Verres, a senate member and illegal appropriator of art. Īccording to Pliny the Elder, the Emperor Augustus was sufficiently embarrassed by the history of Roman plunder of Greek art to return some pieces to their original homes. However, the triumphal procession of Marcus Claudius Marcellus after the fall of Syracuse in 211 is believed to have set a standard of reverence to conquered sanctuaries as it engendered disapproval by critics and a negative social reaction. As Roman power spread throughout Italy where Greek cities once reigned, Greek art was looted and ostentatiously displayed in Rome as a triumphal symbol of foreign territories brought under Roman rule. In Rome's many subsequent wars, blood-stained armor and weaponry were gathered and placed in temples as a symbol of respect toward the enemies' deities and as a way to win their patronage. Room 4 – The Rosetta Stone, key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, 196 BCĪccording to Roman myth, Rome was founded by Romulus, the first victor to dedicate spoils taken from an enemy ruler to the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius. The sacred nature of the statues is further illustrated in the supposed suffering of the victorious Greeks afterward, including Odysseus, who was the mastermind behind the robbery. This myth illustrates the sacramental significance of statuary in Ancient Greece as divine manifestations of the gods that symbolized power and were often believed to possess supernatural abilities. It was widely believed in antiquity that the conquest of Troy was only possible because the city had lost its protective talisman. The small carved wooden statue of an armed Athena served as Troy's protective talisman, which is said to have been stolen by two Greeks who secretly smuggled the statue out of the Temple of Athena. The Palladion was the earliest and perhaps the most important stolen statue in western literature. There, it was uncovered in 1898 by French archaeologists. The stele commemorating Naram-Sin's victory in a battle against the Lullubi people in 2250 BCE was taken as war plunder about a thousand years later by the Elamites who relocated it to their capital in Susa, Iran. The stele of King Naram-Sin of Akkad, which is now displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, is one of the earliest works of art known to have been looted in war. War and the subsequent looting of defeated peoples have been common practice since ancient times. Victory Stele of Naram Sin, Akkadian Dynasty, reign of Naram-Sin (2254–2218 BC). Since the publication of the French report on the restitution of African cultural heritage in 2018, these debates have gained new international attention and have led to changes regarding the public role of museums and to restitutions on moral rather than merely legal grounds. In the early 21st century, debates about the colonial context of acquisitions by Western collections have centered both around arguments against and in favor of repatriations. But many other artworks remained in French museums, like the Louvre museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris or other collections in France. Īfter Napoleon's defeat, some of the looted artworks were returned to their country of origin, among them the Lion and the Horses of Saint Mark, that were repatriated to Venice. The looting continued for nearly 20 years, from 1797 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In the modern era, the Napoleonic looting of art was a series of confiscations of artworks and precious objects carried out by the French army or French officials in the territories of the First French Empire, including the Italian peninsula, Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, and Central Europe. The looting of defeated peoples' cultural heritage by war has been common practice since ancient times. The contested objects vary widely and include sculptures, paintings, monuments, objects such as tools or weapons for purposes of anthropological study, and human remains. The disputed cultural property items are physical artifacts of a group or society taken by another group, usually in the act of looting, whether in the context of imperialism, colonialism, or war. Repatriation is the return of the cultural property, often referring to ancient or looted art, to their country of origin or former owners (or their heirs). ![]() The Horses of Saint Mark, which were looted by Venice in the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, then looted by Napoleonic forces from Venice in 1797 but repatriated to Italy in 1815 ![]()
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