Notable Forgers
Notable Forgers
Throughout history art forgeries have been made whenever creative works have been considered valuable for a collection. The Romans copied Greek original sculptures, and many of the copies have at some time or other been considered originals. Today these copies are in museums, valued for what they are. Coins have been counterfeited since they were first minted by King Gyges of Lydia (died about 648 bc). Sometimes molds were made of originals and copies produced by castings. At other times original dies were used to strike an unauthorized issue. Various Byzantine emperors debased their coinage with base alloys-a form of deception-and coins were even produced in base metals and gilded to be passed off as solid gold. Jean de France, Duc de Berry, an art patron and coin collector, had modern copies made of old Dutch and French coins to fill in gaps in his collection. The Italian artists Giovanni Cavino and Pirro Ligorio were master coin counterfeiters of the 16th century. Even the great Michelangelo forged an “antique” marble cupid for his patron, Lorenzo de Medici. In the 18th century a forger produced a marble head of Julius Caesar that had been purchased by London’s British Museum in 1818 as being authentic.
Perhaps the most prolific production of art forgeries has occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries during periods of avid collecting, when profits for a successful deception have been enormous. The Louvre Museum in Paris bought its gold Tiara of Saïtaphernes for 200,000 gold francs and declared it a genuine work of the 3rd century bc, although it had been made in 1880 by the goldsmith Israel Ruchomovsky of Odesa, Russia. He was commissioned to execute a number of works in the antique manner by unscrupulous dealers, who then sold the objects as antiquities. The Italian artist Giovanni Bastianini, in the third quarter of the 19th century, executed in good faith a number of fine sculptures in the manner of Donatello, Verrocchio, Mino de Fiesole, and other Italian old masters, which were subsequently sold as genuine to-among others-the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Perhaps the most famous master forger of all time was Alceo Dossena, who successfully produced sculptures of such high quality that they were accepted as genuine by many art critics, museum directors, and famous collectors. Apparently Dossena, a master artist, did not know he was defrauding a third party, as he merely supplied work in various styles-archaic, Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Gothic, and Renaissance. When he discovered that a Madonna and Child he had sold for 50,000 lire was in turn sold for 3 million lire, he stepped forward and proclaimed that the works were modern.
Of almost equal notoriety is the story of Hans van Meegeren; he painted a number of fake Vermeers and Pieter de Hoochs that were accepted as genuine by eminent art critics and sold to important collectors and museums for fabulous sums. When he was accused of collaborating with the enemy in having sold, through an intermediary, Vermeer’s The Woman Taken in Adultery to Hermann Göring during World War II, he was able to prove the “Vermeer” was by his own hand; van Meegeren was sent to prison for one year.
In recent years skillful forgeries of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and other modern masters have appeared. Often these are declared fake by art historians, frequently after a technical examination. (1)
Art Forgery Entries in the Encyclopedia: Notable Forgers and Detecting Forgeries
Leave a Reply