White-Levy Weary Herakles Signed to Turkey

Weary Herakles to be reunited

The upper part of a statue of "Weary Herakles" has been signed over to Turkey by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts [press release]. I have reviewed the collecting history before and a formal discussion appears in a paper (written with Christopher Chippindale) that appeared in The American Journal of Archaeology in 2000 [JSTOR]. The legs and abdomen were excavated at Perge in southern Turkey.

The Herakles torso appeared in The Glories of the Past exhibition (no. 172) with an entry written by Cornelius C. Vermeule III. The sculpture is thus one of several items from the Shelby White and Leon Levy collection that has had to be returned to its country of origin. White has had to hand over material to Italy and to Greece. She has still to resolve the situation over the Icklingham bronzes from Suffolk, England. It would also be interesting to learn the full collecting-history of the Trebenishte bronze krater in her collection.

The Herakles is a further reminder of the way that recently-surfaced antiquities were acquired by private collectors.