ABOVE: A forgery (partly cleaned for examination) of a fifteenth-century Florentine portrait, compared with a genuine example (BELOW). The forgery is on an old panel, but was finally proved false by the presence of titanium white, a twentieth-century pigment.
A simple and widespread means of falsifying in this way is a certificate of authorship and genuineness. Sometimes, the writers of these are of the highest competence and probity. These two qualities are not always combined, however; and the certificate then becomes either intentionally or innocently misleading. Unfortunately, most certificates are written for a fee, and there is always temptation for the writer to err on the side of pleasing his employer; while there is no question that sometimes certificates have been given deliberately to defraud. Moreover, forged certificates bearing reputable names are not unknown, a special variety being the stringing together of words from a genuine letter, with all qualifying or negative phrases omitted. There is, however, a more insidious method of giving a certificate, that of publication of an object in a reliable journal. Editors are generally careful enough; but they are defenseless in the face of a plausible case put forward by a name of some reputation, especially when the passage relating to the object is included in a more general context. This kind of certification is particularly difficult to cope with, since such articles will continue to be cited in later publications, perhaps mainly to controvert them but nevertheless renewing their availability for dishonest purposes.
Construction of false pedigrees is another means of misrepresentation, much used in the case of copies or versions. Sometimes, a pedigree is completely false, naming imaginary former owners whose existence cannot be proved but equally cannot be disproved. Sometimes, such history as the object may have is grafted onto that of another and accepted version, so that the two may become confused. A special case of this is the planting out of objects in houses whose owners are ready, for a consideration, to describe them as having descended in the family, or even as having been bought from the maker by an ancestor.
The skill, ingenuity, and knowledge of the forger and of those who exploit his work, are opposed to the skill, ingenuity, and knowledge of the collector and the learned world. The unaided human eye, if it has a trained and well-informed mind behind it, can go a long way in detecting forgeries. It is surprising how forgetful, careless, or ignorant a forger can be. He may employ materials whose inconsistency with the period to which his work claims to belong can be seen even by the unaided eye. More common is the introduction of such things as types and details of costume, or the use of coats of arms, that are later than the alleged date of the work. All such evidence, however, needs scrutiny, since it may simply be a case of later additions to a genuine object. More useful, therefore, may be tracking down the source of a forger’s borrowings. If, for example, these at first sight seem to come from an original work, but follow much more closely the variations from that original in a later copy or engraving, the conclusion is obvious. Again, investigation of pedigrees, checking of literary references, searching through exhibition records, may all reveal suspicious or occasionally damning evidence of falsified history.
ABOVE: A forgery of a portrait by Cranach, and (BELOW) a genuine example. A style forgery, skillful, but coarser than an original.
To tests based on observation and historical verification, we must add those mainly dependent on feeling. For the sensitive and trained observer, a number of indefinable characteristics will “add up” to a definite conviction of genuine or false. Qualities of surface and handling, subtleties in color and in the definition of form, the degree of unity in conception and treatment, and the emotional character of the work are among the things which influence such decisions. Thus, a copy, however exact, may reveal itself as lacking the coherence and the feeling which inspired the original; and the most skillful imitation of some older work may be recognized as a creation of its own time. Nobody can completely divorce himself from the prevailing thoughts, opinions, assumptions, feelings, and standards of his own period; and inevitably these will color whatever he produces, whether he be a forger or an original artist.
Scorn is often poured on judgments of the type described, and the expert who produces them in a court of law is the delight of the skillful cross-examiner. True, the only merit of snap opinions based on defective sensibility and inadequate experience is that they have a fifty-fifty chance of being right; but with sensibility backed by knowledge, an almost supra-rational instinct develops as to what is genuine or false. The so-called impression or hunch is, in such circumstances, more accurately described as a synthesis of many experiences. It is often forgotten that such almost instinctive judgments are not confined to art and archaeology. They play an important part in the sciences (where they are called hypotheses), in politics, in war, in business, and many other fields. Their value varies with the men who make them; but this does not lessen their potential value, and their occasional indispensability. In the detection of two particular types of forgery they are especially useful. Imitations of contemporary work can be very baffling, since the forger works with materials which were or might have been used in genuine work, does not have to give an appearance of age, and works against the same general background as does the artist he imitates. Similarly, a school piece which is misrepresented as the work of an old master, was produced in a similar physical and emotional environment. In such cases, a final verdict often has to be based on nothing but imponderable elements of style, realizable only through feeling based on knowledge.