# The Riace Bronzes > Unknown; two Greek sculptors working about a generation apart - Bronze A about 460-450 BC; Bronze B about 430-420 BC > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-greek-riace/riace-bronzes/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-12 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown; two Greek sculptors working about a generation apart - **Date:** Bronze A about 460-450 BC; Bronze B about 430-420 BC - **Medium:** Cast bronze, direct lost-wax, with copper, silver, ivory and calcite inlays - **Dimensions:** Bronze A 198 cm; Bronze B 197 cm. Metal wall thickness averaging 8.5 mm on A and 7.5 mm on B - **Object type:** Sculpture - **Period:** Greek, fifth century BC - **Current location:** Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Reggio Calabria - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary Two over-life-size Greek bronze warriors, lifted out of eight to ten metres of water off Riace Marina in Calabria in August 1972 and kept from the public for nine years. They are catalogued as Bronze A and Bronze B, they were made about a generation apart, and they are among the very small number of large-scale Greek bronzes that survive at all.Almost nothing else about them is agreed. The finder's own sworn report, filed the day after the discovery, describes a group of statues and gives a depth and a distance from shore that no later account uses. What the Florence restoration of 1975 to 1980 removed from inside them cannot be put back. Whether they may ever leave Reggio Calabria has been argued over for forty years.This record keeps A and B apart on every line. Published accounts routinely do not, and a fact about one is regularly printed under a photograph of the other. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **fifth century BC-unknown** Unknown Greek dedicator or city `[unknown]` (origin) Both statues retain lead tenons under the feet, which means each had been fixed to a stone base and was therefore publicly displayed somewhere before it went into the sea. Casts of the tenons were tried against the surviving bases in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi and matched none of them. The clay analyses point to Argos for Bronze A and Attica for Bronze B. No dedication, no inscription and no ancient text has ever been tied to them. - **unknown-1972** None; on the seabed off Riace Marina `[unknown]` (gap) How they reached the sea is not established. A shipwreck is the usual assumption and is weakened by their near-intact condition. Proposals include jettison from a passing ship and, in R. Ross Holloway's 1998 account, looting by the Carthaginians in 406 or 405 BC from a Sicilian city and loss from a ship off Sicily. Nothing is documented. Roughly two and a half thousand years of this record are a blank and this publication does not fill them. - **1972-present** The Italian state `[documented]` (discovery and vesting) Found on 16 August 1972 by Stefano Mariottini and declared to the Soprintendenza alle Antichita della Calabria at Reggio on 17 August 1972, protocol number 2232. Archaeological objects found in Italian territory or territorial waters vest in the state. Bronze B was raised on 21 August 1972 and Bronze A the following day, after falling back to the seabed once during the lift; the Carabinieri underwater unit used a balloon inflated from the divers' own air cylinders. - **1972-1975** The Italian state, at Reggio Calabria `[documented]` (first conservation) Cleaning of the marine concretion by the restorers of the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia continued until January 1975, when the Reggio superintendency concluded that a full and valid restoration was beyond the equipment in its own laboratory. - **1975-1980** The Italian state, at the Centro di Restauro, Florence `[documented]` (principal restoration) Transferred to the restoration centre of the Tuscan archaeological superintendency, an institution created after the Florence flood of 1966. The five-year campaign ended on 15 December 1980. It was here that radiography established that the right arm and the left forearm of Bronze B are a different casting from the rest of that statue, and that the surviving inlays were identified material by material. - **1980-1981** The Italian state, on exhibition `[documented]` (exhibition in Florence and Rome) Shown for six months at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence from 15 December 1980, then in Rome. The Florence showing and the Rome showing that followed are what turned two archaeological finds into national property in the popular sense. - **1981-2009** Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Reggio Calabria `[documented]` (return and further conservation) The museum's underwater archaeology section was created on 3 August 1981 to house them, dedicated to the memory of the superintendent Giuseppe Foti, who had signed the 1972 discovery file and died shortly before the statues came back. Degradation appeared in the early 1990s and a further campaign by the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro ran from 1992 to 14 June 1995, emptying the casting core the Florence restorers had left inside and treating the copper oxides with nitrobenzene. They then went into a climate-controlled room at 40 to 50 per cent relative humidity and 21 to 23 degrees. - **2009-2013** The Italian state, at Palazzo Campanella, Reggio Calabria `[documented]` (restoration in public and museum rebuilding) Moved in 2009 to the seat of the Calabrian regional council while the museum was rebuilt, into a laboratory open to the public. The work was carried out by restorers of the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro coordinated by Paola Donati and Nuccio Schepis and was completed in 2011. They returned to the museum in December 2013; the Bronzes room reopened on 21 December 2013 and the whole museum on 30 April 2016. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - These objects have never been on the market and cannot be. Archaeological finds made in Italian territory are inalienable state property, so there is no price, no valuation published by the state, and no comparable sale. The only monetary question that has ever attached to them is the finder's reward under Italian law, and whether one was ever paid to Stefano Mariottini is not established in the sources consulted. ## Exhibitions - First public display after the Florence restoration, six months, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence, 1980-1981 - Second showing, following Florence, Rome, 1981 - Restoration laboratory open to the public, Palazzo Campanella, Reggio Calabria, 2009-2011 - Permanent display, Bronzes room reopened 21 December 2013, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Reggio Calabria, 2013- ## Literature - G. Foti and F. Nicosia, I Bronzi di Riace: dal Centro di restauro della Soprintendenza archeologica della Toscana al Museo nazionale di Reggio Calabria, Florence, 1981. - L. Vlad Borrelli and P. Pelagatti (eds), Due Bronzi da Riace: rinvenimento, restauro, analisi e ipotesi di interpretazione, Bollettino d'Arte, serie speciale III, Rome, 1984. - Paolo Moreno, I Bronzi di Riace: il maestro di Olimpia e i Sette a Tebe, Electa, Milan, 1998. - Daniele Castrizio, I Bronzi di Riace: ipotesi ricostruttiva, Iriti, Reggio Calabria, 2000. - Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro and Giovanna De Palma, I bronzi di Riace: restauro come conoscenza, Artemide, Rome, 2003. - G. Bragho, Facce di bronzo: personaggi e figuranti a Riace, Pellegrini, Cosenza, 2008; and I Bronzi di Riace nei documenti ufficiali del ritrovamento, Meligrana, 2017. - Salvatore Settis and Maurizio Paoletti, Sul buono e sul cattivo uso dei bronzi di Riace, 2012. - K. A. Dafas, Greek Large-Scale Bronze Statuary: The Late Archaic and Classical Periods, BICS Supplement 138, London, 2019, pp. 51-67. ## Open questions - Why does every published account give 230 metres and 8 metres when the finder's own sworn declaration of 17 August 1972 gives about 300 metres and about 10 metres? The primary document and the standard figures disagree and nobody explains the difference. - Was Bronze A recovered on 22 or 23 August 1972? The Italian account gives the day after Bronze B, that is the twenty-second; English accounts give the twenty-third. - Mariottini's declaration describes a group of statues, of which two were emerging, and a shield on the left arm of one. No shield was recovered. What else was on that seabed, and where did it go? - Was Stefano Mariottini ever paid a finder's reward under Italian law, and if so how much? Nothing is established in the sources consulted. - Which eye is missing from which statue, and what survives in each socket? The sources consulted describe the inlay materials but do not set out the present condition socket by socket, which is exactly the level of detail a reader of this record needs. - What are the weights of Bronze A and Bronze B? Not published in any source consulted. - What is the exact alloy of each statue, and of the ancient replacement arms of Bronze B? The 2009-2011 campaign is reported to have established the precise percentages, and they are not published in the sources consulted. - Has any loan of either statue ever been formally proposed and refused, and by whom? The prohibition on moving them is treated as settled in general accounts without a documented decision behind it. - Did any conservator publicly oppose the removal of the casting core in 1992-1995? The loss of stratigraphic evidence is real and the professional debate around it has not been located. - Where was the eyelash of Bronze B reported found in the museum basement, when, and is it now reattached or catalogued? - Has the Procura di Siracusa's modello 45 file on the Siracusan hypothesis been closed, and with what finding? It remained open and without suspects as of the sources consulted in 2026. - Has any scholar in the Calabrian discovery tradition answered the Cirrincione and Madeddu paper in a refereed journal, beyond Castrizio's public criticism? None was located in the sources consulted. - Has the Ministry of Culture committed funding, and on what timeline, to the seismic-base and climate-control renovation of the Bronzes room that the museum's own scientific committee has already approved? Not established in the sources consulted as of August 2026. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia (Italian), 'Bronzi di Riace', which reproduces the text of Mariottini's declaration of 17 August 1972 (protocol 2232) and Giuseppe Foti's manuscript annotation, and sets out the restoration chronology, the inlay materials, the ancient repair to Bronze B, the casting-core analyses and the full table of attribution proposals with their authors and dates. Tertiary but unusually well documented; flagged for replacement by Foti and Nicosia, I Bronzi di Riace (Florence 1981) and by Due Bronzi da Riace, Bollettino d'Arte serie speciale III (Rome 1984). - [2] Wikipedia (Italian), 'Museo archeologico nazionale di Reggio Calabria', for the 1981 creation of the underwater section, the 21 December 2013 reopening of the Bronzes room, the definitive reopening of the museum on 30 April 2016, and the description of the display conditions. Tertiary. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Riace bronzes', for the metal wall thicknesses, the calcite eyes of Statue A, the Brinkmann and Settis identification as Erechtheus and Eumolpos, and the summary of Giuseppe Bragho's 2008 claims about the official 1972 records. Tertiary. - [4] Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Reggio Calabria, official page on the Riace Bronzes, for the museum's own statement of the discovery, the lost-wax technique, the calcite and glass-paste eyes, the copper and silver inlays, the attribution of the casting cores to Attica and the Argolid, and the regulated access to the room. - [5] Wikimedia Commons file page for File:Bronzi di riace ritrovamento.jpg. Licence PD-Italy and PD-1996. The description calls it an old postcard, gives the author as Ernesto Franco of Bivongi, and dates it to about 1973, while the original upload log calls it a postcard by an unknown author of 1972. - [6] Wikimedia Commons file page for File:Reggio calabria museo nazionale bronzi di riace.jpg. Licence PD-self, own work, dated 2007. - [7] Il Post, 'L'indagine che ipotizza una storia molto diversa sui Bronzi di Riace', 18 May 2025, on the Procura di Siracusa file and the Brucoli claim, with a credibility assessment of the witness and photographic evidence. - [8] The Journal of Cultural Heritage Crime, 'Bronzi di Riace. A Siracusa un caso di archeomafia? Piuttosto, una palese messa in scena', 15 May 2025, forensic examiner Antonella Privitera's critique of the Siracusan hypothesis, including the patina, sediment and coral evidence and the assessment that the circulated photograph is a photomontage. - [9] R. Cirrincione, A. Madeddu et al., 'A Syracusan hypothesis on the origin of the Riace Bronzes: new investigations and a historical-scientific revision of literature data through an interdisciplinary geological-archaeological approach', Italian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 145 (2026), pp. 97-138, DOI 10.3301/IJG.2026.05. Peer-reviewed primary source for the geochemical claim. - [10] Odnako, 'The Riace Bronzes question and the Sicilian hypothesis, the reply of the research group', the Cirrincione and Madeddu team's published response to Daniele Castrizio's criticism. - [11] StrettoWeb, 'Reggio Calabria, allarme per i Bronzi di Riace: a rischio il basamento antisismico', 7 May 2026, reporting Daniele Castrizio's warning and director Fabrizio Sudano's confirmation. - [12] CityNow, 'Bronzi di Riace, basi compromesse: problema di stabilita e microclima, Castrizio', 8 May 2026, on the compromised anti-seismic bases and microclimate control. - [13] Il Sole 24 Ore, 'Private Funds for the Riace Bronzes. The Strategic Plan of the Museum of Reggio', on the MArRC Strategic Plan 2026-2028, the Bronze Hall renovation budget and the search for private sponsorship. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. 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