Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1898 — A BOGUS RELIC. [ARTICLE]

A BOGUS RELIC.

Amailug Instance of Way !.» Which Museums Are Imposed Upon. A very amusing instance of the way in which museums are imposed upon has just come to light, says the St. James Gazette. At the French revolution, when the Cathedral of St. Denis was so mutilated, the figures which ornamented the beautiful Gothic tomb of Dagobert was thrown down, and for the most part destroyed, all that remained being the body of his Queen Nantilde ahd the head of his son Clovis. When the restorers stepped in subsequently they made the best they could of the bits, putting the son’s head on the mother's body arid calling it the Reine Nantilde. Not long ago more intelligent restorers put an end to this absurdity, apd there are now to be seen at St. Denis two statues on which the original proportions of each are preserved. Cut meanwhile casts of the hybrid were taken, and they still exist in the collection of the Beaux Arts in Paris and in the National Bavarian museum at Munich as examples to students of all that is best in Gothic art. But this is not all. In the great museum at Berlin, in the sculptui«e department, there is a small statuette of stone, with various cracks and flaws which give it an antique appearance, which is nothing less than a smaller and very imprudently made counterfeit of the hybrid. The forger felt the difficulty which might be raised to placing a man’s head above a woman’s bust, and so has modified both to a small extent ; but there is not a shadow of doubt that he has succeeded in palming off a most unexpected imposition where he could little expect to.