Once celebrated as one of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s most prized antiquities, an ancient Italian bust has been shipped back to its country of origin after it was found to have been looted during World War II.
“It is disappointing, even devastating, to lose a great object,” CMA director William Griswold told Cleveland.com yesterday.
The sculpture, which was previously thought to have been held in a North African collection for decades, has been confirmed to actually have been looted from an Italian archaeological museum in 1944.