Transcriber’s Note
Text preceded by a caret symbol ^ and enclosed in curly braces {} was
superscripted in the original book; text enclosed in equals signs was
in =boldface=; and text enclosed in underscores was in _italics_.
THE GENTLE ART OF FAKING
The New Art Library
“The admirable New Art Library.”--_Connoisseur._
NEW VOLUME.
=Perspective.=
As applied to pictures, with a section dealing with
architecture. 472 Illustrations. 18s. nett.
By REX VICAT COLE.
“Makes perspective quite fascinating.--_Aberdeen Journal._
“An indispensable book to the student of art.”--_Daily Graphic._
RECENTLY ISSUED.
=Water Colour Painting.=
By ALFRED W. RICH. 60 Illustrations. 10s. 6d. nett.
“Mr. Rich’s work has placed him among the comparatively few
water-colourists of to-day who count, and the work of his students
proves that he can teach.”--_Saturday Review._
=The Artistic Anatomy of Trees.=
By REX VICAT COLE. Over 500 Illustrations. 15s. nett.
“Like all the volumes of the New Art Library, thorough in its teaching,
eminently practical in its manner of presenting it, and splendidly
illustrated.”--_Connoisseur._
=The Practice and Science of Drawing.=
By HAROLD SPEED. 96 Illustrations. 10s. 6d. nett.
“No work on Art has been published in recent years which might be more
advantageously placed in the hands of a young student. Every page shows
robust common sense expressed in a clear style.... We imagine that Mr.
Speed is an admirable teacher, and cordially recommend his treatise.”
--_Athenæum._
=The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing.=
S. J. SOLOMON, R.A. 80 Illustrations. 10s. 6d. nett.
“If students were to follow his instructions, and still more, to heed
his warnings, their painting would soon show a great increase in
efficiency.”--_Manchester Guardian._
=Human Anatomy for Art Students.=
By Sir ALFRED DOWNING FRIPP, K.C.V.O., 159 Illustrations. 15s. nett.
“Combines the best scientific and artistic information.”--_Connoisseur._
=Modelling and Sculpture.=
By ALBERT TOFT, A.R.C.A., M.S.B.S. With 119 Illustrations. 15s. nett.
“Will be found an invaluable aid to the student.... Takes the student
step by step through the various technical processes, the text being
supplemented by over a hundred excellent illustrations.”--_Studio._
SEELEY, SERVICE & CO., LTD., 38 Great Russell St.
[Illustration:
_Photo_] [_Alinari_
SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF THE POET BASTIANINI BENIVIENI.
A direct cast from the original now in Paris and formerly kept in the
Louvre Museum.]
THE GENTLE ART
OF
FAKING
A HISTORY OF THE METHODS OF PRODUCING
IMITATIONS & SPURIOUS WORKS OF ART
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UP
TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY
RICCARDO NOBILI
AUTHOR OF “A MODERN ANTIQUE”
“Le dernier mot de l’art je le trouve dans la contrefaçon”
SAINTE-BEUVE
WITH 31 ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
SEELEY SERVICE & CO. LTD.
38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
1922
TO
MRS. MARY S. SHEPARD
WITH THE DEVOTED AFFECTION OF A SON
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
PREFACE
“Collectomania” may with some reason be looked upon as a comedy in
which the leading parts are taken by the Collector, the Dealer, and the
Faker, supported by minor but not less interesting characters, such
as imitators, restorers, middlemen, _et hoc genus omne_, each of whom
could tell more than one attractive tale.
In analysing the Faker one must dissociate him from the common forger;
his semi-artistic vocation places him quite apart from the ordinary
counterfeiter; he must be studied amid his proper surroundings, and
with the correct local colouring, so to speak, and his critic may
perchance find some slight modicum of excuse for him. Beside him stand
the Imitator, from whom the faker often originates, the tempter who
turns the clever imitator into a faker, and the middleman who lures on
the unwary collector with plausible tales.
It is not the object of this volume to study the Faker by himself, but
to trace his career through the ages in his appropriate surroundings,
and compare the methods adopted by him at various periods of history,
so far as they may be obtained.
Ethically, there is a strict line drawn between the imitator and the
forger, but in practice this line is by no means rigid. Many imitators
place their goods before the public _as_ imitations; others tacitly
permit their work to be sold as genuinely antique, influenced no doubt
by the fact that though possibly the imitation and the original may
possess equal merit, the one is handicapped by modernity, the other
is hallowed by age. The inexperienced and unwary collector is in most
cases the innocent originator of fraud; if there were no buyer there
would be no seller. Too often fashion leads folly, and so fictitious
values are created, and as demand increases so, too, do the sources of
supply, but unhappily they are frequently not legitimate.
RICCARDO NOBILI.
VILLE MARIE,
VIA DANTE DA CASTIGLIONE 3,
FLORENCE.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF FAKING
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GREEKS AND ROMANS AS ART COLLECTORS 17
II. COLLECTOMANIA IN ROME 24
III. RAPACIOUS ROMAN COLLECTORS 36
IV. ROME AS AN ART EMPORIUM 44
V. INCREASE OF FAKING IN ROME 57
VI. DECADENCE OF ART AND CONSEQUENT CHANGES 63
VII. THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD 68
VIII. IMITATION, PLAGIARISM, AND FAKING 83
IX. COLLECTORS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 101
X. COLLECTING IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND 107
XI. MAZARIN AS A COLLECTOR 114
XII. SOME NOTABLE FRENCH COLLECTORS 129
PART II
THE COLLECTOR AND THE FAKER
XIII. COLLECTORS AND COLLECTIONS 135
XIV. THE COLLECTOR’S FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 150
XV. IMITATORS AND FAKERS 165
XVI. THE ARTISTIC QUALITIES OF IMITATORS 181
XVII. FAKERS, FORGERS AND THE LAW 194
XVIII. THE FAKED ATMOSPHERE AND PUBLIC SALES 207
PART III
THE FAKED ARTICLE
XIX. THE MAKE-UP OF FAKED ANTIQUES 225
XX. FAKED SCULPTURE, BAS-RELIEFS AND BRONZES 234
XXI. FAKED POTTERY 246
XXII. METAL FAKES 263
XXIII. WOOD WORK AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 279
XXIV. VELVETS, TAPESTRIES AND BOOKS 287
XXV. SUMMING UP 301
INDEX 311
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Supposed Portrait of the Poet Bastianini Benivieni _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Marcus Aurelius 48
Diomedes with the Palladium 72
Imitations of the Antique 88
Marsyas 96
The Spinario 120
A Child. By Ferrante Lampini 136
San Giovanni 136
Athlete 144
The Battesimo 152
Bacchus 152
The Resurrection 184
Pietà 184
A Portrait 192
A Child. By Donatello 200
An Imitation of Roman Work 240
An Imitation of Sixteenth-century Work 240
A Mantelpiece 266
A Lamp 266
Plaquettes by Various Artists 272
Europa on the Bull 288
THE GENTLE ART OF FAKING
PART I
THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF FAKING
CHAPTER I
GREEKS AND ROMANS AS ART COLLECTORS
Why the Greeks by not being collectors in the modern sense were
spared faking in art--How the Romans became interested in art
--Genesis of their art collections--The first collectors
and their methods--Noted citizen’s indictment against art
plundering of Roman conquerors--Attitude of noted writers
towards art, and art collecting.
The collector, the chief patron of fakery, being somewhat of a selfish
lover of art, it is quite natural that the Greeks, who saw in art a
grand means of public education and enjoyment, cannot be called art
collectors in the modern sense of the word. Consequently there was
hardly room for sham art in a country where art as the direct emanation
of public spirit was rigorously maintained for the sake of the people.
It was the temples that became art emporiums--museums that everyone
was allowed to enjoy--or free institutions, like the pinacotheca of
the Acropolis, the collection of carved stone at the Parthenon, the
gymnasium of the Areopagus, containing a collection of busts of the
most celebrated philosophers. With this public spirit in the enjoyment
of art Delphi gathered a famous picture gallery in the oracular temple
and, according to Pliny, possessed no fewer than three thousand
statues, one of them being the famous golden Apollo. From this temple
Nero carried off five hundred bronze statues, and later on Constantine
removed many of the remaining works of art to Constantinople. An
identical spirit of public enjoyment of art had turned the temples
of Juno in Olympia, of Minerva in Platæa and Syracuse into veritable
museums of art and--curiosities also. The temple of Minerva at Lyndon
in the island of Rhodes, for instance, contained a cup of _electrum_
(amber) offered by Helen of Troy, which was said to have a cavity cut
to the exact shape of the bosom of the beautiful wife of Paris (Pliny,
XXXIII, 23).
That the Greeks at their highest historical level did not indulge in
the private and artistic delights of the collector may also be gathered
from the poor construction of their usual dwelling-houses. It is well
known that thieves, more especially in Athens, were called “wall
breakers,” and obtained this odd nickname from their peculiar method
of entering houses, namely, by making a hole through the wall rather
than troubling to unlock the door. Such flimsy dwellings can hardly
have sheltered the treasures of an art collection. Thus simplicity of
customs and a clearly defined manner of enjoying art, saved the Greeks
to a great extent from a regular trade in antiques with all its strange
and deplorable etceteras.
As a matter of fact, we have no information as to anything that
might be called a private art collection in Athens, though quite
consistently, considering their extreme passion for knowledge, the
Greeks had fine private libraries, such as those of Aristotle and
Theophrastus. But even these, though containing the rarest and most
precious works, were true libraries, not collections of elaborate
volumes. The mania for fine bindings of costly materials was later on
the caprice of the learned Roman, not of the Greek.
The home of the “collector,” and consequently of his faithful
companion, the faker, was Rome.
The Roman was not a born lover of art. In fact during the early and
primitive period of its existence Rome had not only been somewhat
negative as regards art, but was even rather averse from its enjoyment.
It took centuries for the Roman to overcome the belief that matters
of art were trifling amusements that might be left as toys to their
conquered people. Thus for a long time Romans saw in the enjoyment
of art the chief source of the weakening and degeneration of the
enemies they had subjugated. Springing from a progeny of soldiers and
agriculturists, born to conquer the world, the Roman citizen assumed as
an aphorism the Virgilian saying that his sole duty was to subjugate
enemies, by granting them pardon or humiliating their pride.
Thus the early Romans not only show great ignorance as to marvels of
art, but even contempt for them. When art treasures were brought to
Rome as booty for the first time by Marcellus from conquered Sicily the
Senate censured such an innovation. Fabius Maximus, called the “shield
of Rome,” rose among others in protest, saying that after the siege of
Tarentum, he, unlike Marcellus, had brought home only gold and valuable
plunder. As for statues, more especially images, he had preferred to
leave to the conquered people “their enraged gods.” In fact the only
statue Fabius took away from Tarentum was the Hercules of Lysippus, a
bronze colossus which must have appealed to him either for its heroic
size or the large quantity of material.
A type of the early ignorant Roman art collector is given by Lucius
Mummius, the general who destroyed Corinth, and of whom Velleius
Paterculus tells (I, 13) that in sending to Rome what might be styled
the artistic booty of the destroyed city he consigned the statues and
paintings to those in charge of the transport with the warning that
should the goods be lost they would be held responsible and would have
to reproduce them all at their own expense.
Even when with the progress of time art was finally appreciated in
Rome, the old contempt for it was transferred in a way from the
product to the maker. Thus with the feeling that seems to characterize
the parvenu in art, and with inexplicable inconsistency, the Roman
lover of art persisted in seeing in the artist either a slave or a
good-for-nothing, and never for a moment regarded the artist as worth
the consideration he granted to art. Notwithstanding his belief of
being a lover of art and an intelligent connoisseur, Cicero calls
statues and paintings toys to amuse children (_oblectamenta puerorum_).
In his fourth oration, _In Verrem_, he candidly confesses that he fails
to understand the importance attached by Greeks to those arts which the
Romans most rightly despise.
Valerius Maximus, who lived at the time of Tiberius, that is to
say when Rome had fully completed its education in art, calls the
profession of the painter a vile occupation (_sordidum studium_), and
wonders how Fabius, a Roman and patrician, can bring himself to sign
his painting with full name and qualification, “Fabius Pictor” (VIII,
14, 6).
In one of his letters (No. 88) Seneca, the contemporary of Nero, states
that sculpture and painting are unworthy to be classified as liberal
arts. Petronius, the _magister elegantiorum_ of Rome, two hundred years
after the destruction of Corinth, that is to say when Rome had reached
its maturity in the understanding of art, calls Apelles, Phidias and
other famous artists of Greece, crack-brained (_græculi delirantes_).
With such an innately negative sense of art and strong racial
prejudice, it is not surprising that when brought to an appreciation
of art by circumstances, the Romans, though willing and fully prepared
to pay extravagant prices for works of art, should still retain their
old contempt for artists, those _græculi delirantes_ who had come to
beautify the Capital as slaves or tempted by gain.
As a result of this peculiar feeling and in full contrast with the
Greek sentiment which has handed down to posterity a great deal about
the artists who lived in Athens and the honours they received, Rome has
preserved for us hardly a name of painter, sculptor or architect. And
they must have been legion if we consider the magnitude of the work
accomplished. Vitruvius (VII, 15) informs us that Damophilus, Gorgas,
Agesilas, Pasiteles and other artists were called to Rome by Julius
Cæsar, and that so many Greek artists were in Rome that when the temple
of Jupiter Olympicus was to be finished in Athens the citizens were
obliged to send to Rome, as none of their architects were to be found
in Greece.
It is interesting to trace how the Romans gradually became collectors
of art, and how there gradually developed in Rome a whole world of
lovers of art with all its true and fictitious enthusiasms, furnishing
a group of varied types of collectors not altogether dissimilar from
those of our modern society of lovers of art.
As we have said, conquest and booty furnished the first articles of
virtu. At first statues and objects of art of all kinds were brought
to Rome without discrimination, then education gradually progressed,
taste developed and plunder became more enlightened. Fulvius Nobilior,
to quote one of the many conquerors who brought artistic war booty
to Rome, enriched it with 285 bronze statues, 230 marble ones, and
112 pounds of gold ornaments. Following the custom of the Greeks, the
Romans at first presented statues and paintings to various temples as
ornaments.
Later on, with more discrimination and less greed, Roman officials
proceeded to a systematic spoliation of Greece and the Orient of their
treasures of art. Statues and paintings followed in the triumphs
of Roman generals as did slaves and prisoners of war. Occasionally
returning officials brought home with them pillaged artistic mementoes
of the place they had been ruling in the name of mighty Rome. Thus
Fulvius, consul in Ambracia, brought home the finest statues of that
country. One of these mementoes was excavated in the year 1867; it bore
the naive and candid confession of the consul:--
Marcus Fulvius Marci Filius
Servii Nepos Nobilior
Consul Ambracia
Cepit
Having carried off the statues of the Nine Muses in his conquest of
Ambracia, this same Fulvius Nobilior placed them in the temple of
Hercules. At this time Roman conquerors had progressed, and they
already travelled with experts and advisers. Fulvius Nobilior was
accompanied by the poet Ennius (Strabo, B. X, 5), whose suggestion it
may have been to place Hercules in the midst of the Nine Muses playing
the lyre like an Apollo, a metamorphosis of the god showing that the
Roman had finally harmonized “Strength,” his chief and most cherished
quality, with the gentler feelings of an understanding of art. This
“Hercules Musagetes” seems to symbolize a first conquest of art over
the rude, sturdy Roman character.
Departing from the established rule of presenting their artistic
plunder to the temples after it had followed in their triumphs to
enhance the importance of their conquest, in time the generals began to
keep part of the spoil themselves. In this way were the first private
collections in Rome formed.
The real artistic education of the Romans dates from this time. The
passion and ambition to enrich and embellish private houses helped to
teach what was worth consideration. Sulla, who plundered Greece and
Asia Minor, is said to have acquired a sure eye for valuable _objets de
virtu_; Verres, who with an excellent eye had robbed and collected all
that came within his reach, was perhaps Rome’s best connoisseur of art.
He and Sulla were practically the first to organize that enlightened
manner of plundering subjugated countries that finally made Rome the
first emporium of art in the world.
Naturally, these early Roman collectors rarely bought their articles of
virtu. When they could not obtain by pillage they had ready to hand a
speedy and coercive means of gratifying their artistic craving. Sulla
placed on the proscription list the names of all possessors of artistic
objects who were so unwise as to refuse to give them up to him. Mark
Antony did the same to Verres. The latter paid with his life his
refusal to offer the despotic Triumvir some famous vases of Corinthian
bronze which he sorely longed to have in his collection.
It was, we repeat, in Sulla’s time that the passion for collecting
arose among the Romans, not only guided by an artistic sense of
discrimination, but with all the peculiar characteristics that seem to
attend the development of this passion.
Sulla’s collection--to which the spoils of the temple of Apollo
in Delphi and of the temples of Jupiter in Elis and Æsculapius in
Epidaurus, considered the richest emporium of art in Greece, had
contributed--must have been magnificent and without an equal--except,
perhaps, that of Verres, Sulla’s pupil, who surpassed his master in the
art of plundering, and sacked Sicily of all the island possessed of art.