Museum of Fine Arts	Volume 60 Number 5, September/October 2007 "A Tangled Journey Home"

Marble statue of Sabina, ca. A.D. 136
6 feet tall

(Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

This statue depicts Sabina, wife of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138. The piece is modeled on a Greek statue from the fourth century B.C. Its precise find spot will never be known, but it's likely that the statue was looted from a temple where the Imperial family was worshipped. It would also have contained a statue of Hadrian.

The MFA purchased the statue in 1979 from Swiss dealer Fritz Bürki, who claimed to have bought the piece from an aristocratic family in Bavaria. Robert Hecht acted as agent for the transaction.

Status: Returned to Italy

Apulian vase, 320-310 B.C.
31 inches tall

(Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

This Early Hellenistic vase, from Apulia, in southern Italy, depicts the abduction of the princess Hippodameia by Pelops. According to myth, her father King Oenomaus promised Hippodameia's hand in marriage to anyone who could best him in a chariot race, though a second-place finish would mean decapitation. The hero Pelops bribed the royal retinue to sabotage the king's chariot, and rode off with his new bride (and his head).

The scene was painted by an artist known today as the "White Sakkos Painter," who often depicted women wearing white sakkoi, or headdresses. Boston University archaeologist Ricardo Elia has shown that about 96 percent of Apulian vases have no known find spot, and probably came from thousands of plundered tombs. Some of the larger vessels such as this one may have been used as grave markers, but without knowing their archaeological contexts, it's impossible to determine how they were used in antiquity.

Status: Returned to Italy

Water jar depicting Apollo, ca. 485 B.C.
16 inches tall

(Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

This vase shows Apollo filling a bowl with wine, an offering to the goddesses Leto, his mother, and Artemis, his sister, who stand on either side of him. The scene was created by an artist known today as the "Berlin Painter," an important classical Greek vase painter who contributed to the development of Attic red-figure pottery.

Like many of the pieces recently returned to Italy by American museums, this object first surfaced in Switzerland in the 1970s. The museum acquired the vase in 1978 from Fritz Bürki.

Status: Returned to Italy

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© 2007 by the Archaeological Institute of America www.archaeology.org/0709/etc/returns_mfa.html

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