A court near Naples has asked a US
museum to return of copy of a canonical Greek statue of ideal
male proportions, the Doriphoros (lance bearer) of famed
sculptor Polykleitos.
The court at Torre Annunziata says the Roman copy of the Greek
original which the Minneapolis Institute of Art bought for a
reported two and a half million dollars in 1984 was stolen from
the ancient Roman city of Stabiae near Naples in the
mid-Seventies by an international art trafficker, Elie Borowski.
It said the copy, made in the first century BC from the now-lost
Greek original that dated to 440 BC, is of "inestimable" value
and must be returned to Italy because it is a looted art work.
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