Two Types of Provenance & Two medieval sculptures at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

by Christine E. Brennan Provenance is defined as the place of origin or the earliest known history of an object. More broadly, it is the record of ownership over a period of time of an object considered to be antique. When people think about provenance today, it is often focused on the latter definition. News headlines describing artworks stolen during World War II and restituted to the heirs of their rightful owners are a potent example of this. More than one hundred and fifty years earlier..