W. G. Constable

“ This, too, was the method favored by Ioni for making his early Italian paintings. One great convenience of such procedures (for the forger) is that if suspicion is aroused and investigation made, it can always be alleged that the added work is merely honest restoration. Indeed, the line between restoration and forgery sometimes becomes blurred. Occasionally there appears in the art market a graft of a piece of one original onto another; its sellers would be consumed with indignation were it suggested that they had handled a forgery. ”

“ In the face of the expert, he discards the clumsy copy and the inept certificate, utilizing the improved methods of photography and reproduction and the increasing flood of learned works, to help save him from anachronisms and inherent contradictions in his work. The scientist he meets either by concentrating in fields where scientific methods of inquiry are relatively helpless, or by himself going to school with the scientist. The results of recent scientific work have put at his disposal much knowledge of what to do, what to avoid, and how to baffle certain types of investigation. ”

“ One reason is human snobbery; another, and more important, is that when an object is proved to be a forgery, it is to us no longer the same object that it was. After the discovery, human knowledge about the positive and negative qualities of the object has increased, and a new judgment has to be made upon it. ”

“ The simplest type of manufactured forgery is the straight copy, although this has considerable disadvantages. In addition to the necessity of choosing the right materials, imitating the right technique, and giving a proper appearance of age, the risks of confrontation with the original are great in these days of systematic combing of collections, aided by swift and easy travel, by photography and widespread publication. Sometimes, the forger attempts to meet this risk of confrontation by introducing variations into a design, so that the forgery may pass as a version of the original. ”

“ Structure revealed by microscopic examination must be compared with that of known substances; chemical and spectrographic analysis has to be checked by reference to a codified series of earlier tests; crackle on a surface can only be labelled as false if the nature of genuine crackle is known; 23 and the reading of whatever is discovered by X-ray, ultra-violet, or infra-red rays calls for comparison with verified results of previous examinations. The facts yielded by one method of investigation may by themselves not be sufficient evidence of forgery ”

“ It is this risk that makes forgers prefer to copy objects that are types rather than those stamped with the individuality of some particular master. The strictly controlled design and iconography of much Byzantine painting, and its 11 standardized technique, encourages modern repetition; and the putting of one more copy on the market is not in itself likely to arouse suspicion. Similarly, the fact that eighteenth-century Chinese potters paid homage to those of earlier dynasties by making most admirable copies of their work, confuses the situation in favor of the forger. ”

“ Later, the growth of scientific knowledge and religious skepticism spoiled this market; while recognition of the artist as an individual and the development of art collections stimulated production of forgeries imitating the work of particular artists or of particular epochs. ”

“ More elaborate is examination under various rays of the spectrum, to which the human eye is not sensitive but whose results can be recorded. The best known of these is X-ray, which penetrates certain substances but is held up in different degrees by others, especially metals, so that a photographic film behind an object will record a map of such substances in an object, thus revealing much 22 that is below the surface. On the other hand, ultra-violet rays falling on a surface cause fluorescence, which varies according to substance and texture, so that additions to the surface may be revealed. ”

“ In the detection of two particular types of forgery they are especially useful. Imitations of contemporary work can be very baffling, since the forger works with materials which were or might have been used in genuine work, does not have to give an appearance of age, and works against the same general background as does the artist he imitates. ”

“ The unaided human eye, if it has a trained and well-informed mind behind it, can go a long way in detecting forgeries. It is surprising how forgetful, careless, or ignorant a forger can be. He may employ materials whose inconsistency with the period to which his work claims to belong can be seen even by the unaided eye. More common is the introduction of such things as types and details of costume, or the use of coats of arms, that are later than the alleged date of the work. All such evidence, however, needs scrutiny, since it may simply be a case of later additions to a genuine object. ”

“ Decisive proof that an object is not of the period or by the hand to which it is attributed comes only through the discovery of facts which are not only inconsistent with the attribution but cannot be explained except by assuming that the attribution is wrong. For instance, the body of a work may contain a substance unknown at its ostensible date. Modern nails inside a piece of wood sculpture said to be of the fourteenth century; cobalt, unknown as a pigment until the early nineteenth century, in a painting attributed to Velázquez ”

“ True, the only merit of snap opinions based on defective sensibility and inadequate experience is that they have a fifty-fifty chance of being right; but with sensibility backed by knowledge, an almost supra-rational instinct develops as to what is genuine or false. ”

“ A forgery of fourteenth-century Italian wood sculpture by Dossena.
An X-ray revealed modern nails in the interior.
That, perhaps, is why forgers have on occasion virtually abandoned the use of models, either wholly or in part, and produced objects different from anything that is known, but which could fit into some particular historical or cultural background. Here, they are exploiting not only ignorant enthusiasm but 13 the desire among the learned to extend knowledge of little-known epochs of human history, or to find material that will justify theories about them. ”

“ It is often forgotten that such almost instinctive judgments are not confined to art and archaeology. They play an important part in the sciences (where they are called hypotheses) , in politics, in war, in business, and many other fields. Their value varies with the men who make them ”

“ The exploitation of genuine work, however, often takes much simpler forms than that described above. The signature of a master may be added to a school piece, or to anything that bears some superficial resemblances to his work; sometimes, indeed, the addition is to a work by the master himself, to convince the doubting and to increase its sale value. ”

“ This avoids the risk of comparison with a more or less identical original, and helps in passing off the forgery as an unknown example of the style it imitates. It was on this basis that Bastianini, Rouchomovski, and Dossena worked, as did the German painter Roerich in his 12 imitations of Cranach and other early German masters. Usually such imitations of a style do not embody a new conception or an original idea; for the most part they consist of borrowings from original works, pieced together to make a more or less consistent whole. ”

“ Artists are apt to be forgetful as to what they have produced, especially in the case of sketches, and have been known to deny authorship of perfectly genuine work; so that risks of confrontation are not too great. ”

“ Of these, one includes various techniques for extending the range of human vision. The simplest is examination by microscope, which enables characteristics of a surface to be seen that would otherwise be invisible, so that, for example, painted cracks or cracks artificially induced can be distinguished from crackle due to age. With the microscope, too, evidence of removals and additions can be obtained, such as the manipulation of signatures and inscriptions, or the presence of repaint or artificial patina ”