The discovery of the Riace bronze warriors by a humble diver (or, to be precise, almost simultaneously with the discovery of the same sculptures by four boys), though reckoned among the most precious finds, remains a rather mysterious one

The discovery of the Riace bronze warriors by a humble diver (or, to be precise, almost simultaneously with the discovery of the same sculptures by four boys), though reckoned among the most precious finds, remains a rather mysterious one. Even 47 years on, the circumstances in which the statues were recovered are far from clear. There is a quite convincing version according to which not two but three bronzes were found, one of which, preserved in the scant recollections of witnesses from the tiny Italian town of Locri, vanished before the commission for valuables ever appeared. The third warrior had a full, dishevelled beard, curls and outstretched arms, yet it is hardly likely that a label now stands beside him reading "stolen from the Ionian coast in August 1972, sold for 400 million lire and resold for an improbable sum to an anonymous American collector". That collector, by some accounts, was the oil magnate Paul Getty, whose collection-builders, in general, were not squeamish about a great many dubious objects.