Case Review: Getty v. Italy (2024)

By Livia Solaro

While cultural heritage disputes have often proved heralds of international tensions, very few cases have caused quite the stir as the one revolving around Victorious Youth, a rare example of a life-size bronze statue from the classical Greek period. After sinking in the Adriatic Sea during its transportation, the statue remained on the seabed for around two millennia until, in the 1960s, Italian fishermen inadvertently fished it from the waters off the Marche region of Italy.^[1] The J. Paul Getty Museum eventually acquired it, and the bronze has been on display in Los Angeles since 1978.^[2] The controversies surrounding its rightful ownership, however, did not fade over time. Over the decades, the Italian authorities repeatedly requested the restitution of the bronze, which they considered part of their national cultural heritage.^[3] As the decades went by, even the name of the statue became heavily politicized with some referring to it as “the Getty bronze,” and others as “the Athlete of Fano” (from the Italian city it was brought to after its initial retrieval).^[4]

The legal and diplomatic crescendo building around Victorious Youth found its (temporary?) climax in the litigation before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which reached a verdict in May.^[5] In the latest development of this restitution saga, the ECtHR rejected the Getty’s appeal of a 2019 confiscation order issued by the Italian courts.^[6] According to the Getty Trust, the order – and, consequently, the Italian State – had violated Art. 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which sanctions the right to the peaceful enjoyment of one’s possessions.^[7] More specifically, the appeal argued that the legal basis for the confiscation order lacked foreseeability, pursued an illegitimate aim, and put an excessive burden on the Museum. The ECtHR however deemed that, while constituting a prima facie violation of Art. 1 Protocol 1 of the Convention, the confiscation order was justified by the overarching need to ensure the process of restitution of cultural property.

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