Orpheus and the Sirens at the Museum of Rescued Art

A new important return of an art masterpiece illicitly stolen from Italian state property: it is the terracotta sculptural group depicting Orpheus and the Sirens, the fearsome mythological creatures capable of driving sailors mad with their enchanting voices. According to myth, Orpheus defeated them on his return from the Argonauts' expedition near an island in Sicily or southern Italy, and the victory would symbolically represent the triumph of musical harmony.

The group, a unique artwork because mythical scenes were not frequently depicted in terracotta, came perhaps from a funerary monument or shrine. Il was produced in the colonies of Magna Graecia, more specifically in a workshop in Tarentum, where it would in fact have been discovered, and can be dated to the late fourth century B.C.

Stolen in the 1970s from an archaeological site in Taranto and later acquired by The Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Los Angeles, the work was recovered thanks to the Archaeology Section of the Cultural Heritage Protection Command’s (TPC) Operations Department, in collaboration with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations. After the Roman exhibition, Orpheus and the Sirens will return home and become part of the permanent collection of the Archaeological Museum of Taranto (MArTA).