Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1899 — A BOGUS RELIC. [ARTICLE]

A BOGUS RELIC.

Aanaslng Instance of Way 1m Which Maaeami 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 and 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 and calling it the Seine Nantilde. Not long ago more intelligent restorers put an end to this absurdity, and there are now to be seen at St. Denis two statues on which the original proportions of each are preserved. But 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 sculpture 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 be has succeeded in palming off a most xtMtxpMted tofaafftiim wtane to could little expect to.