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The Fit. Last month Harold Parsons took Fioravanti to the U.S. consulate and had him make a signed confession of the forgery. With that in hand, Parsons sent off a letter to the Met in Manhattan. The Met was not too surprised: its own ceramics expert, Joseph V. Noble, had already completed a series of chemical tests on the statues. His major finding: the famous Greek-black glaze actually contained a modern coloring agent, manganese dioxide.
Director James Rorimer dispatched his curator of Greek and Roman art to Rome. Curator Dietrich von Bothmer confronted Fioravanti in Parsons' apartment. Von Bothmer produced a plaster cast of one of the warrior's hands, from which the thumb was missing. Fioravanti in turn produced a thumb of baked pottery that he had been keeping for years. Placed together, thumb and hand fitted perfectly.
* From the ancient confederation of Etruria, which dominated the Italian peninsula, was later swallowed up by Rome.