Riace in Calabria or Brucoli in Sicily, where do the Riace Bronzes really come from? New scientific studies and eyewitnesses have reopened the debate in recent months, but also the research on the provenance of the famous statues, perhaps among the most important and well-known of the few original Greek bronze statues from the 5th century BC that have come down to us.
Taking stock of old mysteries and new hypotheses is the monthly Archeo, which in the issue on newsstands these days publishes an in-depth report by Flavia Marimpietri, with the voices of scholars and witnesses and an interview with the archaeologist Luigi Malnati, former general director for antiquities of the Ministry of Culture and before that superintendent archaeologist of Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Marche.
We start from current events, because a few weeks ago the archaeological superintendence decided to return to investigate in the waters of Riace, in Calabria, where on 16 August 1972 the two large bronzes, now exhibited at the National Museum of Reggio Calabria, were found by the diver Stefano Mariottini. The hypothesis put forward over the years has always been that the statues, produced in Greece (in Argos?) in the 5th century. BC and perhaps part of a larger sculptural group, had ended up in the sea with the shipwreck of a ship that was taking them to Rome. But the context is no longer there, no trace of that ship has ever been found.
The studies carried out at the time of the two most important restorations on the casting clay of the statues demonstrated their Greek origin. But a very recent new examination conducted by the University of Catania in collaboration with the University of Ferrara (currently being published) reveals instead that the bronze welding sands appear to be Sicilian, from the Syracuse area.
Hence the hypothesis – which Malnati interviewed by Archeo considers plausible – that the bronzes were indeed produced in Greece, but then assembled in Sicily to be exhibited in Syracuse at the height of its power. Two centuries later, however, as Tito Livio recounts, during the Second Punic War, Syracuse turned against the Romans and ended up succumbing. It was 212 BC and it is likely that the bronzes were part of war booty embarked on a ship bound for Rome and then shipwrecked.
But where? According to the testimony of the Bertoni brothers, sons of a restaurateur from Brucoli, in Sicily, the bronze statues (not two but five) were fished out in 1971, a year before their official discovery, right in the waters of the small Sicilian town. The discovery would have been made by Roman divers who would then have sold them, at least in part. The same version of events is supported by another Sicilian witness according to whom it was a mafia boss who took care of the theft of the bronzes: “five statues and two lions”, while the two warriors we know today were ‘left’ in Calabrian waters perhaps precisely to make them find themselves again and divert attention from the most fruitful part of the operation.
All plausible hypotheses, Malnati points out, it’s a shame that the evidence is lacking. In short, the mystery remains thick, but who knows whether the new research or others that will come – perhaps in Sicilian waters – will finally be able to shed light.