Describes the methods used to make artistic, literary, documentary, and political forgeries and the recent scientific advances in their detection. Includes over 600 objects from the British Museum and many other major collections, from ancient Babylonia to the present day.

The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 18 is a compendium of articles and notes pertaining to the Museum's permanent collections of antiquities, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, and sculpture and works of art. This volume includes a supplement introduced by John Walsh with a fully illustrated checklist of the Getty’s recent acquisitions. Volume 18 includes articles written by Anthony Cutler, David A. Scott, Maya Elston, Ranee Katzenstein, Ariane can Suchtelen, Klaus Fittschen, Peggy Fogelman, and Catherine Hess.

J. Paul Getty had a passion for the exquisitely made furniture and decorative objects of eighteenth-century France, which he began collecting in the 1930s. Gillian Wilson, curator of decorative arts since 1971, has broadened and strengthened the collection, adding Boulle furniture, mounted oriental porcelain, tapestries, clocks, ceramics, and more. In the 1980s and 1990s the Museum continued to enlarge its decorative arts holdings, creating a European sculpture department in 1984 and adding glass, maiolica, goldsmiths’ work, pietre dure, and furniture from Italy and Northern Europe. This book is a revised and expanded edition of Decorative Arts: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (1993). In addition to more than forty recent acquisitions—among these four wall sconces from Versailles that once belonged to Marie Antoinette and an elaborate upholstered bed from the collection of Karl Lagerfeld—it includes the results of years of research. Designed for scholars, students, and devotees of the decorative arts, this volume provides a comprehensive look at the Getty's fine collection.

Egyptologist Jack A. Josephson, a writer and researcher in the tradition of the gentleman scholar, has achieved broad recognition as an authority in Egyptian art history. His lucid investigative analyses have probed and redefined the limits of inquiry, expanded research parameters, and broadened perspectives, emphasizing the undeniable contributions of art history in an intra-disciplinary framework. This volume of collected essays is dedicated to Josephson by distinguished friends and colleagues, a select roster including eminent, established scholars in the field of Egyptology and rising stars of the younger generation. Josephson views Egyptian art history as a critical but neglected area of study, and is a strong proponent of its reinstatement in the academic curriculum as an essential component in the formation of new cadres. The quality of the articles in this Egyptological medley is a tribute to the honoree and an affirmation of the esteem of his peers, while the range of subjects and variety of themes addressed reflect the degree to which he has, in his own scholarship, undertaken to implement his ideal.

The collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman of New York is one of the most important private collections of ancient Greek and Roman art in the United States and among the most important in the world. Composed of approximately three hundred objects from the Bronze Age to the Late Antique, it includes bronze statuettes, marble sculpture, vases, jewelry, lamps and candelabra, keys, weights, and silver bowls and utensils. The Fleischmans have a particular fascination with pieces associated with everyday life in antiquity, since these objects evoke a human connection to the past. They are also drawn to pieces that exemplify the human propensity to transform a functional object into a thing of beauty. Not only has their emotional response to an object’s aesthetic appeal or its historical significance guided them in their forty years of collecting, personal interests have been at work as well. The large number of pieces related to the theater or representing theatrical subjects reflects Barbara Fleischman’s lifelong love of that art. A Passion for Antiquities contains photographs and extensive catalogue entries on the objects included in the exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Eighteen contributors provide art historical and descriptive information about each piece. The objects not selected for the exhibition are detailed in a checklist that specifies their origins, dates, media, and sizes. This book is the first major reference on the entire collection, since most of the objects have never before been publicly shown. To facilitate finding specific objects or groups of objects, the book is organized first chronologically and then by medium. Bibliographic sources for each entry cite both publications where the specific work is discussed as well as references to related scholarship. Karol Wight provides a chronological overview of the collection, and Oliver Taplin relates selected pieces to the development of Greek theater. The exhibition of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman’s collection and this catalogue allow us to enter into their minds and emotions so that, for a time, we can share their passion for antiquities.

"A landmark publication exploring the relationship between sacred matter and precious materials in the Middle Ages."--Site web de l'éditeur.