ANCIENT erotic art stolen from Pompeii more than 80 years ago has finally been returned, Italy’s cultural heritage police have announced.
The 2,000-year-old mosaic, depicting a half-naked couple, was stolen by a Nazi officer during World War Two.
The piece shows a man reclining in bed with his female partner standing in front of him – and is a classic piece of ancient Roman art.
It was returned to Pompeii following a diplomatic effort between Italy and Germany, the police said in a statement.
The mosaic was taken from the area around Pompeii, near Naples, during the war by a German Nazi army captain, who had been assigned to military logistics in Italy.
The Nazi officer gifted the piece to a civilian, who kept it until his death.
Though his heirs contacted the Italian authorities to arrange its return once they realised the artwork’s origin.
The mosaic panel, set on a slab of travertine, dates to between the late 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D.
It marks a cultural shift in ancient Roman art, according to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the German-born director of the Pompeii archaeological park.
Previously, Roman art was dominated by heroic myths, legends and Gods.
But everyday intimacy had started to become common in artworks later on.
“Here we see a new theme, the routine of domestic love,”; he said, noting that the male figure’s expression “seems almost a little bored”;.
The mosaic will be put on display at Pompeii, alongside the hundreds of other items and archaeological treasures.
The Romans’ affinity for brothels, alcohol, and pornography has been well documented and discovered among the ruins of Pompeii – the city buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
Hundreds of sexually explicit works of art from Pompeii have been placed in the Secret Museum in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.
These include graphic sex scenes – which experts believe could be advertisements for local brothels, as well as lots of phallic statuary, believed to bring wealth, fertility, and good luck.
Some of these pieces were so cheeky that they were deemed “pornographic”; in 1821, and the National Archaeological Museum closed the room to visitors in 1849.
The Secret Museum didn’t reopen for good until 2000.
