Kenneth D. S. Lapatin

An archaeological detective story investigates one of the most famous pieces of ancient Greek art, a gold and ivory statuette, exposing this piece as an invention of the early 20th century and exploring the reasons behind this brilliant forgery.

Art, Desire, and the Forging of History

Mysteries of the Snake Goddess

The papers in this volume derive from the proceedings of an international symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in June 2006 in connection with the exhibition The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases. The themes of the exhibition--vases executed in bilingual, coral-red gloss, outline, Kerch-style, white ground, and Six's techniques, as well as examples with added clay and gilding, and sculpted vases and additions--are the touchstones for the essays. More than twenty papers by renowned scholars are grouped under such general rubrics as Social Contexts for Athenian Vases in Special Techniques; Conservation, Analysis, and Experimentation; Artists, Workshops, and Production; and Markets and Exchange.

Proceedings of a Symposium Held in Connection with the Exhibition The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases, at the Getty Villa, June 15-17, 2006

Papers on Special Techniques in Athenian Vases

J. Paul Getty Museum

Cleveland Museum of Art

Victoria C. Gardner Coates

Jon L. Seydl

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

This publication is issued on the occasion of the exhibition The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in Malibu, from September 12, 2012, to January 7, 2013; at the Cleveland Museum of Art from February 24 to May 19, 2013; and at the Musaee national des beaux-arts du Quaebec from June 13 to November 8, 2013.

Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection

The Last Days of Pompeii

Composite statues of gold (chrysos), ivory (elephas), and other precious materials were the most celebrated artworks of classical antiquity. Greek and Latin authors leave no doubt that such images provided a centrepiece for religious and civic life and that vast sums were spent to producethem. A number of these statues were the creations of antiquity's most highly acclaimed artists: Polykleitos, Alkamenes, Leochares, and, of course, Pheidias, whose magnificent Zeus Olympios came to be ranked among the Seven Wonders of the World. Although a few individual images such as Pheidias'Athena Parthenos have been the subject of detailed scholarly analysis, chryselephantine statuary as a class, from the exquisite statuettes of Minoan Crete to the majestic temple images constructed by classical Greek city-states and imitated by the Romans, has not received comprehensive study since1815. This book presents not only the ancient literary and epigraphical evidence for lost statues and examines representations of them in other media, but also assembles and analyses much-neglected physical survivals, elucidating throughout the innovative techniques, such as ivory-bending, employedin their production as well as the variety of social, religious, and political roles they played within the ancient societies that produced them.

Kenneth D. S. Lapatin

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