The FBI announced on Friday that it had returned a giant mosaic more than 2,000 years old to the Italian government.
This work of art, considered "a key piece of Rome's history", was lost for at least a century, until an anonymous donor contacted the FBI in 2020, claiming to be in possession of a mosaic depicting Medusa, reports CNN.
The mosaic was cut into 16 pieces, each weighing between 35 and 90 kg.
These pieces had been kept separately since the 1980s on pallets in a storage box in Los Angeles (USA).
While some of these pallets were infested with termites, the pieces remained "largely intact thanks to the air-conditioned facility in which they had been kept".
Arrived in Italy in April by means of specialized transport financed by the donor, the work is being cleaned and restored.
The #FBI recently returned a 2,000-year-old Italian mosaic that had languished in a Los Angeles storage facility for decades to its home in Rome.
Read more at https://t.co/YAtLzklqyl.
@FBILosAngeles pic.twitter.com/w7srUJZXVr
— FBI (@FBI) September 2, 2022
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A mysterious arrival
It was agents Elizabeth Rivas and Allen Grove who identified the true origin of this mosaic, the provenance of which was unknown.
At this time, however, investigators have not yet been able to clearly establish how long it has been in the possession of the donor, or how long it has been in the United States.
It had been listed in the Italian registers of cultural properties in 1909. It also appears in an advertisement in a Los Angeles newspaper dating from 1959.
This restitution is part of a more general effort that has been underway for several years in the United States.
A dozen ancient artifacts, for example, were recently seized from the New York Museum of Art.
Likewise, last June, coins worth $14 million were returned to Italy.
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