A 1,300-year-old sculpture of a dancing horse — a precious relic of China’s Tang dynasty — captured an ancient tradition of trained horses performing for emperors.
But curators at the Cincinnati Art Museum weren’t charmed with one of the lively 8th-century statue’s features: a forehead tassel they suspected wasn’t original.
How to investigate without harming the precious art?
Scientists pitched in to help figure it out….
Spoiler: it wasn’t original, so the museum decided to remove it.
You can read the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/09/17/science-ancient-horse-statue/
Here too is the link to the research paper published by the scientists who solved the mystery:
[Conti, C., Catrambone, M., Colombo, C., Possenti, E., Rectenwald, K. M., Realini, M., & Strobbia, P. (2022). Scientific investigation to look into the conservation history of a Tang Dynasty terracotta Dancing Horse. Heritage Science, 10(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-022-00758-7]
