10-22-2009, 04:36 PM
People will fake anything- I've seen faked WWII heavy artillery shells if you can believe it. Just because it was only lent to the university, doesn't support it not being a fake; it's a good, and well-known way to create some credibility for a piece: don't sell it but 'loan' it, or place it so a credible expert will 'discover' it and so on. What it means is that with one even semi-approved piece, future fakes can be sold.
I can't say I much like the look of this thing either- it's too reminiscent of something I'd expect to find on ebaY. There's nothing about it that says 'authentic' to me- not the least reason is that it's not terribly well-executed work and given that these decorated muscle cuirasses seem to be consistenly associated with very wealthy and high-ranking individuals, I'd really expect a real one to be far better. This is rather inferior to the gladiator pieces from Pompeii (which ARE extremely well done), and those are basically costumes. This one has the look of a Victorian-era reproduction or indeed from any time in the last thousand years- it looks Romanesque, not so much Roman. I had the same reaction as Randall- that the iconography looks like it was assembled haphazardly by someone who didn't really know anything- and before anyone says that'd be silly for a faker to do, they do it all the time. Just look at the 'Roman' swords and daggers that constantly show up on ebaY- there are all kinds of images of real ones out there, but the fakes people try to sell never look like real things, they're always some weird fantasy design.
Overall, since there's no proper provenance for the pieces there simply has to be overwhelming reason to believe they're real. I don't know of any reliable dating method for metal- indeed 14C certainly doesn't apply unless there's some provably associated organic material with it. Really there's nothing that could conclusively show this stuff is real- there was a document faker in the US who fooled 14C dating by cutting the endpapers out of real old books to write on, and he burned the same period paper to add to his ink so even that would test 'old'. In this case all someone would have to do is acquire even a little piece of ancient leather or other known age organic material to 'associate' with the metal.
I can't say I much like the look of this thing either- it's too reminiscent of something I'd expect to find on ebaY. There's nothing about it that says 'authentic' to me- not the least reason is that it's not terribly well-executed work and given that these decorated muscle cuirasses seem to be consistenly associated with very wealthy and high-ranking individuals, I'd really expect a real one to be far better. This is rather inferior to the gladiator pieces from Pompeii (which ARE extremely well done), and those are basically costumes. This one has the look of a Victorian-era reproduction or indeed from any time in the last thousand years- it looks Romanesque, not so much Roman. I had the same reaction as Randall- that the iconography looks like it was assembled haphazardly by someone who didn't really know anything- and before anyone says that'd be silly for a faker to do, they do it all the time. Just look at the 'Roman' swords and daggers that constantly show up on ebaY- there are all kinds of images of real ones out there, but the fakes people try to sell never look like real things, they're always some weird fantasy design.
Overall, since there's no proper provenance for the pieces there simply has to be overwhelming reason to believe they're real. I don't know of any reliable dating method for metal- indeed 14C certainly doesn't apply unless there's some provably associated organic material with it. Really there's nothing that could conclusively show this stuff is real- there was a document faker in the US who fooled 14C dating by cutting the endpapers out of real old books to write on, and he burned the same period paper to add to his ink so even that would test 'old'. In this case all someone would have to do is acquire even a little piece of ancient leather or other known age organic material to 'associate' with the metal.
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