Angry Italian Village Challenges New York's Met

LONDON, May 3, 2007 — -- Nando Durastanti is a very angry man. The mayor of the Italian town of Monteleone di Spoleto has a big bone to pick with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

What, one might wonder, would a tiny mountain town, population 651, have to do with one of the world's most prestigious museums?

More than a century ago, Isidoro Vannozzi, an Italian farmer from Monteleone, dug up an ancient Etruscan chariot -- the only such chariot to be discovered intact -- showing scenes from the life of the Greek warrior Achilles.

The find -- part of a burial treasure, according to archaeologists -- was discovered with the remains of two human skeletons and two drinking cups, which enabled experts to date it to 530 B.C., making the chariot approximately 2,600 years old.

According to Vannozzi's descendants, the farmer sold the sixth-century bronze and ivory chariot to two Frenchman in exchange for a much more useful item -- two cows.

Durastanti, however, believes that the farmer actually sold it to a scrap metal merchant for 950 lire -- 65 cents in today's terms -- and bought 30 terracotta tiles with the proceeds.

No matter what the farmer got, the chariot eventually made its way into the hands of Florence-based antique dealers.

There, the famed financier J.P. Morgan is reported to have bought it for the Metropolitan Museum in 1903, according to journalist Mario La Ferla, who has written a book about the chariot.

But the Met's efforts to take the chariot to New York faced stiff resistance from members of the Italian parliament. And so, legend has it, the chariot was sent to Paris, smuggled in with a grain shipment.

There, it was stored in the vaults at Credit Lyonnais, then the world's largest bank, for an unspecified period. Finally, it was sent to New York after the museum paid an unnamed intermediary the sum of 250,000 lire -- about $17,105 in today's terms -- to transport it across the Atlantic.

The chariot's convoluted history has now led Durastanti and others in Monteleone to demand its return, claiming that it was illegally taken out of Italy.

In an interview with ABCNEWS.com, Durastanti said, "The whole community wants the chariot back because it is part of our culture and history and it was stolen. It belongs to the state and cannot be the object of deals between art merchants."

Durastanti criticized the Italian government for not taking up the case, citing an earlier instance last November when the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed to return 26 objects from its antiquities collection to Italy, including 25 that were demanded by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

He told ABCNEWS.com that "In 1902, there was a parliamentary inquiry about this chariot, but then maybe because of a principle of allegiance to the United States, politicians have been distracted ever since. We have seen three ministers pass by, and they have done nothing."

Since being elected in 2002, the mayor has made the return of the chariot his personal crusade. He even located the lawyer himself, Atlanta-based Tito Mazzetta, who, according to Durastanti, agreed to fight the case pro-bono "for patriotic reasons."

But none of that cuts any ice with the Metropolitan Museum. Speaking to ABCNEWS.com, Met spokesman Harold Holzer ruled out any possibility of returning the chariot.

"The Met," Holzer said, "has legitimately owned this chariot for over a century; it's practically part of the museum's own history."

As for the alleged claims that the purchase was illegal, Holzer dismissed them and said, "Asking for this chariot to be returned because it belongs to Italy is like saying that the Met should not exhibit anything that isn't from New York. It's absurd, and the height of insular thinking."

Italian television coverage suggests a slightly more layered picture.

The national RAI channel broadcast an interview with the family of the farmer who found the chariot as its members gathered in Monteleone to protest the Met's refusal to return the chariot.

Recalling family lore, Vannozzi's grandson told RAI, "An antiques merchant from Norcia was looking for antiques and my granddad said, 'I have plenty,' and in a blink of an eye this guy came and took everything away."

Emotions seemed to run high in the crowd, with one child telling the interviewer that "this chariot belongs to someone from Monteleone and it is a right of Monteleone."

Said one man who represents the village committee fighting for the return of the chariot, "This matter involves the whole region. … It has become a symbol of our culture and the history of our Etruscan origins."

Even Holzer acknowledged that "the Met does not wish to be dismissive of Monteleone's connection to this chariot."

To that effect, Holzer said, "The museum has extended a special invitation to the mayor, should he wish to see the chariot. He is welcome to see it any time he likes, as it is now the centerpiece of the recently opened Greek and Roman galleries at the museum."

But if pride does not permit Durastanti to go to New York, he can always admire a copy of the chariot displayed in Monteleone by the grass-roots organization Pro Loco.

Pro Loco's president said that he had "thought to make a copy of the chariot and bring it to Monteleone, because when I was a kid my grandmother used to tell me about this famous golden chariot. So with Pro Loco, we thought about buying a replica, and we brought it to Monteleone."

But the copy, it seems, isn't enough for the residents of Monteleone.

Well, except for one resident, the septuagenarian granddaughter of the original Isidoro Vannozzi, who, when asked if she wanted the chariot to be returned to her family, retorted, "What in the world would I do with an old chariot?"

POSTSCRIPT: London, May 11, 2007

Following the publication of this article one week ago, ABCNews.com received feedback from an unexpected reader.

A Nevada-based cameraman named Tom Vannozzi wrote to us, claiming to be the great great grandson of Isidoro Vannozzi. That's right, the same Isidoro who found the chariot years ago in Monteleone.

Vannozzi told ABCNews.com that his grandfather, the grandson of Isidoro, "was among the many Italians from Monteleone who came to the US years ago to help build Brooklyn Bridge."

A self-professed museum buff, Vannozzi has now set up the Monteleone Chariot Fund dedicated to the preservation of the Etruscan chariot.

As to the question of where the chariot should be kept?

Vannozzi votes for New York - "no one could take better care of it than the Met," he told ABCNews.com.

He said that while he understood "the pride people feel in the chariot, I think this is an example of Italian bullheadedness!"

"In fact," he added, "this whole battle to reclaim the chariot - which Monteleone couldn't afford to take care of, anyway - has been incredibly counterproductive."

"Now", he continued, "the Met is wary of acknowledging Isidoro's role as the man who discovered the chariot, because of possible legal trouble."

Vannozzi told ABCNews.com that he hopes the establishment of this new fund - the proceeds of which will go to the Met - will go some way towards restoring his forefather's name in the museum as the man who chanced upon this 2,600-year-old chariot more than a century ago.