The Gentle Art of Faking

ool of Padua, Venice-Imitation, plagiarism and faking-The plaquettes and their curious transformatio

agan æsthetic sentiment, a combination of Philhellenic and Latin tendencies, may as well have influenced art as life in general-a sentiment that at the moment of its maturity aroused anathematic protest from Savonarola and a momentary reaction of pietism. However, the preaching of the friar and his colossal bonfire of art treasures in Piazza del

e. It is undeniable that even before this time mythological subjects had become familiar to both painters and sculptors, artists preceding Donatello and Brunelleschi, such as Piero di Giovanni Tedesco, Nicolo di Piero Lamberti (called il Pela) and even Nanni and Antonio di Banco, show slight traces of Roman art at

ld statues, and supposing them to be animated by a mere mercenary hope, that of finding some treasure, they called the two students quelli del tesoro (treasure-seekers). It is undeniably true that however profitable their search for old coins and marble relics, their copies and study o

s all permeated with Greek and Roman reminiscences, and comes at times so close to the Græco-Roman art that it misleads connoisseurs. Speaking of Donatello's art Louis Courajod, a well-known connoisseu

t was recently attributed to Donatello or his school. No one can fail to draw a comparison bet

asm was of a higher alloy even than that of present-day collectors, who are rarely artists or even real lovers of art. Polycletus and Lysippus were Ghiberti's idols, and Greek art his worship; for the era of Imperial Rome he had no enthusiasm. His cult for the Greek went so far as to induce him to reckon time by the Olympiads in his chronology. Instead of telling us that a certain a

Intolerance, comprehensible perhaps in the early times of Constantine, when it was a crime for an artist to go to the forms of the past, had gradually sunk into traditi

ider scope. Even Ghiberti, with all the restrictions placed on his taste by his infatuation for the antique, was, according to Vasari who describes his collection, no narrow specialist in the so much p

ich was also the fate meted out to Ghiberti's collection by his relatives and heirs. Fortunately a few pieces of this stupendous collection have been saved: a fine torso of a Satyr can

hat may be, he was no faker; the art of the faker flourished when imitators had lost all artistic personality, becoming mere craftsmen catering as usual to a momentary mania. Then was the time one saw Filarete indulging in most absurd medals and portraits87 of dubious, very dubious, historical correctness; Riccio in Padua fabricating and flooding the market with charming little bronzes in which the imitation is so evident that it brings up the question as to what the art of Andrea Briesco (called il Riccio) might have been, had he chanced to be born at another epoch. Vellano also alternates fine pieces of work with little bronzes that must have been in great vogue with collectors of antiques.

fancy, but rather by the love of gain by means of fraud and fakery, is given by the

re the form was taken for the cast. In the Prado of Madrid there is also a bronze statue of the Renaissance, possibly a cast from the antique, the peculiarity of which is that the arms have b

old coins and medals. Then small bronzes88 called plaquettes, often past

nd for antiques by launching spurious products upon the market. The artists responsible for them represent what might be styled the aristocracy

examples of this statement. Hercules and Antæus is also a remarkable work by this artist, though the other is superior on account of its simplicity. Of the Flute Player there are copies of

w very little of these small statuettes of Verrocchio's, beyond attribution, but, Vasari says, Verrocchio was tempted to make them while in Rome, because he saw how appreciated were antique statuettes, so much so that even

es to have even been tempted to counterfeit Egyptian ar

ns of th

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s, imperial sandals, and have, as a remarkable contrast, wild, vulgar faces in complete disharmony with the rich decoration of the costumes. However, when this artist models horses or simple nude figures he gets closer to the

of Meleager of the Pourtales collection in Berlin, does not

sold in Rome as an antique, is very instructive. Though well known it serves admirably to illustrate the character of the amateurs contemporary to the great sculptor. The anecdote casts a certain justi

llously arranged and coloured like an old piece of sculpture, was taken to Rome, buried in a vineyard and then "discovered" and sold as an antique to Cardinal San Giorgio, who paid 200 ducats for the work (a ducat was worth about 9s.). Vasari adds that the person who had acted as go-90between in the affair tried to cheat Michelangelo by saying that the Cardinal had only paid him 30 scudi (a scudi was worth about 4s.), an

nd folklore, adding that the irate Cardinal caused the man to be arrested

t the prelate did not bear the artist a grudge for the joke. In this letter Michelangelo tells Lorenzo Medici that he has tried in vain to get the Cupid back from Baldassarre Milanese, the

Valentino, and finally became the property of the Marchioness of Mantua, who o

three good ones; besides these the many restored busts and statues of this same Gallery speak of the characteristic pliability and plagiarism in art of the Renaissance. A fine bust in bronze o

fakers of art-we feel we need not scruple to use the word in association with these names-is chiefly responsible

d have attempted to paganize his sweetly ascetic art, trying his hand at these marble bas-reliefs of Roman emperors, re-edited for the benefit of amateurs. These bas-reliefs already seem to have inveigled artists into palming them off with fanta

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Dreyfus; a third, with an identical inscription, is kept in the Modena Museum; a fourth is in the Correr Museum of

oductions of both portraits, the Aristotle being identical to92 the ones already quoted. Of Plato there are several bas-reliefs in marble, one in the Bavarian Museum of Munich, another in the Museum of Arezzo, and another in the

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II, being reproduced in clay in a medallion of the castle of Alluye at Blois. In this race for popularity in a foreign country and from a spurious origin, Plato seems to have lost nearly half a century, as we find a reproduction in the castle of Ecouen about the middle of the sixteen

ning of the sixteenth century, of a Roman Imperator Caldusiu

many antique brass figures, and many marble heads, and other valuable things," we can believe that they were genuine, but when it is

tremendous skill that the artists93 of all periods of the Renaissance seem to have p

medallions from death masks was quite common in the Quattrocento and later. Such post-mortem reproductions were o

f art. The coins, medals and small bronzes seem to emphasize the Renaissance mania for the antique. Now, for instance, after giving the portrait of Adam, Eve, Noah and Ham, Shem and Japhet, the Promptuarium iconum insigniorum a seculo hominum, published in Lyons by Guillaume Reville (1553), gives other engravings purporting to be authentic portraits of various personages of antiquity. As a matter of fact many of these portraits are copied from old medals that were circulating at the time, the work of the fiftee

tations of the antique. In these works the metamorphoses of the original are at times so numerous and so absurd as to puzzle the modern collector and cause him to speculate on the acumen of some of the connoisseurs of the past. With some of these small bronzes the metamorphosis is not in the form but in the inscription that sometimes accompanies the plaquette, but on other occasions the subject and the figures are considerably alter

form and subject of a plaquette, the fancy dis

zo il Magnifico and, according to Muntz, is now in the Naples Museum, together with many others from the same collection. In this cameo the god is on the right, playing the

ith the inscription to which Ghiberti alludes, "Nero-Avgvstvs-Germanicvs-P-M-Tr-P-Imp-Pp-." The cornelian stone kept in the Naples Museum has no inscription and for this reason is supposed by some to be a reproduction from the original ordered by Lorenzo Medici. The plaquette of the Berlin collection is thought to be cast from the original Greek cornelian stone, though there are other reproductions in various museums, one for instance in the Louvre very similar to the one of Berlin, another in the collection of Courajod, with the inscription, "Prudentia. Puritas. Tertiom. Qvod. I

ctions. There is also a plaquette of this subject in the Dreyfus collect

e one at Naples is repeated almost identically in a cornelian of the Cabinet des Medailles, in a portrait of a young girl, attributed to Botticelli, in the96 Staedel Museum of Frankfurt; on the frontispiece of a work executed for Mathias Corvinus; on

liberated by the angels. The two bas-reliefs, wrongly attributed to Pollaiolo, were ordered from some Roman artist in the year 1477 by Sixtus IV, then a simple cardinal. Of each of these bas-reliefs there is a modified reproduction, one in the Louvre and the other in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the modifications of both are such as to make people believe them to be pagan subjects and antique work. In the reproduction kept in the Louvre the transformation of the subject without much alteration of the wo

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eum, to be a work of the classic Græco-Roman period. As for over three centuries they have passed as genuine work of the Roman Empire, it is not reasonable to suppose that the amateurs of the time were wiser than the succeeding generations of connoisseurs who believed the work to be antique. This fact is eloquently brought out in the case of the work preserved in the Louvre, as this bas-relief was not h

an mention another curious example in which a Crucifixion has become a Rape of the Sabines, and as a case in which a popular subject has caused many reproductions, we quote the Palladium of the Niccoli collection which has been reproduced

rs into what might be styled his matured sixteenth-century temperament, he seems to suffer from the same trouble as98 the imitators of the first third of the said century, namely, over-polish and mannerism, which must in fact have been considered an improvement in imitation. Valerio Belli, a sculptor and famous cutter of precious stones and rock crystal, wa

o, Cavino, Bassiano. Almost every bronze founder is associated with an imitator of the antique, either a maker of statuettes, inkstands, perfume vases, or plaquettes of various sizes and use. Thus for a second time Italy became a gorgeous

s and perhaps the silent accomplices of a fine piece of faking. The Anonimo tells us that there were many such pieces in the collections of either ignorant or accommodating collectors and art lovers, in the house of Marco Bonavido of Padua, and that of a rich merchant of the same city, the sculptor Alviso; in Venice, in the collections of Odoni and Zu

did not seem to resent it even if a pupil signed the name of his master. But as regards imitating the antique, there were hardly any samples to imitate. The grotesques of the old Roman ruins may have sugge

ck. Ottaviano Medici, a lover of art and a Florentine, hating to deprive his city of such a work, was yet not inclined to resist the wish of the Pope and resorted to a ruse. He informed the Pope that the painting should be sent to the Duke, according to His Holiness' orders, as soon as the frame had been repaired. The Duke of Mantua was also informed that the frame needed regilding and that the painting should be shipped as soon as the repairs were finished. With this excuse Ottaviano Medici gained the necessary time and ordered from Andrea del Sarto an exact copy of Raphael's work, a copy that all experts would100 mistake for the original. The work was done

and care any object, that, more often than not, if the style of one of these arts of ours be well imitated by those who delight in the work of whoe

." Which comment amply justifies the observation that the learned Milanesi adds to the life of Valerio Belli, who at times, according to Va

onsequently forgers and imitators abounded; they had in fact multiplied to gr

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