Italy creates new museum for trafficked ancient artifacts

Exterior of the Baths of Diocletian in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome, pictured in an undated photo. Italy has been so successful in recovering art and objects illegally exported from the country that it has launched the Museum of Rescued Art to showcase them. Its rotating exhibits are displayed in the Octagonal Hall inside the ancient baths. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo credit Antmoose / Anthony M. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Exterior of the Baths of Diocletian in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome, pictured in an undated photo. Italy has been so successful in recovering art and objects illegally exported from the country that it has launched the Museum of Rescued Art to showcase them. Its rotating exhibits are displayed in the Octagonal Hall inside the ancient baths. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo credit Antmoose / Anthony M. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Exterior of the Baths of Diocletian in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome, pictured in an undated photo. Italy has been so successful in recovering art and objects illegally exported from the country that it has launched the Museum of Rescued Art to showcase them. Its rotating exhibits are displayed in the Octagonal Hall inside the ancient baths. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo credit Antmoose / Anthony M. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

ROME (AP) – Italy has been so successful in recovering ancient artworks and artifacts that were illegally exported from the country that it has created a museum for them. The Museum of Rescued Art now operates in a cavernous structure that is part of Rome’s ancient Baths of Diocletian. The Octagonal Hall exhibition space was designed to showcase Italy’s efforts, through patient diplomacy and court challenges, to get valuable antiquities returned to Italy, often after decades in foreign museums or private collections.

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Aug. 17 auction unfurls cartographers’ city visions

1651 map of Ribe, Denmark, est. $200-$250

NEW YORK – Maps are beautiful, and their details make them so. Good maps make a landscape pleasing and intelligible; great ones turn information into art. Maps that are designed to be pictorial offer more opportunities for artistic beauty, as do maps of cities, because cities provide more data points to style and convey.

On August 17, starting at 8 pm Eastern time, Jasper52 will host a sale of Antiquarian Pictorial Maps & City Views. The 105-lot sale is curated by maps expert Steve Kovacs. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

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