Authentications & Attributions

December 18 2021

A cornerstone for the Modigliani saga?

Art Test Authentications & Attributions, Exhibitions 0

Not an anthology, not all possible Modiglianis, not a way to propose new Modiglianis, but an exhibition where he was more present than many other times. And a new concept from which, perhaps, we can finally find new ground for the attributions.

The Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, d’Art Contemporain et d’Art Brut in Lille created what for us can be called an epochal exhibition on the Italian Amedeo and French Modi’. Announced for some time, but blocked due to COVID, we have been keeping an eye on its opening for about a year, crossing our fingers and hoping to be finally able to visit it, and … we did!

3 large rooms, 3 paintings, lots of photos and videos to scientifically document Modigliani.

An exhibition that has hit the mark in all its parts. Life-size reproductions of many paintings by Modigliani (including those on display), all photographed “front and back” welcome the visitors. It is a stunning wiew on it own, but it also allow to see and study both the front and back of the artworks, to see the strecher, the labels, everything that is not normally shown, as if it was not part of the painting.

There are only three autography artworks in total on exhibit, and only one not in the permanent museum collection, however, a series of other “expedients” enrich the experience and allow you to get to know the works and the painter in depth.
On a monitor the diagnostic techniques and the results obtained with UV fluorescence, IR reflectography and radiography are illustrated. In the central area, in what is normally a fineart transport crate, another monitor shows a video on the approach of a restorer to a work by Modigliani.
In the same room there is also a documentary in which it is shown, with diagnostic images how Modigliani reused the sane canvas almost 10 times.

Finally, a third room where the stretcher, which has a far from marginal role for the attribution of works to this artist, is the protagonist, together with the pigments and binders chosen by Modì, which are also exhibited.

On the walls, in addition to the artworks, a number of panels in which various themes are addressed, with a lot of extra information; for example, a map of the shops where Modì got supplies in Paris, but also a study on how an observer’s eye moves on a Modì painting and why.

We would liked to see such exhibitions more often. We give kudos to those who bet on showing what is not visible to the naked eye and dare to exhibit what is normally hidden.

But this exhibition is something more. It is the first step for a “free” study of Modigliani’s works, on the basis of certain and publicly-owned works, shared scientific investigations, analyses performed by a laboratory of excellence (CRMF2), and the decision to use the budget that is normally reserved for covering the loan and handling of the works, for something that will enrich the exhibition, provide the works with a diagnostic curriculum that will be useful for their conservation and, finally, help scholar to know more about how Modigliani painted.

What more could you want?

(Emanuela Massa)

December 18 2021

“The scientist and the forger workshop”: we need a shared protocol to identify fakes

Emanuela Authentications & Attributions, Conferences, Highlights 0

How to authenticate a work of art? How to reveal forgeries?

On 2 and 3 December 2021, as a result of an excellent initiative of the Italian Group of the International Institute for Conservation, the workshop “The scientist and the forgery – Scientific methodologies to identify fakes in art” was held in Lucca.

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is the need to tackle this issue in a structured way. During the conference, the many angles from which to address it were discussed: art market, authentication, attribution, dating, stylistic analyses.

At the center of the discussion is the false / falsified / misattributed / authentic object, studied by many, intersecting but not superimposable, professional disciplines that must be able to communicate in a constructive way, to the benefit of the whole community, not just the scientific one.

In fact a forgery, if not recognized as such, not only causes economic losses to those who are defrauded, but can also cause a broader, social damage: it modifies the course of things, the real history of art, providing a distorted version which impacts on all possible conclusions from it.

Art–Test presented the case study of a panel by Bruegel the Younger, wishing to contribute by bringing attention to what we now consider an urgency that can no longer be postponed. A shared protocol for a scientific study of artefacts, structured in a pyramidal manner that adds layers of in-depth analyses depending on previous results.

In addition, the minimum characteristics of the instrumentation to be used for the analises need to be defined, as well as which methodologies are useful and in which order they should be applied. This approach is essential to enable an accurate interpretation and a possible replicability of the measurements.

Furthermore, there is a lack of shared guidelines for the reports provided by the laboratories after carrying out the analyses. Often what is provided is only a generic description of the results, but the raw data obtained are not included, nor the description of the instrumentation and methodology used.

At the same time, we wanted to highlight that there are still too few public databases from which to draw scientific information.

By sharing data we should not be afraid of favoring counterfeiters, as although they may become increasingly aware of the techniques used by the great masters; it is equally true that science, as amply demonstrated, will always be one step ahead.

What we should be concerned of, once again, is the anti-scientific attitude that currently afflicts so many parts of our society, and the narrative that sees the self-declared connoisseurs capable of producing expertise only on the basis of their “eye”.

The workshop ended with the desire to create a technical workgroup to discuss, based on the different perspectives and experience, a base protocol to be applied for investigations and instruments.

The proceedings of the conference will soon be available.

November 8 2021

Is the National Gallery Samson and Delilah a fake?

Filippo Melli art market, art world, Authentications & Attributions, Fake, Instruments, Technology 0

“My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size, (…) has ever surpassed my courage“. So wrote about himself Pieter Paul Rubens, also known as “Pietro Paolo” since he had lived in Italy for 8 years and in Italy developed his style and his “trademark”.

Well, yes, you can talk about Rubens using industry terms, as if he was managing a factory, given the incredible organization that he imprinted on his very crowded workshop. In fact, he relied on a atelier with dozens of students that the master guided and directed like an orchestra conductor.

Rubens was to fascinate the clients with his speeches, then probably made a drawing for them, then a monochrome sketch and then a colored one, all to get their approval. At that point, the sketches passed into the large workshop on the ground floor of his noble home in Antwerp, where the “students” brought back the inventions of the master on the chosen support, canvas or wood, enlarging them, with Rubens sometimes adding only the last retouching.

With this organization of the work, in fact, different types of artworks could be created, from the totally autograph paintings to replicas with a more or less extensive intervention by the master. You could have those painted by him only in some essential parts, and others in which he the simply revised the artwork. The workshop itself produced paintings of very different quality, also depending on who was assigned to the job, and the given subject: from those elaborated from the master’s design to the mere copy.

However, apparently, the famous painting Samson and Delilah that the National Gallery of London bought in 1980 for 2.5 million pounds does not fall into any of these categories, meaning that it is neither an original nor a copy, nor a workshop work. It would simply be a fake, perhaps even make in the 20th century. An Artificial Intelligence algorithm seems to have established it after a very long series of tests, coming to the conclusion that the probability that it is false is greater than 91%! Of course, now there is an open confrontation between scholars and this authentication method, which is based on algorithms specially trained to capture the details of the artists’ style and brushstroke, then evaluated by a sophisticated “convolutional neural network”.

Actually, this “Samson and Delilah” painting is not new to this type of controversy related to the attributions to the Flemish master. Quite the opposite. Since its appearance on the market in Paris in 1929 it has been linked to several names, and the definitive one, Rubens, was proposed by Ludwig Burchard, an expert on the Flemish master, in the 1950s. But when the scholar died in 1960, some unclear documents emerged, according to which Burchard authenticated several works for his own economic advantage.

However, there is a rather detailed report of the studies conducted between 1980 and 1983 by Joyce Plesters, published in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin, which report of an X-ray and numerous microsamples analyzed where no anachronism is found.

What is the credibility of the results obtained with artificial intelligence? Not much, apparently. The National Gallery doesn’t seem very worried by the outcomes of the algorithm, and continues to exhibit the painting as genuine.

October 28 2021

Picasso the forger

Anna art world, Authentications & Attributions, Fake 0

On last October 25th, Pablo Picasso would have turned 140 years old, yet his art is still very current. He remains an extremely important artist for the history of art and the icon of genius.
He chose the Genoese surname, Picasso, of his mother, because it was rarer and more intriguing than Ruiz, the surname of his father, although he owed the start of his career as an artist to him, who was an art teacher.
From a very young age Pablo produced paintings of astonishing quality. He later said of himself: “At the age of four I painted like Raphael, it took me a lifetime to paint like a child”.
And probably because of his “painting as a child”, Picasso seems easy to fake.
However, this is not at all the case. No paint bruch can be changed without the painting suddenly no longer “work”.

But not everyone is able to appreciate the difference, and a large number of counterfeiters actually continue to try, probably also in consideration of the always very high prices of a Picasso. Just look at Sotheby’s recent results.

But maybe you do not know about Picasso the forger, as it was according to Arthur Koestler’s book “The Act of Creation”.
In the book we read that an art dealer, having bought a canvas signed “Picasso”, decided to go to Cannes to meet the master and find out if it was authentic. Picasso was working in his studio. He cast a single glance at the canvas and ruled: “It’s a fake.”
A few months later the merchant bought another canvas signed by Picasso. Again he went to Cannes and again Picasso, after a single glance, grunted: “It’s a fake.”
“Ma cher maitre”, exclaimed the merchant, “I saw you with my own eyes while you were working on this very painting several years ago.”
Picasso shrugged and replied: “I often paint fakes.”

A genius who tried to select the legacy with which he wanted to be remembered? Of course, these are not fakes that we can detect with our techniques.

On the other hand, we have encountered many false “real” ones, who arrived in the laboratory with the most incredible stories, and, unfortunately, at times, also causing very strong disappointments, and huge losses.

Especially when there are millions at stake, do the analysis BEFORE you buy!

October 26 2021

How much is an artwork worth?

Emanuela Authentications & Attributions, Exhibitions 0

an idea to stop illicit artwork traffic

The artistic and cultural heritage cannot be valued per kilo as any other product. Different parameters necessarily come into play in estimating the value of a work of art. It is its existence, even more its possible absence, that increases its value. Its existence is a source, a document, a link with the past. It illustrates it, it passes it on. If the artefact no longer existed, if it had not been adequately protected, we would have an unbridgeable gap in what is the historical discourse, before economic damage. The question: “how much is a work of art worth?” it is difficult to answer.
However, as highlighted in the article by Giuseppe Miceli, an expert in anti-money laundering, entitled “A passport for cultural heritage”, which appeared a few weeks ago in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, the lack of shared rules for the evaluation of works, a the art market, totally unregulated, benefits, with its volatility, with random quotations and subsequent sales at amazing prices, the laundering of illicit proceeds, albeit with totally legal sales.
The analysis conducted by the FBI on the illicit trafficking of works of art estimates it to be between 9-12% of the entire turnover in the sector. Analysis also confirmed by national bodies such as the Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate or the Italian Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission.
To counter this phenomenon, of which Italy is one of the major victims, Giuseppe Miceli has decided to develop a project for the traceability of Cultural Heritage, or the creation of a Register of the Owners of works of art, like what happens for other product categories. In this way it would be possible to monitor every change of ownership of any artefact, as is done now for cars, for example. This register would be used as a deterrent to the use of sums of dubious origin because the purchase value would also be recorded.
The works would be provided with a mark “elaborated and applied by the State Polygraphic Institute”, the data entered on the mark would refer to a database in which all the information on the artefact will be present. Of course, the counterfeiting of this or the tampering would be the subject of criminal proceedings.
Artefacts that do not bear the mark would be deemed to be inauthentic.
But the question we ask ourselves is:

How would authenticity be verified, and would this also include determining the certainty of the autograph when affixing the first stamp?
How would this instrument take into account the variations in value due to new attributions, to scientific discoveries?
Would diagnostic data be accessible, which certainly could be a support for the conservation of the work itself and also proof of authenticity?

We found the proposal really interesting but its feasibility requires resources and skills. An important investment.

In any case, regulation of a market where it is currently possible to exchange many millions without any rules is increasingly necessary.

Caravaggio-Ecce-Homo-Madrid-Ansorena-812x1024

September 28 2021

Who decides if it is a Caravaggio?

Anna Art-Test News, Authentications & Attributions, Conferences 0

Tomorrow is Caravaggio’s 450th birthday.

There will not be celebrations, except for something almost improvised. Nothing to do with what had been organized for the 400 years since his death.

In that occasion, Art-Test analysed several paintings of undisputed autography, including the Bacchus of the Uffizi, the 7 works of mercy of Naples, the Resurrection of Lazarus of Messina, and others that are still discussed, such as the Boy bitten by a green lizard from the Longhi collection.

The lack of official celebrations is probably due to the prolonged pandemic, which made it impossible to plan and above all to have a sufficient return on investment, given the fact that it was not possible to predict whether any exhibitions could remain open.

As such, we lost the opportunity of a debate on a painter who nevertheless continues to fascinate, with his art so “instagrammable”, and with the somewhat gloomy charm of his personal events.

And whose mother “continues to be pregnant”, paragraphing the fortunate title of an essay by T. Montanari.

In fact, there are several paintings that have been proposed as autographs in recent years.

On the last one, the Ecce Homo of Madrid, the scientific article by Cristina Terzaghi has just been published, in the proceedings of the conference held in Naples in 2020.

While the recent Caravaggio’s Cardsharps on Trial: Thwaytes v. Sotheby’s, written by one of the protagonists of the long trial on a copy of “the Bari”, that ended in 2015, describes in detail what happens when experts disagree on the autography of a painting. And on the role to be assigned to technical and historical analyses.

In the absence of a live confrontation, the battle is fought with publications. And as for how and who decides if it is a Caravaggio, while waiting for shared protocols to be agreed upon, it is not over yet.

September 27 2021

Fakes in the Museum

Anna artetestiamo, Authentications & Attributions, Exhibitions 0

The copying of sculpture that has a long history in Western art.

Most of the works of Greek sculptors are known only through Roman copies. However, we do not know if these were sold as Greek originals or not.

We know that Michelangelo tried to sell one of his sculptures by passing it off as antique after having buried it, to give it a certain patina. However, the buyer was not fooled by it (and wanted to know the author).

At the trial of scultptor Alceo Dossena (1878-1937) it was established that he did not produce fakes, but authentic masterpieces, in various styles, from Etruscan to Renaissance, patinating them with a procedure of which he never revealed the secrets.

Sculptures that were then resold by unscrupulous merchants, ending up in the most prestigious collections around the world.

On October 3, 2021, at the Mart in Rovereto, a truly intriguing exhibition will open, conceived by Vittorio Sgarbi and curated by Dario Del Bufalo and Marco Horak, entitled Forgery in Art. Alceo Dossena and Italian Renaissance sculpture.

It is not the first exhibition on fakes, we remember for example Falsi d’Autore. Icilio Federico Joni and the culture of the false between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of 2004 in Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, which had the merit of shedding light on the figure of the forger, his clients and his methods.

While announcing this exhibition, Vittorio Sgarbi stated that he had identified other “authentic Dossena” artworks still exhibited as ancient art.

We are really curious to visit it and learn more!

September 26 2021

Unkown Origin

Chiara Martine Menchetti art world, Authentications & Attributions, Discoveries, Fake 0

Often, to authenticate a work of art, its “provenance” is used, or the succession of the various owners, to try and trace the purchase contracts till the first, with the author’s signature on it.
But “provenance” data are not at all easy to verify. On the contrary, it is a very treacherous terrain, because even these documents can be falsified. And it is often easier than falsifying an artwork.

The art market, especially the contemporary art market, seems to be studded with constantly increasing fakes. According to the Commander of the “Counterfeiting and Contemporary Art” section of the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, in 2018 almost 70% of the contemporary art market in Italy was made up of fakes. And often fake in these cases is also the documentation provided to establish the history and therefore the “provenance”.

Even just last month, sensational news appeared in the press of forgeries of letters, and even of photographs, to support the existence of a link between the seller and the author of the works, as in the case of the alleged works by Diego Giacometti sold by Sotheby’s or the fake Hambleton and Hendricks sold to more than 15 galleries in the United States.

It is essential to assess the veracity of the provenance also because the work may have been stolen or looted. Although in this case it is very often omissions: this information is not reported, as in the case of the Pissarro purchased by Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. Only after a long and bitter lawsuit did it emerge that the painting was confiscated by Paul Cassirer (an important German gallery owner) during the Second World War.

It is true that it is generally impossible to establish the chain of ownership due to the lack of reliable documents or sources, especially for “minor” ancient works. An example is Cimabue‘s “Christ mocked”. The small painting, hung in the kitchen of an anonymous house in the French countryside, seems to have always belonged to the same family, but the news regarding its origins are only hazy and incomplete memories.

There are also many cases of false provenance for apparently more important works, but there is a really striking one that concerns the Getty Museum. The Museum, which in 1983 was about to purchase a Greek Kouros dated 530 BC, decided to convene a committee to establish the authenticity of the sculpture, with experts from all over the world, including Federico Zeri. He, however, immediately realized that something was wrong with that Kouros, and even claimed to have “tasted” it. In fact, the irreverent scholar argued that acids, solvents and dyes remain in the sculptures for decades and therefore by licking the marble it is possible to understand if substances have been used to give an “ancient patina”.
It was not the only contrary opinion, even the expert of Greek art Evelyin Harrison and Thomas Hoving argued that the sculpture was not authentic. Research was also carried out regarding the provenance. The sculpture was accompanied by a series of documents. They were there to show that the work was part of a collection in Geneva of Dr. Jean Lauffenberger, who claimed to have bought it from a Greek merchant in 1930, but without mentioning any excavations. Among the various documents there was also a letter that aroused many suspicions. It turned out that the postal code did not exist until 1972 and that a bank account, mentioned in the letter, regarding repairs to the statue, had not been opened until 1963. Quite naive forgers indeed.

In other cases, diagnostics came to the rescue, as in the case of the prolific German forger Wolfgang Beltracchi for example, identified that the ink with which a label was printed on the back, or sometimes the type of printing, were not compatible with the periodof supposed execution.

In short, the data that certify the origin are in any case physical documents, and should be treated as such. Before taking what they pass on for granted, it is prudent to ascertain their authenticity. If they are fake they can be exposed, and this is best done before facing a litigation in court.

August 23 2021

Who decides if a painting is a Rembrandt?

Anna art world, Authentications & Attributions, Technology 0

The former head of the Rembrandt Research Project, Ernst de Wetering, died on 11^th August 2021.

He has been a crucial figure in the authentication arena, and a very powerful connoisseur. As chairman of the RRP from 1990 till the cease of activities in 2011, he contributed to process many Rembrandt’s attributions.

And now many of those may be challenged again, we suspect.

For about 50 years, it was not without the positive consensus of the RRP that a Rembrandt was a Rembrandt, unless it was .personally de Wetering to support or dismiss it.

Let’s see why.

The turning point into attributing Seventeen –Century Dutch and Flemish paintings was the infamous “Van Meegeren Scandal”, in 1945 -when“Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus” widely celebrated as one of Veermeer’s best paintings turned out to be a forgery.

In the trial, scientific analyses proved to be essential in assessing authenticity, while before it, it had been fairly common for well-known experts to state their opinion simply referring to their intuition, or “feeling”, about a painting, will little further explanation.

This was clearly no longer possible, after all the embarrassment caused by having supported a blatant fake.

Therefore, when in the sixties it was decided to produce a new Catalogue Raisonne of Rembrandts works, it was set out to combine traditional connoisseurship with the newest scientific techniques and form a board of expert to assess every single piece.

Dendrochronology proved to be very useful in dating oak panels Rembrandts used for his early work, to detect copies and sometimes also to prove that what had been considered to be a late imitation was made on authentic seventeenth century wood.

X-rays proved to be valuable in reconstructing Rembrandt’s working process, in terms of how he laid out his composition and the order in which he executed the various parts of a painting. Other peculiarities were to be discovered with the other techniques used, like UV photography and IR reflectography, together with chemical analysis of the materials used.

However, it was clear that in spite of usefulness of the various techniques, there could still be uncertainty about authorship, especially when distinguishing the master from talented pupils, having access to the same studio materials and techniques.

In some other cases, the uncertainty also derived from technical analyses that were not complete or of poor quality.

Hence the connoisseurship arbitration.

However, when the RRP concluded its activities, even though approximately one-quarter of Rembrandt’s oeuvre has not yet been investigated, no scholar wanted to assume responsibilities from the RRP’s chair.

What will happen now? Who will decide if a painting is a Rembrandt?

The most recent case where an attribution was proposed without the official blessing of the RPP, is the Portrait of a Young Woman Allentown from the Art Museum in Pennsylvania. It was in the twenties classified by the RRP as a product of Rembrandt’s studio rather than the master himself. In 2020 the experts from the museum claimed a different truth.

Elaine Mehalakes, the Allentown museum’s vice president of curatorial affairs, dared to state that the RRP had no modern technical means. The only technical image on which it relied was an X-radiograph from the late 1920s that, moreover, was taken when the panel was attached to a wooden cradle.

No objections from the RRP, as it did no longer exist, and probably because the signature discovered on the painting was a clear indication of authenticity.

We hope that new attribution/de-attribution will find on the available documents the best ground for reliable data interpretation. But let’s be honest: the race is open.

A good news is that the extensive documentation collected during the RRP is now mostly freely available online via the Rembrand Database project website, supported by several Museum and Art Institutions around the world.

“The Rembrandt database contains an extensive amount of various types of research documents, which are collected from all over the world and made online accessible for further research. This online guide aims to help users of the Rembrandt Database to navigate the bulk of the raw data. It also aims to provide insight into the information and documentation accessible in the database and to show how these research results have formed our image of Rembrandt as an artist”.

Let’s make the best out of it!

July 28 2021

See you in Moscow!

Anna Authentications & Attributions 0

From 25 June 2021 in Moskow the exhibition "Siena at the dawn of the Renaissance. Painting from the collections of the National Picture Gallery of Siena, from the State Archives of Siena, from other museums in Tuscany and from the Pushkin Museum ", curated by Vittoria Markova and Elena Rossoni, and scheduled until October 3, 2021

The National Picture Gallery of Siena exceptionally transferred some of their masterpieces to Moscow, to allow the Muscovite public to travel through its Golden Age.

Some other important paintings from the National Museum of San Matteo in Pisa and the National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art in Arezzo were also added to these works, together with the painted “Biccherne”, from the State Archives of Siena,

The exhibition will present the Sienese medieval school, recounting its evolution from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century and its exceptional importance in the period immediately preceding the Renaissance.

For the Russian spectator are of particular interest the links with Byzantine painting school, from which Sienese painting originated but soon departed; while it was during this period that the flowering of icon painting in Russia took place, faithful to the Byzantine tradition.

The Pushkin State Fine Art Institute has very important works of Sienese painting of the XIV-XV century too, such as “Crucifixion” by Segni di Bonaventura, two parts of the Sansepolcro di Sassetta polyptych, as well as works by Andrea di Bartolo, Sano di Pietro, Matteo di Giovanni, Guidoccio Cozzarelli, Bernardino Fungai and other Sienese masters.

However, it is mainly to Duccio di Buoninsegna, a contemporary of Giotto and founder of the local artistic school, whose activities have been documented since 1278, that we owe the innovation of the artistic production in Siena. In his works there is still a close link with the art of Byzantium and at the same time there is a different tension, whose elegance will leave an indelible trace in Sienese art.

Sometimes this occurs in details that now seem almost irrelevant to us.

See for example the small panel of the Madonna of the Franciscans, a work probably destined to private devotion.

Note the design of the fabric of the tent supported by the angels.

It was thanks to paintings like this that the Byzantine and Islamic geometric designs were conveyed, showing fabrics initially traded with the south and with Venice, which soon reached all the western power centres.

The stars and crosses motif was depicted in the fabrics painted by many artists, including Giotto and, in fact, Duccio.

The exhibition is part of an extensive twinning program between museums in Russia and Italy, announced by the ministries of culture of both countries for 2021-2022.

If you want to deepen the knowledge of Sienese painting, Art–Test, in collaboration with the Pinacoteca di Siena, has created a database with over 100 paintings, where in addition to the descriptions for each work, there are diagnostic data, such as radiographs, reflectographs, colour analysis. .

All you need for a scientific comparison, an in-depth study and attributions with solid foundations!