INCREASE OF FAKING IN ROME
Increase of Faking--Imitation precious stones--Cameos--Restorers
and copyists.
It is evident that in a society like that of Rome and an artistic
_milieu_ such as we have tried to depict, comprising a few good
collectors among a whole hoard of fools setting up as full-fledged
connoisseurs, deception and fakery must have been rampant. The large
profits promised by a trade in sham art must have helped to perfect
those enslaved Greeks in methods of taking an artistic revenge upon
their oppressors. Romans, especially in art matters, must have
seemed to them mere parvenus. The practised eclectic qualities and
adaptability of those _græculi delirantes_ (crazy paltry Greeks), so
active in Rome, must have helped matters. In time there was nothing
they could not produce for the benefit of their patrons, and often
to such perfection as to deceive even keen-eyed connoisseurs. As a
consequence, already in Rome the imitation of art and curios produced
a certain perplexed feeling even among people who claimed to be
acquainted with the business of buying art and antiques. Pliny, who
was somewhat of a connoisseur, more especially in bronzes, writes
to a friend that he has bought a charming statuette of Corinthian
bronze, and in confessing that he likes it, “no matter whether modern
or antique,” seems to reveal the cautious attitude of a man who does
not wish to be caught in error, a fear and uncertainty that very able
forgers had created in Rome.
Beyond a few hints and gibes about certain collectors and art lovers
and a few comments of Pliny and others we have no detailed account
of the part that imitation and faking played in Rome, but it is to
be presumed that the latter especially found numerous and ever-ready
clients, and that it was able and prosperous beyond the dreams of
modern art duping.
According to Pliny the favourite article, the one to which fakers and
forgers gave their utmost care and attention, was the article that was
in vogue at the moment and therefore promised the biggest return. Thus
murrhines did not escape this fate, they were imitated with obsidian.
Pliny also adds that all kinds of precious stones were imitated in
Rome, not only by coloured glass but also by a selection of stones
that, though rare, were of less value comparatively than the types they
imitated.
The most esteemed kinds of sardonyx were counterfeited by joining
various pieces of the cheaper jaspers or onyx, cleverly alternating
red, white and black, and joining the pieces in such a manner that
it was most difficult, Pliny tells us, for a connoisseur to detect a
fraud. The same writer, who gives valuable hints on the imitation of
precious stones, says that in his time there were even books from which
one could learn the art of counterfeiting precious stones, that all of
them could be imitated, topaz, lapis lazuli, and amethyst; that amber
could be coloured, obsidian used to counterfeit hyacinths, sapphires,
etc. Speaking of the sardonyx, more especially, Pliny says, “no fraud
brings so much money as this.”
In this line there were also other kinds of fraud. One of the most
profitable was the imitation of precious stones with paste ones. There
are some imitation cameos that are a puzzle even to-day. Commenting
upon this fraud, Winkelmann benevolently points out that we owe to
this unscrupulous commerce of false cameos the preservation of the
casts of some precious originals now lost. The marvellous part of these
imitation cameos is that the faker was not only able to imitate the
plain stone of the original but all its characteristic veining and
peculiarities.
With regard to bronzes and other metal works it is to be presumed that
not only could the _Nobilis ærugo_ of Horace be easily counterfeited,
as it is to-day, but the work as well. Pliny the Younger gives us
valuable hints about the perplexity that fakery had generated among the
connoisseurs of his time.
The Greek artists in particular showed themselves most versatile,
they reproduced in Rome the most esteemed originals and could to a
certain extent imitate the most appreciated types of art. Zenodorus,
for example, copied for Germanicus a cup by Calamis in such perfect
imitation of the chiselling that the copy could not be told from the
original.
Fraudulent masterpieces of painting and sculpture, often with the
forged signature of some great artist, as at present times, were
already on the market in Cicero’s time. His “_Odi falsas inscriptiones
statuarum alienarum_” is eloquent enough.
Phœdrus seems to complete Cicero’s information about Roman art faking.
“It is in this way,” he says, speaking of faked paintings and
sculpture, “that some of our artists can realize better prices for
their work: by carving the name of Praxiteles on a modern marble, the
name of Scopas on a bronze statue, that of Myron on a silver-piece, and
by putting the signature of Zeuxis to a modern painting.”
We do not intend to confound fakers with honest restorers of works
of art, but in Roman times, as is often the case in our own, faking
learned no small lesson from the deft hand of the restorer. The same
may be said for imitators and copyists who even in ancient Rome
followed their trade openly with no intention of cheating. Copyists in
particular were very active and their work was certainly appreciated by
a certain class of citizens. The fact is proved by the numerous copies
of Greek masterpieces that have been unearthed in Rome and elsewhere.
When an original was not to be had, a copy was often ordered. Lucullus
sent an artist expressly to Athens to make a copy for him of a work by
Pausias, the portrait of Glycera, the artist’s lady love.
Restorers of works of art were, in Rome as elsewhere, the nearest
relatives of fakers; their ability to imitate antiquity must have
proved a great temptation, and the enormous sums paid for certain
objects, and the gross ignorance of some of the buyers, must have paved
the way to more than one passage from honesty to dishonesty.
There were many restorers’ workshops in Rome, and one has been
discovered near the Forum, where apparently new limbs and heads were
provided for damaged statues. Many an antique statue has come down to
us already repaired. Evander Aulanius, says Pliny (XXXVI, 5), restored
the head of Diana, in the temple of Apollo, on the Palatine. Like
modern restorers, their forefathers of Rome had not always the delicate
hand needed for such operations. When the Prætor Julius ordered the
cleaning of the paintings in the temple of Apollo it was done in such a
rough manner that all the charm of the works disappeared. A fact that
may have induced some good connoisseur to advise leaving untouched the
Venus Anadyomene of Apelles, the masterpiece placed by Cæsar in the
temple of that goddess, and to let it be damaged by age rather than
allow the sacrilegious hand of a restorer to maim the divine painting
of the Greek artist.
From what we have been perusing we may conclude that the Roman
artistic world was not entirely different from the artistic world of
to-day. Certainly the city must have been of a magnificence of which
no conception is given by its grandiose ruins. But the artistic life,
and the narrow path of the collector, were somewhat similar to those
of to-day. Some of the characters we have quoted would seem to be
alive to-day, a change of name and a _milieu_ of more modern colouring
and they would provide ground for an action for libel. We feel quite
familiar, in fact, with the characters described by Seneca. Even to-day
the world possesses collectors of rusty nails and other worthless
objects--mere cult of fetishism. We feel no less acquainted with
some of the other types to whom Martial pays his attention. The man
who gathers ants fossilized in amber, the collector of relics who
glories in owning a fragment of the Argonauts’ ship, might both be
alive to-day. So might Lycinius the demented, Codrus the penurious and
dissatisfied, Eros the enthusiast and dreamer. They still exist and
are well represented in their various shades of foolishness down to
that Mamurra who used to upset all the shops of the Roman antiquaries
without buying a single thing. Would you resuscitate Tongilius to our
modern society just substitute a bright motor-car for his rich and
cumbersome _lectica_ and, for a certainty, the name of some modern
collector of art, some up-to-date Mæcenas, will come to your mind.
Of course, though Mr. Cook had not yet alighted to relieve itinerant
humanity from many troubles, tourists existed even at the time when
Rome did not possess the modern type of traveller. According to Titus
Livius many foreigners used to visit the temples of _Porta Capena_,
regular museums of art. The tourists of that time followed a routine,
as we can gather from Pliny and other writers. They were taken to
the Palatine, to the Via Sacra to admire the temple of Apollo with
its peristyle of fifty-two columns, adorned by the simulacra of the
Danaides and fifty equestrian statues, one of the finest sights in Rome
and which inspired Horace with an ode. This temple of Luni marble with
ivory doors, surmounted by a quadriga in gilded bronze carrying the
god, was also a museum, containing among other things a fine collection
of gems, and a room lined with silver in which the Sibylline Books were
kept. The _Domus Aurea_, the paintings of Apelles exhibited in the
Forum of Augustus, the temple of Venus, one of the finest emporiums
of art, that of Ceres which contained the celebrated “Bacchus” of
Aristides of Thebes, the “Marsias” in the temple of Concord, and in the
Capitol the “Theseus” of Zeuxis, in Pompey’s portico the “Soldier” by
Polygnotus, in the temple of Peace the “Hero” by Timante and another
famous work by Protogenes.
There were of course foolish tourists who, like to-day, insisted
on being fed with more or less authentic anecdotes of relics of an
impossible character, who believed the unbelievable. Thus, according
to Procopius, who evidently believed the genuineness of the relic,
many tourists went to see the boat, still moored in the river, from
which Æneas had landed in Italy, etc. This kind of tourist must have
inspired Lucian with the comment that Greek guides in Rome might have
starved but for the nonsense and legends with which they enriched their
descriptions of the city. “But what of that,” remarks Lucian, “visitors
like to hear such things, and do not seem interested in the truth even
if offered to them free of charge.”
The revival of the past needed this slight touch to show that the
artistic world of two thousand years ago was not, after all, dissimilar
to that of our enlightened days.
Need we repeat that the phenomenon of art faking for the benefit of
foolish lovers of art generally appears when the passion for collecting
takes that Byzantine attitude which makes it ripe for decay and
degeneration, when mania, fashion and snobbery chiefly hold the ground
instead of taste and genuine love of art, in fact when the parvenus or
the lunatic submerge the intelligent collector. It follows consequently
that the decline of Collectomania heralds the decline of Forgery. The
latter, its errand over with the cessation of the demand for antiques
and curios, disappears to await a fresh chance. But the fake-festival
and carnival will revive, phœnix-like, with the awakening of a new
artistic world--just as though faking at certain moments answered to
a sore need of society.