Eike Schmidt: Germany must return the base of the Discobolus to Italy.

The director of the Uffizi, Eike Schmidt, also intervenes in the case of the return of the base of the Lancellotti Discus, which the director of the National Roman Museum, Stéphane Verger, has requested from the Glyptothek in Munich. The matter has been much discussed in recent days, as the response of the German museum’s director, Florian Knauss, that the museum cannot abandon its position of legal claim to the Discobolus, has been interpreted as a request by Germany to return the Discobolus. Nonetheless, Director Knauss, in the following days, made it known through our newspaper that his museum has never asked for, nor does it intend to ask for, the ancient sculpture now housed in the Museo Nazionale Romano.

For the Uffizi director, at any rate, the case is far from closed. “It is absolutely necessary for Germany,” Schmidt said this morning on the sidelines of the presentation of the Divina Simulacra exhibition, “to send the base of the Discobolus back to Rome as soon as possible. The base by itself without the sculpture has no historical or artistic value; it is in storage where no one can see it. Precisely in order to recontextualize it, it is absolutely necessary to send it back to Italy, and therefore I am making an appeal to all my compatriots in my country of birth - of the nation to which I continue to belong, even though I am now Italian - for the return of the base, which is of enormous value to the Discobolus statue, which has no meaning in Germany.”

Eike Schmidt: Germany must return the base of the Discobolus to Italy.

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