Greek vases are not so easy to imitate as terracotta figures, the main difficulty being the black varnish, which can never be successfully reproduced. Acids or alcohol will always remove modern counterfeits, but cannot touch the original substance. Since the discovery in Greece of white-ground vases forgers have had a better chance, and they have often ingeniously availed themselves of genuine ancient vases on which to place modern paintings. But the antique drawing is exceedingly difficult to imitate. In former times Pietro Fondi established manufactories at Venice and Corfu, and the Vasari family at Venice, for fictitious vases,[[66]] and many such imitations have been made at Naples for the purpose of modern decoration.
The first to make such an attempt in England was the famous potter Wedgwood, whose copy of the Portland Vase is well known. His paste is, however, too heavy, and his drawings far inferior to the antique in freedom and spirit. At Naples, chiefly through the researches and under the direction of Gargiulo, vases were produced, which in their paste and glaze resembled the antique, although the drawings were vastly inferior, and the imitation could be at once detected by a practised eye. They were, indeed, far inferior in all essential respects to the ancient vases. Even soon after the acquisition of the Hamilton collection by the public, the taste created for these novelties caused various imitations to be produced. Some of the simplest kind were made of wood, covered with painted paper, the subjects being traced from the vases themselves, and this was the most obvious mode of making them. Battam also made very excellent facsimiles of these vases, but they were produced in a manner very different from that of the ancient potters, the black colour for the grounds or figures not being laid on with a glaze, but merely with a cold pigment which had not been fired, and their lustre was produced by a polish. In technical details they did not equal the imitations made at Naples, some of the best of which deceived both archaeologists and collectors.
Sometimes illustrations of vases which never had any real existence have appeared in publications. One of the most remarkable of these fabricated engravings was issued by Bröndsted and Stackelberg in a fit of archaeological jealousy. A modern archaeologist is seen running after a draped woman called
, or “Fame,” who flies from him exclaiming,
, “A long way off, my fine fellow!” This vase, which never existed except upon paper, deceived the credulous Inghirami, who too late endeavoured to cancel it from his work. Other vases, evidently false, have also been published.[[67]]
M. Tyszkiewicz, the great collector, in his entertaining Souvenirs,[[68]] gives some interesting illustrations of the methods of Italian forgers of vases, of which he had frequent experience. “The Neapolitans,” he says, “excel above all others in this industry; and it is in ancient Capua, now Sta. Maria di Capua Vetere, that the best ateliers for the manufacture of painted vases are situated.” But “even the famous connoisseur Raimondi, who was considered the master of his art at Sta. Maria—even he could never invent altogether the decoration of a vase so as to make it pass for an antique. Only if this talented artist could get just a few fragments of a fine vase, he was clever enough to be able, by the aid of illustrations of vases in museums or in private collections, to reconstruct the whole subject. He replaced the missing parts, and threw such an air of uniformity over the vase that it was almost impossible to tell what was modern. But if you tried to wash a vase faked up in this manner, in pure alcohol chemically rectified, you would find that the modern portions would vanish, while the ancient paintings would remain. Neither Raimondi nor any one else could ever manage to discover the secret of the ancient potters—how to obtain the background of a brilliant black colour, improperly known as the varnish of Nola. To disguise their failure in this respect, the forgers are obliged, when the vase is entirely reconstructed and repainted, to cover it all over with a varnish of their own invention; but the surface of this varnish, although brilliant, lacks the freshness and brightness of that used by the ancients. Relatively this surface appears dull, and vanishes the moment it is washed with alcohol.”
At Athens also, says M. Tyszkiewicz, laboratories have been established for making vases, of which he was acquainted with three. These forgers excel in turning out the white-ground vases, which, even when antique, cannot resist the action of alcohol. For the same reason they apply gilding to their black-and-red vases, because this also yields to its action. The large prices fetched by the white vases (see below) have stimulated their activity in this direction, and their efforts have not been without artistic merit, though failing in technique.[[69]]
On the subject of forgeries in relation to Greek vases the literature is very scanty; but reference may be made to Prof. Furtwaengler’s Neuere Fälschungen von Antiken, which raises some very interesting questions in regard to forgeries, though his conclusions may sometimes be thought rather arbitrary.