The Gentle Art of Faking / A history of the methods of producing imitations & spurious works of art from the earliest times up to the present day

by Riccardo Nobili

Marsyas

An excellent work by Pollajolo after the antique.

There is no reason to disbelieve the supposition that this piece of faking was perpetrated to cater for the mania of the art lover of the time. As a matter of fact the Louvre bas-relief was considered an antique till but recently, and that of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which entered the collection wrongly labelled as the work of Ghiberti, was believed, before 1863, when it was acquired by the Museum, 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 hidden but has quite a long and well-established pedigree. Among other migrations we can trace it to Malmaison in a sort of select collection of objects coming from Italy. Edme Durand bought it as an antique and in the belief that it was antique kept it in his collection. The Louvre Museum also bought it for an antique and for quite a long time classified it in the catalogue (N. 280) as an Etruscan bronze.

It would take too long to trace all the transformations of small bronzes made for the benefit of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century amateurs, the many reproductions with changes. Of the metamorphoses to which plaquettes were subject we can 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 by Donatello, Nicolo Florentino, etc. The statue of Marcus Aurelius also seems to have been a cherished subject for small statuettes from that by Filarete given to Piero Medici in the year 1465 to reproductions of the seventeenth century.

Of all the workmen of that fertile period running between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Moderno was the most active and versatile. There is hardly a mythological subject that has not been treated by him. His imitation of the antique is at times quite convincing, more especially that belonging to the early period of his career. Later on when he enters into what might be styled his matured sixteenth-century temperament, he seems to suffer from the same trouble as 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, was quite justified in reproducing the subject of his own carving in the small bronze bas-reliefs that now play such an important part in modern collections of plaquettes, and which in times gone by must have been the delight also of past collectors. They often bore his signature, which speaks eloquently for the fact that there was no intention to dupe anyone.

There were also other artists who evidently had a hand in faking antiques. They belong more or less to various schools, but chiefly to those of Padua and Venice. The Paduan school is in this respect fortified by the names of Vittore Camelio, 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 market of imitation, very often in itself such good art as to be worthier than the art counterfeited. One of the last of these imitators was Tiziano Aspetti, to whom, rightly or wrongly, small bronzes of private collections are attributed.

From the Anonimo Morelliano one gathers that there was a period in which a gentleman could hardly afford to do without a little collection of antiques. “The bronze figurines are modern by various masters and are derived from the antique,” remarks this Anonimo of Morelli, as though explaining that there were some collectors perfectly satisfied with this 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 Zuanno Ram. They are often mingled with genuine antiques, which fact causes the Anonimo, who evidently thinks himself either a connoisseur or a well-informed chronicler, to say here and there, “the many bronze figurines are modern,” or “the many medals are of modern bronze,” or “the medals are most of them antique.” Precious confessions, as one can see.

We know but vaguely of imitations in painting, but an assembly of such versatile artists can hardly have refrained from imitating the work of some master. Besides, the very teacher at the head of a school 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 suggested to more than one artist a new type of decoration; but this plagiarism, if it can be called so, though not without influence on fifteenth and sixteenth-century art, found no practical issue with fakers.

There is, however, an incident in which a piece of faking saved to Florence a masterpiece of Raphael. It is related by Vasari in Andrea del Sarto’s life. According to Vasari when Frederick II, Duke of Mantua, came to Florence he greatly admired the portrait of Pope Leo X, the magnificent painting now hanging in the Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence. His admiration turned to such greedy desire of possession that when he reached Rome he begged the then all-powerful Clement VII to procure it for him. The Pope agreed to the Duke’s request and ordered Ottaviano Medici, then residing in Florence, to have the painting packed and sent to Mantua to Duke Frederick. 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 would mistake for the original. The work was done to such perfection that even Ottaviano Medici, who was an art connoisseur, could not tell the original from the copy: the pseudo-Raphael was sent off, the Duke was duped and one of the finest portraits by Raphael was saved to Florence. In Vasari there are comments here and there which lead us to think that many others may have been duped by the versatility of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century painters. We know that Bellini’s pupils finished three-quarters of some of the great Venetian master’s works, that Calchar imitated Titian so closely as to be taken for the great Vecelli, but we do not know to what extent lovers of art of the time may have been duped.

As for sculpture, we may close this study by quoting what Vasari writes in the life of Vellano. “So great is the power of counterfeiting with love 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 whoever it be, the thing that imitates so closely resembles the thing imitated, that no difference can be detected, except by the most experienced eye.”