Looted Antiquity, Once at Met Museum, to Return to Lebanon

A Colorado couple has dropped a federal lawsuit that sought to stop the Manhattan district attorney’s office from returning to the Republic of Lebanon an ancient marble bull’s head that prosecutors said had been looted during that country’s civil war.

The 2,300-year-old sculpture had been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art until July when the museum turned it over to authorities after a curator raised concerns about its provenance to Lebanese officials, who requested its return.

The collectors, Lynda and William Beierwaltes, had argued that they bought the artifact in good faith for more than $1 million in 1996. But on Wednesday, the couple’s lawyer, William G. Pearlstein, released a statement that said, “After having been presented with incontrovertible evidence that the bull’s head was stolen from Lebanon, the Beierwaltes believed it was in everyone’s best interest to withdraw their claim to the bull’s head and allow its repatriation to Lebanon.”

In an unusual twist, though, prosecutors said they are now pursuing the return to Lebanon of a second work that they discovered while recently reviewing a profile of the Beierwalteses in an old issue of House & Garden magazine. In a June 1998 special issue, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos spotted an antiquity, “an archaic marble torso of a calf bearer,” in a photograph of the Beierwalteses’ home. Mr. Bogdanos said in a court filing that it too had been stolen from Lebanon.

The antiquity, which depicts a person carrying a calf, was later sold by the Beierwalteses to a New York collector, Michael H. Steinhardt, in 2015. Mr. Bogdanos said in a letter that he sent to a state Supreme Court judge earlier this week that the district attorney’s office had obtained a warrant to seize the work. Mr. Steinhardt could not be reached for comment.

The Beierwalteses had also sold the bull’s head sculpture to Mr. Steinhardt, who lent it to the Met museum. But, after learning about the provenance dispute, Mr. Steinhardt asked the Beierwalteses to take back the work and return his money.

This summer the Beierwalteses sued the district attorney’s office and the Lebanese government, saying they had clear title to the bull’s head artifact and demanding its return. But Mr. Bogdanos produced evidence that the bull’s head had been discovered during a state-sponsored excavation in 1967 at the ancient Temple of Eshmun in Sidon, Lebanon. The item had been put in storage after its discovery and then was stolen in the summer of 1981 during the Lebanese civil war. It later turned up in the possession of Robin Symes, an antiquities dealer, who sold it to the Beierwalteses, Mr. Bogdanos said in his letter to the court.

Mr. Bogdanos said in his letter that “although the bull’s head shall be released without the Beierwaltes or any other individuals being the subject of criminal charges, the investigation continues.”

The calf bearer sculpture passed though some of the same hands as the bull’s head, according to the letter. It too had been excavated at Eshmun and was stolen from the Lebanese Republic, prosecutors said. It was then sold in 1996 by Mr. Symes for $4.5 million to the Beierwalteses, who later sold it to Mr. Steinhardt, Mr. Bogdanos wrote.

In a statement Wednesday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said: “The art world must acknowledge that stolen antiquities are not simply collectible commercial property, but evidence of cultural crimes committed around the world. These important historical relics must be treated with caution and care, and galleries, auction houses, museums, and individual collectors must be willing to conduct proper due diligence to ensure that an item has not been unlawfully acquired.”