An antiques dealer made the find of a lifetime at a Texas Goodwill store: A 2,000-year-old priceless work of Roman art that she scooped up for a measly $35.
The following written content from Joshua Rhett Miller
Laura Young, of Austin, found the 52-pound Roman bust at the thrift store in her hometown in 2018 and figured it was worth such a modest investment.
“He looked Roman. He looked old,” Young told the San Antonio Express-News. “In the sunlight, it looked like something that could be very, very special.”
Young’s hunch proved correct: A Sotheby’s consultant later determined her extraordinary find to be a marble Julio-Claudian-era Roman bust that dates from the late first century BC to the early first century AD, the newspaper reported.
The bust — named “Portrait of a Man” — went on display Wednesday at the San Antonio Museum of Art, where it’ll stay until next May. The ancient work of art will then be returned to Germany, where it disappeared following World War II.
“It had once stood in the town of Aschaffenburg, Germany, in a full-scale model of a house from Pompeii, called the Pompejanum, built [by] Ludwig I of Bavaria,” the museum said on its website.
The bust “disappeared” after Allied bombers had targeted Aschaffenburg during the war and seriously damaged the Pompejanum, according to the museum.
A returning US soldier “most likely” brought the bust back to Texas, where it remained unknown until Young’s fateful find four years ago.
Young said she ultimately notified the German government of her historic discovery and made arrangements to return it to the Bavarian Administration of State-owned Palaces. But not until Texans and art lovers across the country get a chance to see her priceless find.
“He’d been hidden for 70 to 80 years, I thought he deserved to be seen and studied,” Young told the Express-News.
Young has also detailed her four-year journey with the bust on her Instagram page for her online shop, Temple of Vintage. Read more from NYPost
Subscribe
