Italy culture minister welcomes court ruling. A European court on Thursday upheld Italy’s right to claim an ancient Greek bronze statue from the Getty Villa Museum in California. The life-sized statue, attributed to the Greek sculptor Lysippos, was found in 1964 by Italian fishermen in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Pesaro. It has been on display at the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu since 1978. The Getty has long held that Italy had no legal claim to the Greek statue, arguing that it was not part of Italy’s cultural heritage and claiming that it had been found in international waters.