THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is to return a 2,500-year-old vase by Euphronios, the great Greek painter, to Italy.

The decision to return the 6th-century BC terracotta vase, one of 20 artefacts to be repatriated to Italy, could set a global precedent for the return of stolen antiquities. The vase, or krater, went missing from the Etruscan tombs at Cerveteri, north of Rome, in 1971.

The 45-centimetre-high (18in) Euphronios vase is one of the finest known examples of an Attic krater, a vessel used to mix wine with water. It depicts scenes from the Trojan War as described by Homer in The Iliad.

The move reverses the Metropolitan’s longstanding policy of refusing to concede that prized items in its collection might have been looted. Rocco Buttiglione, the Culture Minister, said that he would complete the negotiations with Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum, at a meeting in Rome this month.

Evidence of the theft emerged last year from the trial of Giacomo Medici, a Rome antiquities dealer, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for the systematic smuggling of looted art objects.

Many of the items are in US museums, including the Metropolitan, the J. Paul Getty Museum, in California, the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Medici, 67, is appealing against his conviction. At the trial prosecutors said that he had acquired the Euphronios vase from tomb robbers and then sold it to Robert Hecht, an American dealer.

He in turn sold it to the Metropolitan Museum for $1 million in 1972. Mr Hecht, 86, together with Marion True, 57, a former curator of antiquities at the Getty, is on trial in Rome for smuggling dozens of antiquities. Both deny the charges. In addition to the Euphronios vase, the Metropolitan is to return a superb set of 15 pieces of Hellenistic silver from the 3rd century BC, stolen from a dig at Morgantina, Sicily. Italy has undertaken to supply the Metropolitan with substitute antiquities “of equal beauty and importance” on long-term loans.

Under the deal Italy will also accept the Metropolitan’s contention that it acquired the stolen artefacts in good faith.

Enrico Gasbarra, president of the Rome Province, said that funds were being set aside for a museum to showcase the vase at the Etruscan tombs at Cerveteri, north of Rome, from which the vase was stolen in 1971. He hopes to open the display next year.

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