The Gentle Art of Faking

tators and fakers-Cola di Rienzi, archæologist-A collection of the fourteenth century-Artists, writers and travellers hunt

xpression which had deeply affected their artistic temperament. Were these artists doing it purely for art's sake, or had they the hope that their work might pass as antique? The answer to this is perhaps to be deduced from the character of the ag

he art of the past. It is no more a question of solid silver and jewels, but of statues and paintings. Catalogues no longer read like that of Charles VI of France: "Inventoire des joyaux, vaiselle d'or et d'argent estant au Louvre et en la Bastille à Paris a

ith inscriptions cut into marble, which were to be found round Rome. No one could decipher the ancient epitaphs like him. He translated all the ancient writings and gave the right i

bove year of 1335 he came to Venice to buy several pieces for his collection, manuscripts of the works of Seneca, Ovid, Sallust, Cicero, Titus, Livius, etc., goldsmiths' work, fifty medals that had been

escription handed down to us by Guillebert de Metz. It gives a full account of the collection of Jacques Duchie, a Parisi

aces far and near, to the right and to the left. Item, a study the walls of which were covered with precious stones and with spices of sweet odour. Item, several other rooms richly furnished with beds and with ingeniously carved tables and adorned with rich hangings and cloth of gold. Item, in another lofty room were a great number of cross-bows, some of which were painted with beautiful figures. Here were standards, banners, pennons, bows, pikes, swords, lances, battle-axes, iron and lead armour, pavais, shields, bucklers, cannon and other engines, with arms in abundance, and, briefly, there were also all manner of war implements. Item, there was a window of wonderful workmanship,

imply curious; on the contrary we are confronted by real connoisseurs and genuine lovers of art, intelligent and eager hunters after all sorts of a

he Cosmati appeared to be a Byzantine aping Roman art, all that seemed plagiarism of this classic art in Nicola Pisano, takes an interestingly different course with Donatello,

Dondi, a physician from Padua, who visited Rome in the year 1375 to crown a long course of study devoted to the antique. In a letter addressed to his friend Guglielmo da Cremona, Giovanni proclaims the superiority of antique art and is certain that moder

pts and relics of art; Francesco Squarcione comes from the East, bringing to his native Padua fine Greek works, and is perhaps the first art

ot

in

with the

School (?) and a free copy of Niccoli's cam

city walls. The Chancellor of the city of Padua addressed him in a letter as "clarissimus vetustatis cultor." Notwithstanding his great wealth, such was his passion that but for the discreet help of the Medici, the powerful Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo, who became Niccoli's benevolent bankers, on more than one occasion this enlightened amateur might have been forced to sell his precious collection, or at least do that which is most hateful to the true lover of art, sell the best that years of patient work had gathered together. What is most surprising is the fact that Niccoli managed to make one of the finest collections of art of his day almost without leaving his native city. We know of him as going once to Padua to secure a rare manuscript of Petrarch, and later on as accompanying his friend and protector, Cosimo Medici, to Verona, a trip the latter undertook in the year 1420. With Cosimo again he visited Rome, to be horrified at the mutilation inflicted upon the Eternal City by barbarians of all ages and denominations. Yet without moving from his native city, keen-eyed Niccoli managed to search the world73 with the help of agents and friends-some of them, no doubt, the practised servants of the Medicis. There was hardly a rare thing discovered, no matter where, but the fact ca

es was always to be dressed in pink. He had an endless wardrobe of these rosy-hued garments and was as preoccupied with them as he was with the rare objects of his collection. These and other oddities were naturally the subject of gibes and sarcasm from friends and unfriendly humanists, but Niccoli never answered one written line,74 content to retaliat

ors, the Medicis, the family who as collectors of art and foster

iccoli, become rather minor stars when compared with the artistic treasures gathered by the Medicis for generations. T

enthusiastic amateurs have given themselves to its enrichment; the greatest artists, Donatello, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, the two Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael have sought inspiratio

n in the year 1494, when Piero Medici fled and the Medici palace was sacked by the populace and the remaining effects sold and dispersed by order of the Commune. What was later recovered75 by the family was only a small part of the collection. An idea of the magnitude of the Medici

the Medici family, Cosimo and Lorenzo il Magnifico, will enable us to

avoid arousing enmity from adversaries. But for this peculiar feeling Cosimo's palace, the present Palazzo Riccardi, one of the most sumptuous monuments of Florence, might have been still more imposing, displaying greater architectural wealth. It is known that Brunelleschi's project was privately preferred by Cosimo, but he did not dare to arouse old jealousies by too sumptuous a display. Michelozzo's de

f the word collector, while the latter, as being far too eclectic a lover of all sorts of artistic expression, was more cut out for the part of an enlightened Mæcenas, a prince-amateur and a generous patron of art and literature. One can hardly even imagine the Magnifico classifying his cameos as did Niccoli, or giving a semi-scientific and rational order to his objects of virtu, but, running on the same lines as Cosimo, Lorenzo invested in the rôle of patron of art and lover of the antique, in wh

d admirers have full benefit of his collection. More than the gratification of an egotistic desire to possess rare an

. A page of Plato or the beautiful form of a Greek marble aroused in him feelings of emotion more than any modern expressio

s contemporaries tells us, "when he received

o his son Giulio, the future Leo X, on his promotion to the Cardinalate, he gives advice as to the kind of art which is most in keeping with ecclesiastical taste, but as a matter of fact epitomizes his own penchant as a collector of art. Urg

neur, æsthete and humanist. Paul II is a passionate collector of art, but more a scholar than an artist, with him knowledge is supreme; Cardinal Scarampi is, as Ciriaco D'Ancona calls him, an archæologist, and Niccoli, as an eager and intelligent s

en for Greek but is now attributed to Donatello. The Duke of Calabria asks him for an architect, and he sends him one; in the year 1488 he sends to Ferdinand, king of Naples, a fine plan of a palace by Giuliano da Sangallo, and78 later he introduces Leonardo da Vinci to Lodovico il Moro, Filippino Lippi to Cardinal Carafa, Sansovino to the king of Portugal. In connection with odd requests that came to Lore

ainly had no scruples about using public funds for his private purposes. Not that he was fond of personal

ety functions. "All the things that in olden days," says Rinuccini, "gave grace and reputation to the citizens; like weddin

sion to Rome at the elevation to the Holy See of Cardinal Della Rovere. "In the month of September, 1471, I was sent as ambassador to attend the coronation of Pope Sixtus. I was the recipient of many hono

excavating and looking for antiques79 to add to his collection. His intercourse with these accomplices, the ruses employed, the adroit managemen

in our modern museums. Then came a fine collection of coins and medals, 23,000 pieces in all, and another of Etruscan vases. His st

ot into the Magnifico's collection. Politiano writes from Venice to his friend and patron on June 20th, 1491, that Messer Zaccharia has just received from Greece una terra cotta antiquissima and that he believes

ation and willingness to pay whatever it might be worth, we quote part of his letter dated May 15th, 1490, addressed to Andrea da Foiano then at Siena. "Ser Andrea, I received your letter last night, and wi

held from one side it had a benign expression, and from the other a terrifying one. Naples also contributed its share to the Medicean collection, from whence arrive the portraits of Faustina and Sc

he Pope's authority managed to silence, and the Medici collection became enriched by many fine pieces. Among them, the so-called "Tazza Farnese," now one of the finest pieces of the Naples Museum, to which the inventory of the collection gives a value of 10,000 ducats, and the rare Greek work known as the "Rape of the Palladium," rated by the same inventory at the sum of 1500 ducats. This celebrated cameo had formerly belonged to Niccoli. Donatello copied it

ons were carried on for quite a time. Knowing Mantegna's straightened circumstances, Isabella coolly and almost cruelly waited the favourable moment to take best advantage of the artist's distressing situation. Pressed by all sorts of needs, the aged artist finally decides to part with his best antique, the portrait of Faustina, a work of art he adored. Conscious of having served the house of Gonzaga most faithfully and knowing Isabella's intelligence and admiration for his bust of "Faustina antica," as he calls it, he determined to offer her the work for a hundred ducat

a and will act as shrewdly as possible about the Faustina (farò l'opera con più destro e acconcio modo s

through the agent go on, till one day the latter82 announces to the Marchesa Isabella Gonzaga that she has become the possessor of the Faustina antica, which is already shipped to her (Mando per burchiello a posta la Faustina a S.V.), provided she agrees to the price; if not the agent begs that the bust may be sent back, in accordance with his promise given to

Excitement over antiques had now become a mania, and this is perha

enzo Medici, the Duke of Urbino, Este, Gonzaga, Sforza, Arragona, d

an excellent imitation of Michelangelo, because, though having deceived him and many others, it was not actually genuine, although far better than some of the rubbish of his collection which contained indiscriminatingly anything that had