4 Forgeries That Turned Out to Be Real

4 Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil

Claude Monet was a real freak for the River Seine. He spent a lot of time in the Argenteuil region, a suburb of Paris, painting up a storm. There are probably enough Monet paintings of Argenteuil that the Google Earth car can skip that part of town entirely. One painting of his called La Seine a Argenteuil is worth somewhere around $17 million. So when millionaire jagoffs started selling a painting titled Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil, and signed by Monet, back and forth around the world in the 20th century, no one batted an eye.

It wasn’t until art historian David Joel tried to get it authenticated on the TV show Fake or Fortune? that its authenticity really came into question. While many experts agreed it was a legit Monet — a snapshot of the image appeared in his obituary, after all — there was one prominent holdout. The world’s premier Monet expert, Daniel Wildenstein, refused to authenticate it to his dying day, and even after he was gone, the Parisian institute he worked for has kept up his refusal. Joel took the institute to court, where he was told in so many words to quit asking. So while many experts have come out in support of its authenticity, this one place won’t include it in its official catalog.

3 The Glozel Artifacts

In 1924, a 17-year-old kid stumbled upon a hidden chamber in a field he was plowing with his cow. Inside, he found clay tiles, stone tablets, ceramic fragments and even human remains. As word spread, an excavation effort ultimately unearthed 3,000 artifacts over the course of six years. Excavators started weaving a tale of an ancient civilization in the area, far older and more advanced than previously thought.

The only problem was: This was a private excavation, kicked off by a teenager. As the archaeology world took notice, doubt was cast over the improbable story told by the buried clues. Ultimately, it was dismissed as a hoax entirely — that is, until later in the century, when radiocarbon dating confirmed that many of the objects were absolutely from the Iron Age. While the collection is now thought to have been “enhanced” with some forgeries, the fact remains that this kid probably did stumble upon some crazy ancient evidence of human civilization.

2 The Lady of Elche

This intricate limestone sculpture of Tanit, a big-time player in the ancient Carthage deity scene, is thought to date back to the 4th century BC — by idiots. It was discovered by farmers in Spain in 1897, and by 1906 its authenticity was already being questioned. This particular statue differed from other ancient Iberian artworks in a few ways, and the story of its discovery was, admittedly, a bit convenient. Art historians posited that the landowner commissioned a prolific forger to carve and then plant this item, just in time to be discovered by a famous archaeologist who happened to be cruising through town. Indeed, that archaeologist was so impressed with the work that he purchased it from the landowner and stuck it in the Louvre.

But as the decades and centuries passed, and more artwork from the time period was unearthed, scholars noticed that the Lady of Elche was actually a perfect specimen of 4th century BC sculpture. In fact, it was the first known example of several stylistic and structural choices, which ultimately reinforced its authenticity. After all, how could a forger have known to leave trace amounts of paint all over it when, at the time of its discovery, nobody thought the Iberians painted these things?

Incidentally, they figured out that it was used as an urn, and found traces of human ash and bone in a little compartment in the back of the statue’s head, which is metal as hell.

1 The Praeneste Fibula

This golden brooch is thought by some experts to be the oldest written example of the Latin language, and may date back to the 7th century BC. The inscription sounds like Charlie Kelly trying to give a birthday present: “Manius made me for Numerius,” which can be excused, because they were still kind of in the brainstorming phase of the language. 

There were a few pieces of evidence, however, pointing to a high quality forgery. The brooch was “presented” by a prominent archaeologist in 1887, but its provenance is a little fuzzy: an art dealer bought it from a friend, who got it from a tomb, don’t worry about it mind ya business. Furthermore, one leading skeptic insisted that the Latin inscription, which in part read “mēd fefaked,” contained a sneaky pawprint of a forger: the word “faked.” In the end, linguists have insisted the lettering checks out, and a chemical analysis found micro-crystallization of the gold that could only have happened naturally over the course of hundreds of years. 

So this weird little golden bone is probably legit.