Bust of Empress Livia

Object or Group Name

Bust of Empress Livia

Case Summary

This bust of the Roman Empress Livia, dating to the 1st century CE, was unearthed in 1928 during excavations conducted by the Italian Archaeological Mission of the archaeological site Butrint, located in southern Albania. In 1940, the Italian Mission established a museum in Butrint for the display of excavated artifacts, including the bust.

Between 1990 and 1991, Albania was in a state of civil unrest due to the fall of communism. Sometime in 1991, the Museum of Butrint was looted and a number of objects were stolen, including the Livia Bust. The piece allegedly was smuggled from Albania to Switzerland and eventually to the United States, where it reappeared in 1995 listed for sale by the antiquities dealer Robert Hecht.

Hecht's catalogue "From a North American Collection of Ancient Art" identified the bust as a “Roman marble portrait of Livia (58 BCE – 29 CE), wife of Augustus”, and claimed that it came from a “collection formed over the last forty years.”

Archaeologist Dr. Elizabeth Bartmann recognized it as a work from Butrint, however, and informed the Albanian Embassy in Washington, D.C.  Around the same time, in 1995, Hecht offered the bust for sale to the Glyptothek Museum in Munich; however, curators there identified it as stolen and alerted German law enforcement. The bust was listed as stolen by INTERPOL, and Hecht withdrew it from sale.  Albanian authorities took no further action, however, and the piece remained in Switzerland for the next five years.

In 2000, Albanian authorities along with the Director of the International Center for Albanian Archaeology, Dr. Iris Pojani, approached Hecht, leading to his voluntary return of the bust to Albania on November 3, 2000.

Number of Objects

1

Object Type

Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Culture

Roman

Receiving Country

Albania

Images

https://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2009/08/albania-overview-of-butrint-returns.html

MOLA Contributor(s)

Jessica Wang

Peer Reviewed By

Lisa Duffy-Zeballos
VG

Citation

“Bust of Empress Livia,” Museum of Looted Antiquities, accessed January 22, 2026, https://mola.omeka.net/items/show/968.

Geolocation