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In A Nutshell
- A $34.99 find. In 2018, Texas antiques dealer Laura Young bought a 52-pound marble head at a Goodwill store in Austin for $34.99, ABC reported.
- It was about 2,000 years old. Experts identified it as a Roman marble portrait from the late first century B.C. or early first century A.D., according to NBC News.
- It had vanished from a German museum. The bust once stood in the Pompejanum, a replica Roman house built for King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and disappeared after World War II.
- She could not keep it. After a year on display at the San Antonio Museum of Art, the bust was set to return to Bavaria.
Most people walk past the clutter under the shelves at a thrift store. In 2018, Laura Young looked down instead, and spotted a marble head lying on the floor of a Goodwill in Austin, Texas.
She paid $34.99 for it. Four years later, experts had confirmed it was a Roman portrait roughly 2,000 years old that had vanished from a German museum after World War II. Here is how it was identified, how it may have reached Texas, and why the woman who found it was never allowed to sell it.
How Did A Roman Bust End Up At Goodwill?
Nobody knows for sure, but experts suspect an American soldier.
“The head was on the floor under a display table,” Young, an antiques dealer, told ABC. “It definitely looked old. It was carved marble.” The bust is 19 inches tall and weighs 52 pounds. She buckled it into the back seat of her car and brought it home.
How it got to Austin is still a mystery. The San Antonio Museum of Art said the most likely scenario is that a U.S. soldier stationed in Germany brought it home after the war, but the rest of its journey is unknown, NBC News reported.
How Did Experts Prove It Was Real?
Auction specialists, and a German museum catalog about 100 years old.
Young started researching the piece and contacted auction experts. A consultant for Sotheby’s concluded it was a genuine marble bust from the Julio-Claudian era, the dynasty of Rome’s first emperors. Another auction house then found the bust pictured in a catalog of a German art museum published about a century earlier, which tied it to a specific collection.
Who it depicts is less certain. Early reports named Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, a Roman general. A Roman art specialist at the San Antonio Museum of Art suggested it may show Sextus Pompey, a rival of the first emperor, Augustus, and the museum labeled it simply “Portrait of a man.” “It’s a portrait of an outlaw, a sort of enemy of the state,” the specialist, Lynley McAlpine, said of that theory.
Where Did It Come From?
A copy of a Pompeii house, built for a Bavarian king.
The bust once stood in the Pompejanum in Aschaffenburg, Germany, a full-scale model of a house from Pompeii built for King Ludwig I of Bavaria in the 1840s to display Roman art. Allied bombing damaged the building during World War II, and the bust later disappeared. Experts believe an American soldier stationed in Aschaffenburg may have taken it, though that has not been confirmed. Artnet has more on the bust’s return.
What Happened To The Bust?
It went on display in Texas, then home to Germany.
Because the bust was missing property of the Bavarian state, Young could not sell it. Under an agreement with Germany, it was shown at the San Antonio Museum of Art for about a year before being returned to the Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces, Gardens and Lakes. “It’s bittersweet because I can’t sell him! I am a dealer,” Young told ABC. She also said she thought the bust “deserved to be seen and studied” after being hidden for decades.
Even without a payday, she was clear about what it meant to her. “He’s probably the coolest thing I’m ever going to find,” she said.
For roughly 2,000 years, the marble head passed through an ancient Roman workshop, a king’s collection, a war and an American thrift store. The last stop on its way home was the floor under a display table, where it waited for someone to look down.
