Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College History of Art Faculty Research and Scholarship History of Art 1994 A Late Antique Ivory Plaque and Modern Response Dale Kinney Bryn Mawr College,
[email protected] Anthony Cutler Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/hart_pubs Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Custom Citation Kinney, Dale, and Anthony Cutler. "A Late Antique Ivory Plaque and Modern Response." American Journal of Archaeology 98 (1994): 457-480. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/hart_pubs/31 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A Late Antique Ivory Plaque and Modern Response DALE KINNEY Abstract "the" forger implicitly denies the historical relativity A recently published challenge to the authenticity of of aesthetics [not to mention style], and with it a the of the now in the Victoria ivory plaque Symmachi, fundamental premise of art history), Eisenberg's es- and Albert Museum, is refuted, and its late fourth-cen- say elicited a chorus of approbation from art profes- tury origin is confirmed by comparison with other sionals who plaques whose fourth- or fifth-century date is secure. wrote to express their own rejection of The charge of forgery is related to patterns in recent the object. Alan Shestack confessed that he had been art historiography,and these are traced to an anachro- "duped for decades" but was now converted; Chris- nistic critical that entails vocabulary inappropriate toph Clairmont proclaimed that "the forgery of the norms of illusionistic depiction.