Today's Reading
Laurie squinted at the face of the sculpture. "I would've guessed he was a fake."
"He's definitely real," Emily blurted out.
Laurie opened her mouth to speak, but not before Jason said, "Emily spotted a fake at the Getty Villa."
Terrence turned to her. "Seriously? What was it?"
"An ivory statuette of the Virgin Mary," Emily said, feeling both proud and shy. She'd told Jason about this in her interview, and a former coworker she'd used as a reference had confirmed it. She suspected it was one of the reasons she'd gotten this job.
"How did you know it was a fake?" Terrence asked.
"Um, it had a flat background, so it originally would've been attached to some kind of plaque, but on the back, there weren't any signs of points of attachment."
But as she'd told Jason, she'd recognized it as a fake on sight, and she couldn't even say exactly why. She just hadn't gotten that feeling of history from it—an invisible but undeniable sense, like a vibration.
She definitely got some kind of vibration from this knight.
Jason circled the statue, looking at it from all angles, his hands clasped behind his back. "The documentation goes back to the 1460s, though we have no idea who the artist was."
Artist? Devil, more like!
Emily froze and whipped around to gaze at the sculpture's face. Her heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. She was half sure he'd said that.
But of course he hadn't. He was a big hunk of carved limestone. A remarkable big hunk of carved limestone, but still.
She gave an uneasy laugh and said, "He almost looks real." Laurie took a sip of coffee, then grimaced down at the cup.
"For the period, it's an unusually realistic style," Jason acknowledged.
"It's so iconic," Terrence said, amused. "Classic knight in shining armor."
Emily went back to unwrapping him, her fingers grazing his bare neck.
"Did you wash your hands?" Laurie asked.
"Of course. Just a minute ago." Many people thought that art conservators always wore gloves whenever they touched a valuable object. Often they did, both to protect a fragile work from the oils and dirt on their hands and, in some cases, to protect themselves from toxic materials like arsenic and lead. But for this piece, a thorough hand-washing was sufficient.
It was too bad that Laurie didn't trust her to do it. How had Emily gotten off on such a bad foot with this woman? It bothered her, and not just professionally. Her mother was always telling her, Not everybody is going to like you, and that's okay. But it wasn't. When someone didn't like Emily, she tended to obsess about it.
She'll come around, she thought with grim determination.
Pulling more of the cloths aside, she revealed the rest of his torso. She straightened again to study it.
"Even the armor is so detailed," she said, tracing the air just above his breastplate. "I would guess he's from 1420, 1430. The ornamentation reminds me of Edmund Mortimer's armor." It was going to be a perfect example for the presentation she was putting together for the museum's next symposium—a daylong event where scholars and experts in art history gave presentations. She was calling hers Dating Medieval Sculpture.
She turned to Jason. "Was this guy famous, too? Or from some rich family?"
He shrugged. "We don't know anything about the subject."
Laurie stepped up the stool to take a closer look at the sculpture's face—and Emily's possessiveness flared. She wanted to say, Get away from him. He's mine.
Laurie turned to look down at her. "Do you know how to treat sulfation?"
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