# Tiara of Saitapharnes > Israel Rouchomovsky - 1894 to 1895, Odessa. Sold as third to second century BCE. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/israel-rouchomovsky/tiara-of-saitaphernes/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-06 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Israel Rouchomovsky - **Date:** 1894 to 1895, Odessa. Sold as third to second century BCE. - **Medium:** Gold sheet, worked by hammering, repousse and chasing, and soldered - **Dimensions:** Height 17 cm; diameter 18 cm - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Nineteenth century, in the Hellenistic Greek manner - **Current location:** Musee du Louvre, Paris, Departement des Antiquites grecques, etrusques et romaines - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A conical gold tiara seventeen centimetres high, covered in scenes from the Trojan War and in Scythian pastoral and hunting life, with an inscription around the base recording that the council and citizens of Olbia offered it to the great and invincible king Saitapharnes. The Louvre bought it on 1 April 1896 for two hundred thousand gold francs and put it on show as one of the finest pieces of Greek goldsmiths' work in existence.It had been made in Odessa a year or two earlier by a goldsmith named Israel Rouchomovsky, who had been commissioned by two dealers, the brothers Schapschelle and Leiba Hochman, and told the piece was a present for an archaeologist friend. Adolf Furtwaengler and Professor Vesselovsky condemned it in print in the same year the museum bought it. The Louvre defended it for seven years.In March 1903 a Paris newspaper printed a jeweller's statement that he had watched Rouchomovsky make it. Rouchomovsky came to Paris, said so himself, and was disbelieved until he was handed a sheet of gold and asked to prove it. He reproduced a section of his own work in front of the examiners. The Louvre catalogues the tiara today under his name, which is what makes it unusual: most exposed forgeries lose an attribution and gain nothing. This one gained the right one. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1894-1896** Schapschelle and Leiba Hochman, dealers `[documented]` (commission) The Hochman brothers commissioned the tiara from the Odessa goldsmith Israel Rouchomovsky in 1894, supplying him with details from recent Black Sea excavations and telling him the piece was intended as a gift for an archaeologist friend. Rouchomovsky stated in Paris in 1903 that he had not known what it was for. - **1896** Hochmann, exhibiting in Vienna `[documented]` (offer) The tiara was exhibited in Vienna in 1896 as a Greco-Scythian crown before the Paris sale. - **1896-present** Musee du Louvre, Paris `[documented]` (acquisition) Announced on 1 April 1896. The Louvre paid two hundred thousand gold French francs to the dealer Hochmann and displayed the piece as having belonged to a Scythian king. Place of discovery unknown, then and now. Condemned in print the same year by Adolf Furtwaengler and Professor Vesselovsky and defended by the museum until 1903. Withdrawn to storage after Rouchomovsky's demonstration, shown again in the Salon of Fakes in 1954, and lent to later exhibitions. Inventory MNC 2135 and Bj 2357, Departement des Antiquites grecques, etrusques et romaines. The Louvre's current catalogue names Rouchomovsky as the author and dates the object to the nineteenth century. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The tiara has never been sold at public auction. It was bought by private treaty: the Louvre paid the dealer Hochmann 200,000 gold French francs, announced on 1 April 1896. That is a purchase price and not a hammer price, so there is no premium to separate from it, and no modern equivalent is offered here because conversion methods for an 1896 French franc differ by an order of magnitude and none of them answers the question a reader actually has. What the maker was paid for the work is not recorded. ## Open questions - What did the Hochman brothers pay Israel Rouchomovsky for the work? No figure appears in the sources consulted, and the gap between his fee and the Louvre's two hundred thousand francs is the whole economics of the case. - What did two hundred thousand gold francs represent in 1896 against the Louvre's annual acquisition budget? That comparison, rather than any modern currency conversion, is the informative one and it is not established here. - Did the Hochmans sell other pieces by the same hand, and are any of them still catalogued as ancient? A workshop that produced one object of this quality on commission is unlikely to have produced only one. - Which excavation publications did Rouchomovsky work from? He is recorded as having been supplied with details of recent Black Sea excavations, but the specific sources are not identified in the material consulted. - Who made the copies now at the British Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and when? - What exactly did Professor Vesselovsky publish in 1896, and where? He is named as condemning the object in print in the same year as the purchase, without a citation in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Musee du Louvre, collection record for the Tiare de Saitapharnes, inventory MNC 2135 and Bj 2357, Departement des Antiquites grecques, etrusques et romaines. The museum's own catalogue: author Rouchomowsky, Israel, goldsmith, 1860-1934; nineteenth century; gold, sheet metalwork, hammering, soldering, repousse and chasing; H. 17 cm, diam. 18 cm; purchased 1896 from Hochmann; place of discovery unknown; with the inscription and the description of the decorative registers. - [2] Archaeological Institute of America, Archaeology Magazine archive, 'Saitaphernes' Golden Tiara', in the Hoaxes, Fakes and Strange Sites series. Source for the Vienna exhibition, the 1 April 1896 purchase at 200,000 francs, the 1896 condemnations by Furtwaengler and Vesselovsky, the Le Matin disclosure by the jeweller Lifschitz, the three-part soldered construction, the demonstration with a sheet of gold, the modern solder and tool marks, the ball-pein hammer damage, the 1954 Salon of Fakes and the 1997 Israel Museum exhibition. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Tiara of Saitaferne'. Tertiary source, used for the 1894 commission by Schapschelle and Leiba Hochman, the account that Rouchomovsky was told the piece was a gift for an archaeologist friend and was supplied with excavation details, the wording of the inscription, Furtwaengler's objections on style and ageing, Rouchomovsky's gold medal at the Paris Salon of Decorative Arts and his death in 1934, and the copies at the British Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Flagged for replacement with the 1903 French press and the Louvre's own dossier. - [4] Wikimedia Commons, the Tiara of Saitaferne and Israel Rouchomovsky file categories, including the plates from Le Monde illustre of 23 May 1903 reproducing his sarcophagus, Minerva and Achilles, rhyton and gorget, the Le Petit Journal supplement of 5 April 1903, the Le Matin front page of 23 March 1903 and the four-view plate of the tiara. 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