Britain banned the export of a rare Renaissance bronze statuette to give a UK buyer a chance to acquire it
The UK government placed a temporary export bar this week on 'Seated Nymph,' an early-16th-century bronze statuette by the Mantuan sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi — known as 'Antico' — valued at roughly $6.2 million, in order to give a British institution or buyer the opportunity to raise funds to keep the work in the country. The mechanism, used periodically by UK culture ministers when a work is deemed of outstanding national or art-historical significance, gives domestic buyers a fixed window to match the sale price before an export license is finally granted, reflecting a long-running British policy of treating certain culturally significant objects as a kind of national patrimony even when they are privately owned and legally sold abroad. If no UK buyer raises the matching funds within the deadline, the statuette will be allowed to leave the country for its new foreign owner, joining a long list of contested cases in which Britain's export-bar system has succeeded only sometimes in keeping significant art at home.
