ITALIAN ART HOAX

Hokitika Guardian, 1 June 1929, Page 8

ITALIAN ART HOAX

Yet another hoax oil the literary ami artistic world would appear to have oeen perpetrated hy Italians.

In 192-1 «i world-wide sensation was caused by Professor di Marti no-Fusco’s admission that the- story of bis discovery oif the 107 missing books of Livy, the Homan historian, was an invention. In 192? a bombshell was thrown among the art collectors and museum-direc-tors of the world when it was proved that numerous -alleged Renaissance sculptures, considered of tremendous value, were fakes by a living Italian sculptur, Signor Alceo Dossena. Now it is announced that the police at Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy, have arrested the two dealers who were stated in January last to have discovered a monograph hv Antonio Stradivari, the. master violinmaker of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revealing the secrets of his manufacture. SKILFUL WORK BY FORGERS. 280 DOCUMENTS. ..MILAN, April 10. The. Stradivari dccimiems, about which there was so much talk last January, would now appear to he a forgery. The two dealers Vi'f Bergamo, Lonibardv—Signor Zannrdi and Ravasio—who staled that they Imd fomiTl the documents accidentally in a piece o! eld furniture and s'ihsofjnontly sold flmm to Signor Leandro Bisiaeh, a Milanese violin maker and connoisseur, were arrested yesterday.

A long and careful examination of tho doruments, it is announced, has proved their lack of authenticity. Count Tomaso G noli, the Bibliographical Supervisor for Lombardy, wl'o, together with two other experts, has repeatedly expressed in the u Corriere della Sera ” his firm conviction as to the authenticity of the documents. now writes to the same paper admitting his mistake.

INK AND PAPER PROOF

Count Tomaso says that he had at first examined hurriedly only part of the-documents. Since their confiscation by the police on January 12, however, he has had more time for studvipfr them, and he finds that the ink and' paper, and, above all, the conl°nts, nrove the document to he the fruit of a very skilful forgery.

The police confiscation was stated at the time to lie for the purpose e' r establishing the origin of the documents and preventing their leaving the country. Their value was placed at between CIO,OOO and £20,000. Altogether, there arc about 280 documents, the ten-page monograph on the art of violin-making dealing with the wood. Varnish, glue, bordering, shape, and covers favoured by Stradivari in his famous instruments being regarded as the most interesting. It has been said that when Stradivari died he refused to reveal his secrets to posterity. THE LIVY FRAUD.

AND FAKED SCULPTURE IN U.S

There have been many instances recently of hoaxes in one form or another engineered from Italy, and collectors have been fighting shy this year of the most strongly-accredited antiques. The noy.'s of the arrest of the discoverers of flic alleged Stradivari documents, however, recalls most insistently the famous Livy hoax off M)24. At one time it seemed that the now-famous Professor di MarlinoFusee was likely to go down in history as. the maker of the greatest discovery ever known in classical literature. He v.'os •-.'•lift! to have found the missing 107 hooks of the great Unman historic n Livy while exploring the vaults of an old cloister in a Naples monastery.

i Tremendous interest was aroused : throughout- the world by the news; interest which received a severe set-back when, a. month later, Professor di M.ar- , tino-Fusco admitted to Professor Nic- ' colini, the delegate of the Italian Min-

stfy of Education, that his story was all wrong. In the interval the Government had taken extensive precautions to prevent the supposed manuscripts, which would have been ol extreme, value, leaving the country and had set a careful frontier watch. • At the end of last year, also, some Italians threw a. bombshell among the multi-millionaire collectors and museum-directors of the United States who were rendered aghast hy the revelation that accepted 11th and Ith century sculptures were in reality modern productions. In Cleveland, lor instance, a Greek Athena which had been valued at £150,000 was elussei. as a. fraud.

It was discovered that; Signor A hoc !)■ ssena, an Italian sculptor, had been turning out copies ol Renaissance artists’ , work which experts could no toll from genuine antiques. He him self was without intention to deceive and instituted an action *1 or against certain antique dealers. I was alleged that Dossena’s works had cost American £IOO.OOO, and that pieces—Donatellos ' and others —o ct’p" ing places of honour in the gallerieand museums of New York, Roston and Cleveland, and many other citic were fakc-d.