Suzan Mazur has published an important piece on the silver griffin returned to Iran ("A Fake? America's souvenir to the Iranian people", scoop October 9, 2013). She reports that Oscar White Muscarella, who has published one of the major studies of forged Near Eastern antiquities [see review in AJA: JSTOR], has identified the griffin as "a modern forgery". Muscarella identified the griffin as "a modern Iranian artifact" in a contribution to a series of studies in honour of Massoud Azarnoush (and published in 2012).
Mazur reminds us that the griffin was purchased from the Aboutaams in 2002 for $950,000. It apparently surfaced in Geneva in 1999. The purchaser asked for confirmation of the authentification.
The story has an interesting parallel with the Cleveland Apollo: readers of Mazur's article with recognise that the dealer and the scientific studies overlap to some degree. Does this undermine their authority?
What will the Iranian Government make of this offering?
I am grateful to Suzan Mazur for drawing my attention to her article.
Discussion of the archaeological ethics surrounding the collecting of antiquities and archaeological material.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Another Bubon bronze head likely to be repatriated
It appears that a bronze head acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum from Nicolas Koutoulakis has been removed from display and appears to be...
-
Source: Sotheby's A marble head of Alexander the Great has been seized in New York (reported in " Judge Orders Return of Ancien...
-
Cup seized from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art The New York Times has run a discussion of one of the Attic red-figured cups seize...
-
The Fire of Hephaistos exhibition included "seven bronzes ... that have been linked to the Bubon cache of imperial statues" (p. 1...
No comments:
Post a Comment