A Looted Bronze Statue That May Depict Marcus Aurelius Is Returning to Turkey
The repatriation comes after years of legal disputes over the true identity and provenance of the 6-foot-4 artwork, which has been housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art
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A headless bronze statue that may depict the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius will be repatriated to Turkey after an investigation determined that it had been looted, smuggled and sold through a web of antiquities dealers before arriving at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1986.
The Manhattan district attorney’s antiquities trafficking unit first identified and took possession of the looted statue in 2023. But the statue remained in Cleveland while the museum challenged the seizure.
Last week, the museum relented and agreed to return the statue to Turkey. According to a statement, “new scientific testing” had revealed that the second-century C.E. statue was “likely present” at the Sebasteion, a shrine near the ancient Roman settlement of Bubon.
“The New York district attorney approached us with a claim and evidence that we felt was not utterly persuasive,” William M. Griswold, the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, tells the Art Newspaper’s Daniel Grant. Officials then requested scientific tests to determine the validity of the claim.
All parties agreed that the scientific investigation would be led by Ernst Pernicka, an archaeologist and chemist who serves as the senior director and managing director of the Curt-Engelhorn-Center for Archaeometry in Germany.
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As Pernicka tells the Art Newspaper, his tests followed a “well-established scientific procedure,” which included soil samples, lead isotope analysis and 3D modeling of the shrine site. Soil from within the statue matched soils in Turkey, and lead at the foot of the statue matched lead residue on a stone base where it may have been attached at the Sebasteion. Investigators also traveled to nearby villages to conduct interviews with locals who remember the looting.
Per the New York Times’ Graham Bowley and Tom Mashberg, the story goes something like this: Built nearly 2,000 years ago, the shrine featured bronze statues of Roman emperors, including Lucius Verus, Valerian and Commodus. An earthquake later buried the site, which was discovered by farmers in the 1960s. Villagers plundered the shrine and sold the bronzes to antiquities dealers like Robert Hecht, who faced allegations of smuggling before his death in 2012. After covert restoration in Switzerland and Britain, the items were sold to collectors and museums around the world.
With the statue of Marcus Aurelius returning to Turkey, the antiquities trafficking unit has seized 15 items looted from Bubon, collectively valued at nearly $80 million, according to a statement.
Turkish officials are celebrating the news. In a social media post, Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy lauded the efforts to return the statue “to its rightful land,” per a translation by Türkiye Today. He added, “History is beautiful in its rightful place, and we will preserve it.”
In a legal sense, the case is closed. But mysteries about the bronze remain. The most glaring question: Who does the headless statue really depict?
When the Cleveland Museum of Art bought the statue from the Edward H. Merrin Gallery for $1.85 million in 1986, the receipt said “figure of a draped emperor (probably Marcus Aurelius), Roman, late second century [C.E.], bronze,” according to the Times. Standing at 6-foot-4, even without a head, it’s now thought to be worth around $20 million.
In its statement, the museum claims to have made a “relatively recent determination” that the statue is an unnamed philosopher rather than Marcus Aurelius. One stone base at the Sebasteion is inscribed with the ruler’s name, but the tests revealed that the statue was likely positioned on a different stone base without an inscription.
“Without a head or identifying inscription, the identity of the statue remains uncertain,” the museum adds.
However, Turkish officials dispute the museum’s claims, suggesting that the statue does depict Marcus Aurelius—both an emperor and philosopher—and may have been moved around between plinths, per the Times.
For now, the mysterious statue remains in the Cleveland Museum of Art. As Griswold tells the Art Newspaper, “The Turkish authorities are prepared to consider permitting the work to remain here in Cleveland for a brief period, so that our visitors may say farewell to the sculpture and so that we may explain to the public some of what we’ve learned in this process.”
