This past Sunday the US TV show (CBS) 60 Minutes reran its piece on fake paintings by a particularly skilled worker who recently served a very short time when he made a mistake in selecting a brand of white paint that contained a chemical not available when the original was made. As a result, many art experts have stopped authenticating paintings in the class (multi-million $$) in which he worked because some of them have been sued by people they had caused to buy a fake or just because making a mistake like that is ruinous to your reputation. I can see their point. There is currently serious question on just how many paintings this man has faked. He may not even know. It is not the sort of business that you keep exhaustive records on. We are not quite in a position matching paintings but there are many ancient coins that have been found to be fakes. Some are definitely no better than C+ efforts but we have to wonder whether our best efforts are keeping up with the engraving version of the 60 minutes painter. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/art-forger-wolfgang-beltracchis-multimillion-dollar-scam/ I suggest listening to this piece and asking yourself how any of this material might apply to your hobby. Certainly this painter works in a field where the cheap items are worth more than any of our coins. We are in less danger but not no danger.
There are several novels about painting counterfeiters, from using old canvases that they scrape clean, making their own varnishes and oils and Gesso, and paints ( some quite poisonous in various stages) Use of modern technology to produce outlines and specific curvatures from other painting of same classic artist, and my favorite, the use of electric Pizza ovens and gas bags around them to age everything just right. Just like modern coin doctors. They are very very good in what they do.
The 60 Minutes piece is definitely sobering food for thought for us coin collectors. Always best to be familiar with the telltale signs of fakes, of course, and to be on guard. But there have got to be a number of "perfect" struck fakes, stylistically consistent with their ancient models, that slip by from time to time, fooling the experts and populating (hopefully in small numbers) some of our collections. Off topic perhaps, but a link to one of my own paintings..."Detritus #4," oil on canvas, about 6' tall, painted about a dozen years back...NOT a forgery: http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net...4s2l/20130221022944-Detritus__4_Art_Slant.jpg
Stopped watching the story after they showed that Viagra commercial the second time within just a few minutes. But while Wolfgang (and Helene) Beltracchi may be unknown in the US, pretty much everybody has heard about them here. This year alone they published two books, one about their story as counterfeiters or rather creators of works "in the style of" (Selbstporträt), and one with the letters they wrote each other while they were in prison (Einschluss mit Engeln). There is also a new movie (Die Kunst der Fälschung) about the two. Over here the reactions have been mixed. On one hand they are criminals as they did a lot to make their creations look like unknown works of famous artists, and he even signed those works using those other (famous) people's names. On the other hand their story is fascinating, partly because this was not a case of mafia-style organized crime, partly because his chuzpe can sure be charming. And more importantly, they could only be so successful because of the somewhat crazy art "market" where some are willing to pay gazillions ... How much of this applies to coins? Well, not that much, I think, and maybe this should not even be a W&A topic. With very few (mostly early) exceptions, the Beltracchis did not copy but, as I mentioned, created new works that match what famous artists created before. Single works with signatures. Coins are mass products, and while there sure are lots of dangerous counterfeits around, the criteria usually are different ones. Christian
Ancient mass products made from many dies but surviving in some cases in small enough numbers that there are single examples from a die take on a new set of rules since you can not compare a new discovery to anything known. The art forger was not duplicating known works but creating new things in the spirit of known artists. This compares to a coin forger who makes a new die in the spirit of a particular time and place. Rather recently the single Domitian II was upgraded from probable fake to certifiably genuine when the British Museum found a second one in the middle of a hoard. More frequently the change in expert opinions goes the other way.
If one wants to draw a parallel - which, as you wrote, does not really work here - , somebody like Carl Wilhelm Becker comes at least somewhat close. He was a coin dealer, appreciated by famous collectors such as J. W. Goethe and M. A. Rothschild, but also made quite a bit of money by making elaborate reproductions of ancient and medieval coins. And he made "coins that could have been". Many bought from him in the early 19c ... and a museum in Offenbach (HE, DE) has about 500 Becker pieces. Even the Bundesbank Collection in nearby Frankfurt has some and lists one here (PDF, German, see image p.7 and text p.8). Becker's dies were hand made, and he would even take his "coins" on horse carriage rides, in small boxes along with iron filings and grease. The rough country roads would do the rest, so that at the end the pieces had a sort of ancient look ... Christian
The best fakes will not be made by those trying to make money but by those trying to make a point. If someone is cheated by an expert, it is only natural to try to make that expert look bad. Becker was proud of having his work accepted as real by people who claimed to know all. The obvious question is how many more Beckers there are whose work remains their little secret.
