The statues, created by Italian brothers Pio and Alfonso Riccardi and three of their six sons, were bought by The Metropolitan Museum of Art between 1915 and 1921.
In 1908, Fuschini informed the British Museum that the chariot had been found in the old Etruscan fort near Orvieto, and that the Riccardis had been commissioned to clean it.
In the following years, various art historians, especially in Italy, presented their suspicions that on stylistic and artistic grounds alone, the statues might be forgeries, but there was no forensic proof to support the allegations.
A later expert found that these exceptionally large pieces showed extraordinarily even firing characteristics, but he expressed this as cause for admiration, not suspicion.
Metropolitan director James Rorimer stated that studies by the museum's Operating Administrator Joseph V. Noble (an antiquities collector and self-trained ceramic archaeologist) "provided the first technical evidence of their having been made in modern times.