In 1979, the Glyptotek, the Copenhagen museum that houses the Carlsberg brewing dynasty’s collection, arranged for the loan of a bronze torso and exhibited it with a bronze portrait of Roman emperor Septimius Severus from its collection. It was presented as a triumphant reunion and the torso would reappear in 2011 on a long-term loan to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Today, both bronzes have been returned to Turkey and the previous assumptions about the relationship between head and torso are now in doubt.
The seven-foot-tall torso statue went first. In Spring 2023, the Manhattan district attorney’s office seized it from the Met along with a cache of other looted artifacts.
Now, Severus’s head has followed. Pressure from the Turkish government last year prompted the Glyptotek to launch an archival and technical analysis of the portrait and its provenance. The Danish museum announced in a statement on November 26 that it had concluded the artifact was likely illegally excavated from Boubon in southwest Turkey in the 1960s.
The head of Septimius Severus. Photo: courtesy Anders Sune Berg/Glyptotek.
“Exceptionally strong arguments and scientific documentation are required to separate a work from the museum’s collection. In the case of this object, both criteria were present,” the museum’s director Gertrud Hvidberg-Hansen said. The director acknowledged that the recent history of illegally sold artifacts from Boubon being returned to Turkey by U.S. institutions had impacted the museum’s thinking.
The Glyptotek stated its researchers had been unable to examine the relationship between the head and the bronze body and was therefore unable to comment on the potential connection between the two artifacts.
A looted bronze of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, seen here on loan to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been returned to Turkey. Photo courtesy of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The museum acquired the portrait in 1970 for 365,500 Swiss francs ($83,600) from Robert Hecht, the late antiquities dealer who dodged controversy for much of his career, including twice facing smuggling charges from Italian authorities. Several of the artifacts repatriated from the Met last year once belonged to Hecht.
The portrait of Severus, a brutal military strategist who ruled Rome from 193 C.E. to 211 C.E., is believed to have belonged to a larger group of bronze sculptures of the Roman imperial family. These were housed in Boubon’s Sebasteion, a shrine in which Roman emperors were worshiped as gods.
In addition to researching Severus’s head, the Glyptotek reviewed the provenance of other artifacts that originated from Turkey and had been acquired in the 1970s. It identified 48 architectural terracotta artifacts from the 6th century B.C.E. that had been illegally exported from the Iron Age citadel of Düver, a site in southwestern Turkey, and sold on the international market.
One of the 48 terracotta artifacts that are being returned to Turkey. Photo: courtesy Anders Sune Berg/Glyptotek.
The museum noted it had acquired the terracotta artifacts in 1974 (again from Hecht) even though it was well known Düver had been illegally excavated. The museum is recommending their return to Turkey.
“This development sets another precedent for institutions and collectors all over the world, including in Denmark, that all artifacts acquired with a shady provenance should be returned to their rightful owners,” said Hakan Tekin, Turkey’s ambassador to Denmark. “Glyptotek has done the right thing and we celebrate them for their decision.”