Attribution of cultural property

Attribution (lat. Attributio - attribution) is a type of scientific activity for the assessment of cultural monuments in museums, scientific institutes, associated with determining the reliability, authenticity of a work of art, its author, place and time of creation, and it is carried out by a narrow specialist in this type of art. That is, the main activity of a specialist in attribution is aimed at disclosing and evaluating the above characteristics, in order to confirm the characteristics that are attributed to them. According to this definition, the attribution of jewelry acts as the establishment of the identity of all the characteristics of an object to its essential features.

Analysis of the main modern approaches to attribution of the subject indicates the use of art criticism (analysis) and the study of historical and archival documents.

In connection with the constant development of the counterfeiting industry in general, the task of determining only the correspondence of the obviously attributed authorship to the true one is put forward. The facts obtained as a result of documentary research and art criticism assessment cannot be fully used as evidence of the authenticity of the subject. In addition, without attention to the attributive characteristics, there remain the issues of determining the memoriality of an object, i.e. his involvement in outstanding personalities, significant events, etc.

Art criticism does not aim to study social significance, aesthetic value and beauty in general, which affects the perception of a product and its value in the market.

Evaluation of jewelry, according to aesthetic value and social significance, cannot be replaced by historical-sociological, historical-bibliographic and other modifications of the historical approach. It requires its own axiological, value-based approach.

In addition, the limitation of attribution by the cognitive-analytical approach is also due to the fact that its purpose was mainly reduced to determining the historical authenticity, originality, reliability of a fact and a material item of jewelry that is in the museum fund and does not function on the market as a commodity. Therefore, the aesthetic, technical value and social significance of objects that have been removed from us for centuries, and their peculiar patina of an outstanding time and layers of different cultural eras, discovered by restorers and a textologist, was sometimes perceived as in itself, without additional research, analysis and evaluation.

The wording of the concept of "attribution" includes several types of assessment, in particular, identification by type (assortment), style, content (time of creation, author, etc.). Certain facts obtained in the course of the research are not subject to attribution. The obtained data are analyzed, compared with the features identified on other typical objects, and on the basis of this, a final conclusion is made about the authenticity, chronological belonging of the object, which represents a professional assessment of the revealed facts. This assessment may change in the process of identifying new facts obtained while working on the subject. Therefore, attribution is the accumulation of scientific knowledge about a monument, which is carried out by a narrow specialist for the maintenance of scientific passports in museums, the formation of collections of cultural values. However, given the use of only documentary, literary, encyclopedic sources and typical prototypes for comparison, as a means of this study, it is necessary to concretize the definition of "attribution".

It would be advisable to define attribution as a type of appraisal activity, based on the practical and theoretical experience of a specialist in a narrow direction of art and aimed at identifying documentary, informational support in determining the typology of an object to confirm its authorship, chronological affiliation, and authenticity.