Attic lekythos returned to Italy

The New York County District Attorney's Office has announced that it has seized a number of antiquities from two separate premises and that the items will be returning to Italy "8th century B.C.E. bronze statues among collection of ancient artifacts being repatriated to Italian Republic by Manhattan District Attorney's Office", May 25, 2017, press release]. Six of the items were seized in April from "a gallery in Midtown Manhattan".

The release adds:

This month, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office also seized an additional item pursuant to a search warrant from a different gallery in Midtown Manhattan. The recently recovered artifact is also being returned to the Italian Republic as part of the repatriation ceremony.

The gallery is not named but is reported to be the same one linked to a returned Attic amphora and a sarcophagus fragment.

This lekythos appears to be the one attributed to the Group of Palermo 16 that had once formed part of an old English collection, and then passed into the Kluge collection (itself a collection not without interest to readers of LM). It had passed through a New York gallery that has returned other items to the Italian authorities. The lekythos appears to have first surfaced on the London market.