[MSN] The Monteleone Chariot at the Met - a forgery?

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Subject: The Monteleone Chariot at the Met - a forgery?
From: ancientart at aol.com
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 10:53:02 -0400
To: msn-list-owner at te.verweg.com

For Immediate Release

THE MET’S MONTELEONE CHARIOT:  FIGHTING MACHINE OR FORGERY?

Hailed as one of the centerpieces of the new Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, extensive academic research has branded the world-famous Etruscan Monteleone Chariot a clever forgery – a pastiche of ancient and modern elements.  In a groundbreaking new article published in England in the July/August 2007 issue of the academically acclaimed Minerva, the International Review of Ancient Art and Archaeology, Dr Jerome Eisenberg, Editor-in-Chief and founder of the magazine in 1990, presents his sensational findings based on scrupulous and painstaking research initiated nearly four decades ago.
An expanded Italian translation of the article was published in Archeo in their August 2007 issue.

The life-sized chariot, apparently discovered in an Etruscan tomb near Monteleone di Spoleto, Italy, in 1902 and purchased by the museum in 1903, is thought to date to the second quarter of the sixth century BC.  It is decorated with elaborate scenes thought by some to depict the life of Achilles. These are rendered in bronze on three of the chariot’s principal central, left, and right panels.  Dr Eisenberg claims these to be forgeries.  Although he concedes that most of the peripheral components of the chariot – the two smaller lower panels, wheels, axle, and shaft - are genuine, his aesthetic and technical analyses convincingly demonstrate that the vehicle was boldly embellished by a master forger between about 1890 and 1902.

Dr Eisenberg’s observations are borne out by the suspicious similarity of the chariot decoration with the ornamentation on a number of ancient objects which entered museums long before the discovery of the vehicle, such as the ‘Euphorbus Plate’ in the British Museum, and the ‘Loeb Tripod’ and other objects in the Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek, Munich. Dr Eisenberg has also identified an extensive range of anomalies in the artistic style and pictorial composition on each of the three panels, which point to the work of a clever modern forger rather than an Etruscan master craftsman. According to Dr Eisenberg, ‘The forgers have misunderstood the harmony of an overall ancient design and of its individual elements. Their personal style and mistakes in the execution of the three panels…have been demonstrated in over 70 examples. In all, 28 of the 32 of my devised “Stylistic Criteria in Ancient Art Forgery” apply to the work of these forgers.’

Dr Eisenberg is widely respected as an authority on forgeries in ancient art and has lectured and presented papers internationally on the subject since 1969 when he first lectured on the subject at New York University and 1970 at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.  His articles on ancient forgeries have appeared in Minerva since 1992.  In 1996 he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Institut für Klassische Archäologie at the Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, where he gave a series of five two-hour lectures on forgery and fraud in ancient art.   

For further information contact:
Dr Jerome M. Eisenberg, Editor-in-Chief, Minerva Magazine
153 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022
Tel.: (1) 212 355-2034.  Fax.: (1) 212 688-0412.  E-mail: ancientart at aol.com