| Supposed Portrait of the Poet Bastianini Benivieni | [Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Marcus Aurelius | [48] |
| Diomedes with the Palladium | [72] |
| Imitations of the Antique | [88] |
| Marsyas | [96] |
| The Spinario | [120] |
| A Child. By Ferrante Lampini | [136] |
| San Giovanni | [136] |
| Athlete | [144] |
| The Battesimo | [152] |
| Bacchus | [152] |
| The Resurrection | [184] |
| Pietà | [184] |
| A Portrait | [192] |
| A Child. By Donatello | [200] |
| An Imitation of Roman Work | [240] |
| An Imitation of Sixteenth-century Work | [240] |
| A Mantelpiece | [266] |
| A Lamp | [266] |
| Plaquettes by Various Artists | [272] |
| Europa on the Bull | [288] |
THE GENTLE ART OF
FAKING
Part I
THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF FAKING
CHAPTER I
GREEKS AND ROMANS AS ART COLLECTORS
Why the Greeks by not being collectors in the modern sense were spared faking in art—How the Romans became interested in art—Genesis of their art collections—The first collectors and their methods—Noted citizen’s indictment against art plundering of Roman conquerors—Attitude of noted writers towards art, and art collecting.
The collector, the chief patron of fakery, being somewhat of a selfish lover of art, it is quite natural that the Greeks, who saw in art a grand means of public education and enjoyment, cannot be called art collectors in the modern sense of the word. Consequently there was hardly room for sham art in a country where art as the direct emanation of public spirit was rigorously maintained for the sake of the people. It was the temples that became art emporiums—museums that everyone was allowed to enjoy—or free institutions, like the pinacotheca of the Acropolis, the collection of carved stone at the Parthenon, the gymnasium of the Areopagus, containing a collection of busts of the most celebrated philosophers. With this public spirit in the enjoyment of art Delphi gathered a famous picture gallery in the oracular temple and, according to Pliny, possessed no fewer than three thousand statues, one of them being the famous golden Apollo. From this temple Nero carried off five hundred bronze statues, and later on Constantine removed many of the remaining works of art to Constantinople. An identical spirit of public enjoyment of art had turned the temples of Juno in Olympia, of Minerva in Platæa and Syracuse into veritable museums of art and—curiosities also. The temple of Minerva at Lyndon in the island of Rhodes, for instance, contained a cup of electrum (amber) offered by Helen of Troy, which was said to have a cavity cut to the exact shape of the bosom of the beautiful wife of Paris (Pliny, XXXIII, 23).
That the Greeks at their highest historical level did not indulge in the private and artistic delights of the collector may also be gathered from the poor construction of their usual dwelling-houses. It is well known that thieves, more especially in Athens, were called “wall breakers,” and obtained this odd nickname from their peculiar method of entering houses, namely, by making a hole through the wall rather than troubling to unlock the door. Such flimsy dwellings can hardly have sheltered the treasures of an art collection. Thus simplicity of customs and a clearly defined manner of enjoying art, saved the Greeks to a great extent from a regular trade in antiques with all its strange and deplorable etceteras.
As a matter of fact, we have no information as to anything that might be called a private art collection in Athens, though quite consistently, considering their extreme passion for knowledge, the Greeks had fine private libraries, such as those of Aristotle and Theophrastus. But even these, though containing the rarest and most precious works, were true libraries, not collections of elaborate volumes. The mania for fine bindings of costly materials was later on the caprice of the learned Roman, not of the Greek.