The precious Pompelu Togatusa sculpture is exhibited in Pamplona until 2024, but it may return to the United States. However, the Foral Government has publicly stated that it is a sculpture of “great heritage” and that “it is Navarra’s property”. The Foral Government therefore intends to acquire full ownership.
The Pompelu togatus is a Roman bronze sculpture of 127 centimeters, very valuable because there are only a few in the world – thirteen such sculptures, most of them found in Pompeii and Ercolano. What was discovered in Navarra has no head.
It was discovered on Navarrería Street in Pamplona in 1895 and until recently it has not been very well known to whom it has been in hands. It is believed that he was in Pamplona and Madrid for the first ten years, but the Government of Navarra, in collaboration with historians, states that once reached 1906 the track was lost. In the 1970s he was in Versailles and in 1985 he moved to the United States. Five years ago he met at a private exhibition in New York.
In the deposit of one of the world's rich
Pompelu's togatus sculpture is the richest entrepreneur of the 20th century, John Werner Kluge.
Werner Kluge was born in Germany in 1914 and emigrated to the United States like many Germans of that time, fleeing the war context. From its beginnings it entered the audiovisual world, first on television buying broadcasters and finally in cinema. He participated in the beginnings of the film industry 20th Century Fox and the linear television Fox Television Network, without leading but with shareholder ownership. The prestigious magazine Forbes named the richest person in the United States between 1989 and 1991.
The suspicion that revolutionized the belief that it was lost came in 2015 from the United States: five years earlier the sculpture was put in an auction, but nobody bought it. The property was not clear according to that document, nor was it that sculpture. As specified in the auction it came from the “Gaul”. It is already known that Werner Kluge’s family released the precious piece of his property.
Since then, studies by the Museum Service of the Government of Navarra confirm that the piece is the togatus of Pompelu and that the property is in New York, in the house of a rich collector. It has never been possible to bring the property to Navarra, but with a long-term loan you can see it in Pamplona from 2022 to 2024.
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