[CPProt.net] Art dealer takes Greek statue back home (probably trousered by a soldier 60 years ago)

[MSN CPPnet]

Art dealer takes Greek statue back home 

Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Saturday May 28, 2005
The Guardian 

Still smiling after 2,600 years, one small Greek youth, probably trousered
by a soldier 60 years ago, is going home to the island of Samos. 
"He's in remarkable condition apart from his nose," said James Ede, a London
art dealer who has established that the figure was stolen from the island's
museum, probably during the second world war. "He got that biffing in
antiquity, not in my care," he added anxiously. 

The kouros, a type of ancient Greek image typically of splendidly muscled
young men with long curly hair, is shorter than a teaspoon. 
But it is worth around £30,000, as early Greek provincial sculpture is
highly prized by collectors but rare on the market. Mr Ede bought it, with a
quantity of other pieces, from the widow of a Greek collector based in
Switzerland, and showed it to John Prag, of the Manchester Museum. He had
seen it before: it was photographed by a German archaeological team in the
1920s, and reproduced in a 1942 book, proving that it came from the Samos
museum. 

Without the photograph, it would never have been traced. Victoria
Solomonidis, cultural counsellor at the Greek embassy in London, said that
in common with many other Greek museums, no complete record was possible on
Samos of what was destroyed and what had gone missing, in the chaos of the
aftermath of the war. 

The statue was not listed on the Art Loss Register, the nearest thing to a
comprehensive international database. The measurement given for the figure
in the 1942 book was also wrong, robbing the youth of a precious 14
millimetres, and making it more difficult to identify. 

Mr Ede, who has previously returned a stolen marble plaque, bitterly
criticised the British government's decision on cost grounds not to produce
an online register of missing art, promised when the law on illicit art was
strengthened. 

"I think it's a monstrous mistake on their part. If laws are going to be
passed then the tools should be provided." 

Mr Ede will take the statue back to the museum himself. The Greek government
has offered a reward, but he has refused it. "I bought him as part of a
large collection, and I've already done quite well out of it," he said.