She’s five and a half feet tall and weighs about a ton
Once in a while, the world sees the discovery of an ancient artifact in good condition that isn’t a forgery. In this case, excavators near Skopje have unearthed a relatively awesome late Roman Venus pudica:
All too often, things like this turn up and prove to be clever forgeries, sometimes to the amplified embarrassment of those who underwrote relevant purchases.
Truths and legends about the forgery of old sculptures offer a lot of fun. The most interesting recent example is, of course, the notorious Getty Kouros.
More pop-culturally amusing at the moment is the fact that several of the Aztec crystal skulls in prominent collections — artifacts that inspired the focus of the latest Indiana Jones flick — have been proven to be forgeries.
In related news, the inevitability of revising the Etruscan section of all those art history survey books is finally upon us. They’ve long noted that the suckling Romulus and Remus were additions from the Renaissance, but many had held out hope that the lactating she-wolf would turn out to be pre-Roman. Alas, she’s from the high Middle Ages.
