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 dayNobili, Riccardo
History
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
Nobili, Riccardo
Art -- Forgeries; Collectors and collecting; Forgery of antiquities
the most eloquent is the decoration of the castle of Gaillon, where
there are some medallions with portraits of Roman emperors of a most
mystifying character. Though the work of Italians of the end of the
Quattrocento they were classified as antique (_antiqualles_) only a few
years later, at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
An evident proof that Quattrocento imitations were not always directed
by artistic fancy, but rather by the love of gain by means of fraud and
fakery, is given by the fact that some of the statuettes imitating the
antique were cast with broken limbs.
The Ambras collection of Vienna has one of these curious specimens--a
charming figure, a female nude. This piece has evidently been cast
without arms, the clay model having been mutilated before the form
was taken for the cast. In the Prado of Madrid there is also a bronze
statue of the Renaissance, possibly a cast from the antique, the
peculiarity of which is that the arms have been added afterwards, as
though in restoration. The metal of the arms is of a different alloy
and the modelling of these parts purports to be of a much later date
than the rest of the statue.
The first pieces to show a positive character of fakery are imitations
of old coins and medals. Then small bronzes called _plaquettes_, often
_pastiches_ of antique models, when not actually reproductions from old
cameos.
The Renaissance has also produced many bronze statuettes that seem to
have had no other purpose than to take in the amateur--to gratify his
demand for antiques by launching spurious products upon the market.
The artists responsible for them represent what might be styled the
aristocracy of fakers; there is nothing banal about them, their work is
generally good, so much so that these imitations have now acquired a
value _per se_.
Antonio Pollaiolo, the Florentine sculptor, is one of the most charming
imitators of the antique. The Flute Player of the National Museum
of Florence is perhaps one of the most convincing examples of this
statement. Hercules and Antæus is also a remarkable work by this
artist, though the other is superior on account of its simplicity.
Of the Flute Player there are copies of the same period in the Cluny
Museum and at Avignon. Curiously enough this statuette tempted even the
pencil of Raphael, who reproduced it in a sketch-book now kept in the
Academy of Venice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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