# Composite Names Three Different Objects, and Only One of Them Is a Fake > Fifty-seven records here use composite, pastiche or assembled, and the words are doing three incompatible jobs. One describes manufacture, one describes centuries of honest accretion and one is an allegation about intent. > The Study - 2026-09-25 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/composite-names-three-different-objects/ ## Key points - Fifty-seven of the 297 published records in this archive use the word composite, pastiche, assembled or not original to, and the word is doing three incompatible jobs. Reading them as one class turns ordinary manufacture into a doubt and an allegation into a description. - The Ardagh Chalice is assembled from 354 separate pieces and nothing about it is in question. Composite there is a fact about how eighth-century Irish metalwork was built, and the underside of the foot, which no congregation would ever see, is finished to the same standard as the front. - The Louvre dates the four principal parts of the French coronation sword to four different periods across roughly a millennium, and publishes that itself. The object is entirely genuine; what fails is the tradition that calls it Charlemagne's. - Museum armour is assembled, and the museum is usually the assembler. The Metropolitan's Clifford garniture of 1586 as now displayed was put together by the Museum from two separate acquisitions, made four years apart out of two different funds, and its left gauntlet is not original to the commission. - The strongest word in the vocabulary carries an allegation about intent, and the Metropolitan published it against one of its own objects in February 1968 under the title The Forgery of Our Greek Bronze Horse. The horse is now catalogued as Greek of the late second to first century BCE, and the object it was bought as in 1923 has gone instead. ## One word is carrying three claims that do not follow from each other ## Assembled can be a fact about manufacture and nothing else ## The Louvre dates one sword to four different periods, and says so itself ## Museum armour is assembled, and the museum did the assembling ## Pastiche adds an inference about who intended what ## The Rospigliosi Cup shows what a museum does when it stops guessing ## The strongest word was published by a museum against its own object, and it was wrong ## Three meanings, and the question that separates them ## How to read a composite entry ## Land the point ## Why this archive is free to read Fifty-seven records here use one of these words and the great majority of them are reporting how an object was made or how it survived. The word itself cannot tell those cases apart from the two that are allegations, which is why the entry has to do it: say when the parts came together, say who put them there, and say whether anybody was meant to be fooled. The Metropolitan's bronze horse is the standing warning at the other end of that scale. A museum can publish the strongest word in the vocabulary against its own object, in its own Bulletin, and spend the next thirteen years proving itself wrong. ## Questions **Does composite mean an object is a fake?** Usually not. In this archive the word most often records how an object was manufactured, as with the Ardagh Chalice's 354 separate pieces, or how it acquired parts over centuries of use, as with the French coronation sword. Only pastiche and forgery carry an implication that somebody meant to mislead. **How does the Louvre date the sword called Joyeuse?** By part rather than as a whole. The Louvre's collections database gives the pommel as 900-1100, the quillons as 1100-1200, the grip as 1200-1400 and the blade as 1700-1900, and describes the sword as composed of very diverse elements. None of those ranges includes the lifetime of Charlemagne, who died in 814. **Why is museum armour described as assembled?** Because the suit on display is frequently put together from pieces acquired separately. The Metropolitan's Clifford garniture of 1586 as now shown was assembled by the Museum from two acquisitions made four years apart from two different funds, and its left gauntlet is not original to the 1586 commission. **What is the difference between a pastiche and a forgery?** A pastiche describes an object made up from the vocabulary of a period; a forgery alleges that somebody intended to deceive. The distinction matters because the person who makes the object and the person who sells it as ancient are not always the same, as with the Tiara of Saitaphernes, whose maker came forward and proved his own authorship in 1903. **Has a museum ever called its own object a forgery and been wrong?** Yes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin published The Forgery of Our Greek Bronze Horse in February 1968 about its own accession 23.69, and a thirteen-year technical re-examination restored the statuette to antiquity, with thermoluminescence dating of the core returning 2250 plus or minus 210 years. It is now catalogued as Greek of the late second to first century BCE. ## Sources - [1] Musee du Louvre, collections database, 'Epee du sacre des rois de France', MS 84. Read 25 September 2026. Source for the component datings of pommel 900-1100, quillons 1100-1200, grip 1200-1400 and blade 1700-1900, for the dimensions of 100.5 by 22.6 cm, and for the Louvre's own statement that the sword is composed of very diverse elements, much modified, particularly as to the blade. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 192708, the Rospigliosi Cup. Read 25 September 2026. Source for the Museum's current catalogue line: title 'Cup', date 'probably ca. 1840-50, or somewhat earlier', medium gold partly enamelled with pearls, dimensions 19.7 by 21.6 by 22.9 cm, accession 14.40.667 and the credit line Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913, with no maker named. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 251268, Bronze statuette of a horse. Read 25 September 2026. Source for the Museum's current dating of the object as Greek, late 2nd to 1st century BCE, with machine-readable begin and end dates of -115 and -1, the height of 40.2 cm, accession 23.69 and the Fletcher Fund credit line of 1923, against which the 1923 to 1960s catalogue date of about 480 to 470 BCE can be compared. - [4] Joseph V. Noble, 'The Forgery of Our Greek Bronze Horse', in 'Art Forgery', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, new series vol. 26 no. 6, February 1968, article at p. 253. The Museum's own scanned issue was downloaded and read on 25 September 2026. Source for the title verbatim from the issue's contents page, and for the issue's note that the first four articles are adapted from a series of seminars presented by the Museum in November and December 1967, which is the period in which the bronze was condemned.