Apollo of Piombino, not just a Roman copy of an older Greek original but, attempt at Roman forgery of ancient Greek art

When I posted the image of a lampholder depicted as Apollo in the archaic style which is part of the new exhibit, Tota Italia, a couple of days ago, another Facebook member asked me for an image of the complete statue.  The exhibit did not provide a full length image of it so I checked the website for the National Archaeological Museum in Naples and could not find it there either. I also checked Wikimedia Commons and didn't have any luck there. I found a small side view of the full statue just in a general image search then found a full length image of the Apollo of Piombino which is another archaic-style sculpture of Apollo that is said to be very similar to the one in the exhibit that was found in Pompeii in the House of C. Julius Polybius.  Found in 1832 at Piombino (Roman Populonia), in Etruria, Apollo of Piombino depicts either the god Apollo as a kouros or youth or it may be a worshipper bringing an offering.   The bronze is inlaid with copper for the boy's lips, eyebrows, and nipples. The eyes, which are missing, unlike the statue found in Pompeii, were of another material, perhaps bone or ivory.

The Apollo of Piombino  was originally dated to the 5th century BCE by various scholars and was purchased for the Musée du Louvre in 1834.  The two sculptors responsible for the piece could not resist secreting inside the sculpture a lead tag inscribed with their names, though, which was found when the sculpture was conserved in 1842. In 1967, classicist B. S. Ridgeway, stated it to be not simply an archaizing sculpture of the 1st century BCE, of the kind designed to appeal to a Roman with refined tastes, but a consciously fabricated Roman forgery, with a false inlaid inscription of silver in archaic lettering on the left leg. He pointed out the inscription dedicated this Apollo to Athena, an anomaly as well.  When the similar sculpture of Apollo was found in 1977 in the villa of C. Julius Polybius in Pompeii, this corroborated Rideway's theory.  

Apollo of Piombino now in the collections of The Louvre, Paris.

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Forgeries of ancient engraved gems

The J. Paul Getty Museum has some spectacular ancient engraved gems in their collections and I have featured a number of them in my posts.  But, during the pandemic one of their curators, Kenneth Lapatin, researched one gem in their collection with a portrait of Marc Antony engraved upon it, and discovered, unfortunately, it was not ancient at all but a 19th century forgery produced by Giovanni Calandrelli for Prince Stanislas Poniatowski, nephew and heir to the King of Poland and Lithuania, and one of the richest men in Europe.

Alerted by a friend, the late Gertrud Platz from the Berlin Antikensammlung, who had  just published a study of Giovanni Calandrelli, Lapatin learned she had recently examined a plaster impression that was made of one of Calandrelli's forgeries featuring a portrait of Marc Antony.  Platz suspected the Getty gem was the same work.  So Lapatin sent an impression of the Getty gem to her and they were found to be virtually identical.

"There are three smoking guns," explains Lapatin. "There is the plaster impression in Berlin, and another sent to St. Petersburg, Russia, that show that the gem had been in the Poniatowski collection, which was full of forgeries. That doesn’t prove anything, because Poniatowski’s collection also contained some genuine antiquities, but puts the gem in very bad company. Then, there’s Calandrelli’s notebook, which says he made a Mark Antony with the signature of Gnaios. And then, the third is when we put our gem next to ones that we know are genuine ancient engravings by Gnaios, we can see stylistic discrepancies, especially in the way the skin and hair is rendered."

Mistakes such as this are certainly understandable since it is widely known Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, and the nephew of the Emperor Augustus, as well as other ancient aristocrats, all collected gems and donated their collections to the gods in temples.  This particular gem came to be widely known in 1968 when John Boardman (now Sir John), one of the foremost authorities on ancient gems, published and praised this gem very highly as one of the masterpieces of late Roman Republican, early Augustan gem carving. It is just unfortunate that some wealthy 19th century collectors sought to boost their prestige by clandestinely hiring talented gem engravers to simulate ancient works.

Read more about it:  https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/a-gem-of-a-mystery/  

Amethyst gem with engraved portrait of Marc Antony originally thought to be late Roman Republican to early Augustan work.  Actually, it is a forgery produced by 19th century gem carver, Giovanni Calandrelli.  It remains in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum due to its quality but has been moved from the Getty Villa to the Getty Center where it is now displayed with the works of other 19th century engravers.

 

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