After a series of investigations conducted by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection and Heritage TPC and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome, the work entitled “The Oracle of Delphi” painted by Neapolitan artist Camillo Miola in 1880, has finally been returned to the city of Naples. Investigations have traced the oil on canvas that was stored in the halls of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, one of the few buildings that escaped the flames that devastated California in the serious incidents of recent days.
Traces of the rediscovered painting had been lost for several decades, but it was documented in the catalog of property of the Province of Naples compiled in 1912. “The Oracle of Delphi” had been illegally brought to the United States during the post-World War II period. Later, having entered the American antiquities market circuit in 1972, it had landed in the collections of the Getty Museum in LA. Miola’s painting falls within the aesthetic of European Romanticism of the second half of the 19th century. The subjects favored by the artist, a follower of Morellism–i.e., the art of Domenico Morelli, a Neapolitan painter and politician who lived and worked in the second half of the 19th century-were inspired by anecdotes from ancient history and particularly from Greek and Roman culture.
“The stolen work of art is like the fugitive,” said Rome Deputy Prosecutor Giovanni Conzo, ”only unlike the fugitive, who talks, phones and moves, the work is cold and therefore it is even more difficult to search for it abroad. This operation, carried out with the Carabinieri Heritage Protection Command and the Ministry, has made it possible to recover to our city these important works and return them to the community because the work of art must be enjoyed by the whole community.”
In the course of this recovery operation, another important work was also found. It is the painting titled “Portrait of Vittorio Emanuele III,” by Achille Talarico, an oil on canvas dated 1902 and commissioned by the Province of Naples and whose traces had been lost for several years. This painting has also been located and seized and may be returned to the community.
“The return of these two paintings belonging to the Metropolitan City’s collection,” stressed the head of the Department for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, Luigi La Rocca, ”complements the heritage of the institution, which consists of about 400 works, a heritage that we hope can be enhanced and made usable.
