In 2013, Dario Del Bufalo, an Italian expert on ancient marble and stone, was signing copies of his book Porphyry in New York when he overheard a shocking conversation. Two people paging through the volume had spotted a photo of a Roman mosaic that disappeared toward the end of World War II. Suddenly, one of them exclaimed, “Oh, Helen, look, that’s your mosaic.”
Once part of the dance floor on one of Roman Emperor Caligula’s pleasure ships, the marble masterpiece was recovered from the depths of Lake Nemi in the 1930s, only to vanish the following decade. Art dealer Helen Fioratti and her husband, Nereo, purchased the mosaic from an aristocratic Italian family in the 1960s and used it as a coffee table in their Manhattan apartment for some 45 years. Now, reports Anderson Cooper for CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the priceless artifact is back in Italy, where it recently went on display at the Museum of Roman Ships in Nemi.