page_title: Lady of Elche
section_title: Contention of forgery
hierarchical_section_title: Lady of Elche / Contention of forgery
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of Dama de Baza (from File:Dama de Baza ampliada.jpg)
context_page_description: The Lady of Elx or Lady of Elche is a limestone bust that was discovered in 1897, at La Alcudia, an archaeological site on a private estate two kilometers south of Elche, Spain. It is currently exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid.
  It is generally known as an Iberian artifact from the 4th century BC, although the artisanship suggests strong Hellenistic influences. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion, the Lady of Elche is believed to have a direct association with Tanit, the goddess of Carthage, who was worshiped by the Punic-Iberians. Similarly, the sculpture presents features of the Celtiberian culture and the own Iberian.
context_section_description: The bust was first accused of being a forgery in 1906, in an essay called 'Las esculturas del Cerro de los Santos, cuestion de autenticidad' by archeologist José Ramón Mélida.
  In 1995, John F. Moffitt, an art historian specializing in painting, published Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche, University Press of Florida, in which he contended that the statue was a forgery with similarities to symbolist art of the Belle Époque. He speculated that the identity of the forger and commissioner was "a physician and resident surgeon in the town of Elche" who was "well informed about the current state of Iberian studies" and owned "the fertile archaeological site of La Alcúdia."
  Experts in Spanish archaeology have rejected Moffitt's theory and accept the Lady of Elche as a genuine ancient Iberian work. Antonio Uriarte of the University of Madrid has stated: "Decade by decade, research has reinforced the coherence of the Lady within the corpus of Iberian sculpture. The Lady was found more than a century ago, and many of its features, not then understood, have been confirmed by subsequent finds. For example, the use of paint in Iberian sculpture was unknown when the Lady appeared." A Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) study on the Lady of Elche's micropigmentation published in 2005 concluded that the trace pigments on the statue were consistent with ancient materials and that no modern pigments had been found.
  In 2011, María Pilar Luxán, the author of the 2005 study, analyzed microparticles within the back hole of the Dama d'Elx utilizing electron microscopy and X-ray dispersive spectrometry. Luxán deduced that the particles belonged to the ashes of human bones and that they compared with those of the Iberian period. She concluded that the statue was used as a funerary urn in the Iberian period, thus guaranteeing its antiquity and confirming the hypothesis about its function.
caption: The Lady of Baza, another Iberian "lady" bust.
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