A large Roman mosaic depicting Medusa will be repatriated to Italy from the U.S.

An important two-thousand-year-old Roman mosaic will be returned toItaly by its current owner, who resides in the United States and has no documents to prove the object’s lawful provenance. Announcing the return is theFBI’sArt Crime Team, which began working on the case in 2020, when an art lawyer contacted FBI agent Elizabeth Rivas, who is part of the Art Crime Team, to inform him that one of his clients had a mosaic depicting the mythological figure of Medusa. The huge mosaic had been cut into sixteen pieces and stored in a storage facility in Los Angeles since the 1980s, in pallets of different weights (ranging from 35 to 90 kg).

Some of the pallets were infested with termites, but the mosaic pieces were largely intact thanks to the climate-controlled facility in which they had been kept. The customer, as mentioned, did not have the documentation to prove provenance, and as a result he was unable to sell the pieces. The two agents Elizabeth Rivas and Allen Grove then investigated to figure out to whom the mosaic legitimately belonged, and after hearing from a local expert who said it was either an Italian or North African mosaic, they contacted the Carabinieri’s Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, who often cooperate with the FBI, and who confirmed that it was an Italian mosaic, reported on the records of art illegally stolen in our country since July 1909 and present in the U.S. since at least 1959, the date to which a newspaper ad in which the mosaic was offered for sale dates back.

The Carabinieri in particular, following a search among documents in the Central State Archives in Rome, found that the mosaic depicting Medusa is a polychrome tessellated piece with geometric compartments formed with white, red and black pebbles, in a pattern imitating matting, dating back to the 2nd century AD, found in 1892 in room “A” of the “Quarto di Montebello” villa, located at the 9th mile of the Via Flaminia, near Rome. As of July 1909, no further evidence has surfaced. This evidence has been provided to the FBI, claiming the return of the property considering that since June 28, 1909, with the entry into force of Law No. 364 of June 20, 1909, specific protection regulations have been in force in Italy that prohibit the sale of cultural property owned by the Italian state, as well as its export abroad.

The work is currently undergoing cleaning in the U.S. before repatriation. “We worked with the owner and made sure we documented the condition and made sure we had everything we needed to send it back to Italy,” Allen Grove said. “We then worked with the Italian consulate here in Los Angeles. It’s something of great interest to Italy; they came to inspect the mosaic and helped us facilitate the logistics of actually bringing it back to Italy.”

“The mosaic,” Grove added, “was made by hand at a time when people put an incredible amount of care and effort into it. It really speaks to the ingenuity and creativity of the time. It is not meant to be in Los Angeles. The mosaic belongs to the Romans. It allows us to understand a little bit about the history of human beings two thousand years ago.”

The ability to work closely and collaboratively with the Italian government was key to the success of the repatriation, as was the art lawyer’s willingness to contact Special Agent Rivas about the piece. “We were very happy that they contacted us,” Rivas said. “If they hadn’t, it would have been in storage for another 100 years. It’s a successful example of how we can work together to put the pieces back where they belong.”

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A large Roman mosaic depicting Medusa will be repatriated to Italy from the U.S.

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