Orpheus and the Sirens

Orpheus and the Sirens

In 1976, J. Paul Getty purchased this unique group of terracotta figures for USD $557,549 from Leo Mildenberg, an antiquities and coin dealer who had created an antiquities trading branch at Bank Leu AG in Zurich, Switzerland.

The life-sized terracotta group depicts the seated poet Orpheus, a legendary Thracian bard and prophet who travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece. He is flanked by two standing Sirens, mythical half-woman, half-birds who sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors toward their island's rocky shores...and certain death. As the legend goes, when Jason and the Argonauts approached the island, Orpheus heard their voices, drew his lyre and played music that was louder and more beautiful, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs. This is the very scene depicted in the sculptural group.

Getty made the purchase based on the recommendation of Jiri Frel, the antiquities curator at the Getty from 1973 to 1986. An entry in Getty's diary dated Saturday, March 6, 1976, notes that he bought “a group of 3 Greek statues made in Tarentum at the end of the 4th c. B.C. They represent a singer Orpheus seated and 2 standing sirens, purchased for USD $550,000 from Bank Leu. All of these naturally were on [Frel's] recommendation.”

The sculptures were said to have be from the ancient Greek settlement of Taranto, in southern Italy. They show evidence of having been reconstructed from fragments and underwent heavy restoration prior to their acquisition by Getty. Nevertheless, they still bear traces of the orange, red and black pigments that once adorned them.

Italian authorities inquired about the sculptures during their 2006 investigation of the Getty's antiquities collection, but no concrete evidence emerged to prove if and how they had been trafficked out of Italy.

In 2021, however, Dutch authorities arrested a notorious Italian antiquities trafficker, Raffaele Monticelli, who had long been a supplier to Mildenberg and Bank Leu. In April 2022, the Manhattan District Attorney's office seized the Getty sculptures, saying they had identified new evidence about how the sculptures had been trafficked out of Italy by Monticelli, a former school teacher turned antiquities trafficker known as "the professor from Taranto."

Upon its return to Italy, the sculptural group was displayed in the Museo dell'Arte Salvata (Museum of Rescued Art) located at the Baths of Diocletian in Rome.

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Sculpture

Greek

J. Paul Getty Museum

76.AD.11.1-3

Italy

J Paul Getty Museum

Jason Felch

VG