Fishermen come up with a pearl of a statue while diving for shellfish
It is more catch of the decade than catch of the day after fishermen diving for shellfish in the Firth of Clyde stumbled on an Italian sculpture worth an estimated £45,000, it was revealed yesterday.
Skipper Hector Stewart and his fellow fishermen James Turner and Sean D'Arcy found the marble bust, by the 19th-century sculptor Rinaldo Rinaldi, buried in sand while fishing for otter shells.
The men, from Tarbert, Argyll, managed to drag the 13-stone statue of a woman's head into a fish box before hauling it off the seabed.
advertisementArt historians say the perfectly preserved marble sculpture dates from 1869 and is likely to have come from a 130-year-old shipwreck. The work bears the maker's name with the words "Roma 1869" on the back. Pieces by Rinaldi, whose work is on display in the Louvre in Paris, are much sought after and have fetched small fortunes in the past.