Portrait of the Emperor Caracalla as a Youth

Object or Group Name

Portrait of the Emperor Caracalla as a Youth

Case Summary

On March 30, 2023, the Manhattan DA's office seized a bronze portrait of a young Caracalla from the Fordham University Art Museum as part of a sweeping investigation of objects looted from the ancient Roman site of Bubon, in modern Türkiye.

Caracalla was Emperor Septimius Severus's eldest son and was considered a tyrant by historians. This bust showing him as a young man was looted in the 1960s and smuggled into the United States.

In May 1967, Turkish authorities learned that local looters had illegally excavated several life-sized bronze statues near the village of İbecik, in southwest Türkiye. Archaeologists from the nearby Burdur museum conducted an emergency excavation and discovered the remains of a Sebasteion, a temple complex dedicated to the imperial cult, which worshipped Roman emperors as gods. By the time authorities arrived, the bronze statues were missing, but the marble bases with the names of 14 Roman emperors and empresses were left behind. Villagers told Turkish archaeologist Jale Inan they had sold nine or ten bronzes to a dealer for as much as 90,000 Turkish lira each, as well as many fragments, including heads, arms, and legs.

This bronze head left Türkiye and entered the private collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lipson in 1967, residing with them until they reportedly sold it to Arte Primitivo on March 14, 1997, soon after Howard Rose reopened the gallery at its East 65th Street location in New York City.

Many of the bronzes looted from Bubon first studied by Cornelius Vermeule III, then-curator of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who was the first to identify this portrait head in the Lipson’s private collection.

The portrait head briefly appeared in the Harvard University Art Museum in 1996 and was recorded in the companion book to the museum’s 1996 exhibition on Roman and Greek bronze sculpture, The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections. It is unclear if the Lipsons loaned the head to Harvard before it was acquired by Arte Primitivo.

Gill and Chippendale (2000) also noted the portrait head's residence at Harvard in their research on several well-known collections of Classical antiquities. Importantly, Gill suggested that this head belonged to a headless, partially complete statue of an "Imperial Roman Heroic Figure" held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The portrait surfaced next at the Fordham University Museum of Greek, Roman and Etruscan Art in 2007, after residing in William and Jane Walsh’s collection. The Walsh collection was the founding collection of the museum, and this piece was donated along with 269 other antiquities. How the Walshs acquired it, or for how much, is unclear. The university, expecting possible legal and ethical challenges to arise from the large donation, immediately putting the collection on display, with a promise to repatriate any items identified as suspect.

The portrait head remained there until 2023, when it was identified by investigations by Turkish authorities, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI-NY) and the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit. A search warrant was authorised by the New York State Supreme Court for HSI-NY to seize the head. The head was returned to Türkiye on December 5, 2023. 

Number of Objects

1

Object Type

Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Culture

Roman

Private Collector

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lipson, MA.
William and Jane Walsh, CA.

Museum Name

Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art

Museum Accession Number

2007.1.205

Receiving Country

Türkiye

MOLA Contributor(s)

Jason Felch

Peer Reviewed By

Damien Huffer
Michela Herbert

Citation

“Portrait of the Emperor Caracalla as a Youth,” Museum of Looted Antiquities, accessed October 8, 2026, https://mola.omeka.net/items/show/2191.