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Historical Allegations from

The ceiling at Altamira represents the highest achievement of prehistoric painting. There are very few examples of high Magdalenian art, and these are in incomparably bad condition. The image definitions exploit the natural structure of the cave ceiling at Altamira. Very little was added to the rock protuberances to bring the recumbent bison or "ant" into being. These concentrated forms were achieved only through a combination of all known means of expression: paint was applied with a brush or by blowing, or it was rubbed over the surface, and flints were employed as engraving tools.
Death and the notables, alledgedly a printer's proof from Der Doten Dantz, woodblock printed by Jacob Meydenbach, Mainz, 1492.

In the well known Danse Macabre genre, death is personified as a skeleton that levels all social classes and ranks. Death was often accompanied by animals such as toads or snakes. The ant as a messenger, heralding imminent destruction with his horn, is known only from this print.
Las Hormigas Grotescas. Cover illustration from a Mexican broadside, executed in the manner of Jose Guadalupe Posada, printed by A. Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City, c. 1900.

Typical broadsides were engraved on type metal, printed on cheap paper, often with garish colors, and described crimes, disasters, miracles, bandits and other events from everyday life. Images of this type were known as ejemplos. Generally these were moral lessons in the form of horrible examples of behaviour drawn from current events. The text of the broadside does not illuminate the graphic. There is no other known account in contemporary news collections. Possibly the image refers to an unknown folk tale or child's rhyme.
The "teeth" are undoubtedly foreshortened pipes of pan.
Based on Charles Negre's famous photograph of Henry Le Secq
at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.
Print from the 1851 calotype negative in the collection Andre Jammes, Paris.

Clearly a fake, the print shows a certain level of skill in the way scratches and other marks of wear have been incorporated to suggest that the imposition of the ant figure was done in the late 19th century. But this is likely not the case. Analysis indicates that there was never a musical instrument of any kind either attached to, or in proximity to the ant figure. Unless his hat hides it.

George Herriman's KRAZY KAT.
Original art from the estate of John Wetherill, Kayenta, Arizona. c. 1940.
copyright 1942 King Features Syndicate Inc.

Possibly another fake, but a superior forgery this time. The image was not suspected until it was exhibited in 1973, and opinion still remains divided. All the typical elements are included; Officer Pupp, Ignatz, Krazy, the Cocino landscape, the jail, the black expanse, the cross hatching and the variable line. Some elements have possibly been used in other strips, the jail is flipped horizontally from its normal location at the right end of the panel strip, and there is no welcome on the door mat. However the ant's hatching and the horn are both clearly in Herriman's style.


(apologies to all)