The simple imitator, the man who honestly declares his work to be modern, though of a higher moral standard than his comrade the forger, is no more likely to win our admiration. The difference between the two, artistically speaking, is that the one is apt to irritate us from the first, the other only after we have been “taken in,” the first cheats himself alone when he believes his patchwork to be good art, the second is ready to deceive any and everyone who credits his artistic lies. High above these two classes, however, stand a few gifted beings who seem to have actually imbibed the artistic qualities of Renaissance art to such an extent as to have attained a new and genuine personality--modern in date but old and faithful to the past in creative conception. In this case, imitation becoming creative, as we have said, it rises to the rank of real art. Up to the present, since Bastianini’s excellent work was first launched, many of the imitators who followed and who have successfully duped museums and art lovers, belong to the commonplace order. Their success is chiefly due to the deficiency and lack of practice among curators, collectors and connoisseurs at large. The more recent imitations that have deceived some of the most experienced eyes in Florence, Munich and Paris have revealed the names of two sculptors, Zampini and Natali, who apart from their imitative ability may, like Bastianini, be studied and admired _per se_. Both these artists have some points in common with the sculptor who puzzled all the French connoisseurs of the Second Empire. Both, like Bastianini and other good and honest imitators, have made the fortunes of others, not their own; like him, too, have sold their products as modern, only to realize that as soon as believed antique they reached fabulous figures. The portrait bust of Girolamo Benivieni--for which Bastianini received 350 francs--was finally sold to the Louvre for 14,000 francs. Before landing in the Paris Museum it had passed through the hands of Freppa--a Florentine antiquary--Nolives, a connoisseur who travelled in Italy in search of “finds,” and Nieuwerkerque, Princess Mathilde Bonaparte’s all-powerful protégé, who was responsible for its acquisition by the Museum. This classic piece of fakery is worth recalling in all its details, together with the stir succeeding Bastianini’s declaration of himself as the author of the Benivieni bust and the humiliating figure cut by the officially recognized connoisseurs and art critics after the _dénouement_.