Questionable Antiquity of the "Ancient" Statues

I believe that every single statue, starting with the busts of Plato was located between 1438 and now. A reasonable person would ask a reasonable question similar to, "Why is that?" May be there is a simple answer to this question, like they were produced after 1438.

Our knowledge of the ancient history started with Poggio Bracciolini who discovered quite a few manuscripts in 1416, as well as the "discovery" of the Plato's works circa 1438 (unrelated to Bracciolini). Since then, I believe, this world has not seen any originals of anything.

I believe that all the works attributed to the Ancients were created after approximately 1438. Various documents could be scientifically dated prior to this time, but none of the actual statues were discovered prior to 1438-ish, or thereabouts.

I will start with a couple of statues. Now and then I plan on adding a few more to this first article post. If you choose to participate in this little experiment, it will go much faster. Your findings will be added to the first post as well.

1. Venus de Milo
Venus_de_Milo.jpg

Official claim: created 130 - 100 BC
Discovered: 1820

The original Greek bronze, allegedly made circa 460–450 BC is claimed to be lost but the work is known through numerous Roman copies.

Discobolus_in_National_Roman_Museum_Palazzo_Massimo_alle_Terme.JPG

The Discobolus Palombara, the first copy of this famous
sculpture to have been discovered

Official claim: created 130 - 100 BC
Discovered: 1781 (the earliest located)

Official claim: created in 2nd century BC
Discovered: 1863
4. Laocoön and His Sons
Laocoön Group
Laocoon_and_His_Sons.jpg

Official claim: created 200 BC - 70s AD
Discovered: 1506

Official Claim: created 1345 B.C.
Discovered: 1912


Official Claim: created 470 - 440 B.C.
Discovered: 1926

Official Claim: created 210 - 209 B.C.
Discovered: 1974


Official Claim: created 1st century B.C.
Discovered: 1959

Official Claim: created 1st or 2nd century B.C.
Discovered: 1556

Official Claim: created 460 - 450 B.C.
Discovered: 1972


#​
Statue Name​
Dated with​
Date discovered​
11
Tusculum Portrait50-40 B.C1825
12
The Orator110-90 B.C.1566
13
Scipio Africanus1st century B.C.1750-65
14
Statue of Antinous130 A.D.1894
15
Farnese Hercules216 A.D.1546
 
So, I just stumbled upon this while reading about the Baths of Titus/Trajan:
[Michelangelo] was inspired, it has seemed fairly clear for the past several centuries, by an ancient Greek masterpiece dug up in Rome in January 1506, which depicted Laocoön, the high priest of Troy, and his sons being devoured by snakes. Now, though, an art historian is claiming that the ancient masterpiece - which fascinated not just Michelangelo but Blake, who engraved it, and Napoleon, who seized it - is not what it seems. She says it was carved by Michelangelo himself...

When Michelangelo and his rival Sangallo were called to see the latest find from Nero's palace - believed at that time to be the Baths of Titus - they recognised it as just such a lost masterpiece. Here, Sangallo saw at once, was the sculpture the Roman writer Pliny the Elder calls the greatest work of art in the world: a gory representation of Laocoön and his sons and the "wonderful clasping coils" of the snakes that came out of the sea and killed them. The story is in Virgil's Aeneid; the sculpture, according to Pliny, was in the palace of Titus in Rome. Lo and behold, that was where it was found.
Just as an aside, Baths of Titus, Baths of Trajan, Nero's palace... just what was this place?
Yet now, this supreme survival of the ancient world has, purportedly, been exposed as the work of that talented pasticheur, Michelangelo. It sounds, at first, utterly deranged. Yet Lynn Catterson told the Italian Academy at Columbia University she has a "mountain of evidence" proving Michelangelo faked the ancient sculpture and arranged for it to be discovered so he could profit from its sale...

...The fun starts when you see Laocoöns in Michelangelo's paintings and sculptures from before its discovery in 1506. In about 1494, when he was still a teenager, he carved The Battle of the Centaurs - a writhing, coiling tangle of limbs. The men and centaurs struggling in buttery marble have the sensuous abandon of a nest of snakes, and you can even see a figure who specifically resembles Laocoön.
1280px-Michelangelo,_centauromachia,_1492_ca._01.jpeg

Battle of the Centaurs

Don't worry though, they "debunk" this "nonsense":
You can almost start to believe Michelangelo did forge the Laocoön, if it weren't for one depressing fact. In the Pergamon Museum in Berlin is the immense High Altar from the Greek city of Pergamon in Asia Minor. On its frieze is a passionate suffering figure with a wild face - obviously the model for the face of Laocoön. This kind of expressive, pathetic emotionalism became typical of later Greek art, in the Hellenistic style. Before the Pergamon altar was taken to Berlin by German archaeologists it was in Turkey. Michelangelo never went there. He cannot have forged the 400ft-long Pergamon frieze, or based the Laocoön on it. Amazingly enough, the Renaissance really did rediscover the masterpiece described by Pliny.

And there's another reason why the Laocoön can't be by Michelangelo. It's not good enough.
Well, that might be convincing to these timeline purists (...but "not good enough"? Really?? ), I'm a little more skeptical. Especially when we find more about the timeline of this Pergamon altar recovery:

In 1878, the German engineer Carl Humann started official excavations on the acropolis of Pergamon, an effort that lasted until 1886.

In Berlin, Italian restorers reassembled the panels comprising the frieze from the thousands of fragments that had been recovered. In order to display the result and create a context for it, a new museum was erected in 1901 on Berlin's Museum Island. Because this first Pergamon Museum proved to be both inadequate and structurally unsound, it was demolished in 1909 and replaced with a much larger museum, which opened in 1930. This new museum is still open to the public on the island.
I included that last part about the museum just because it's humorous. Anyway, here's part of the frieze in question, which was supposedly made 20 years prior to the Laocoön Group:

1280px-Pergamonmuseum_-_Antikensammlung_-_Pergamonaltar_02-03.jpg

1280px-Pergamonmuseum_-_Antikensammlung_-_Pergamonaltar_22.jpg

There's a lot more sections to it, but I thought these seemed closest to the Laocoön Group's giant's face (which I'll post again here for comparison):

Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg

Anyway, the frieze looks kinda awful to me, I guess what can you do, but sections of it seem very arbitrarily slapped together. And naturally, I don't think the similarity between these faces tells us anything at all about when both were constructed... but I would bet it's far closer to Michelangelo's time than 1500ish years prior.

Oh and before I leave this for now, here's an interesting little blurb from the bottom of the Pergamon Altar wiki:
In August 2020, while the Pergamon Museum was still closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic pandemic, Attila Hildmann described the altar as being the "centre of global satanists and Corona criminals". In October of the same year it was discovered several pieces in the museum were damaged while it was closed.
Eventually we'll learn that TPTB don't worship the same "gods" the rest of us do... hopefully not the hard way!
 
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