Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-05-11

examples will bafie any expert to distinguish
them from authentic Rembrandts. But there
as copies, they are invariably signed and dated.
That is the hallmark Of the faker. Genuine
old masters are rarely signed.
It has been announced with blare of
trumpets that the use Of the X-ray was going
to put an end to this sucker game, but the
takers always manage to keep one jump ahead
of the new methods Of detection.
no you want charming BotticeIli-a Bot
ticelii that would be worth $4,000 if it were
genuine and that is so close to being genuine
that you can easily find dozen experts to
swear that it is?
Il can be arranged for 500, or several
hundred dollars at the utmost The clever
copyists of Florence, men who have studied
BotticelH all their lives, are making them
regularly. First, they find a worthless old
painting in order to have an ancient canvas.
Then they scrape of the image, leaving as
much of the old sizing and pigment as pos
sibe. There will be no picture underneath
the new masterpiece for the eyes of the x-ray
to reveal! The next thing is to procure a
supply of the pigments used in Botticells
time. but many paintmakers now supply these.
chemist shopping around this manufactured
masterpiece will not be able to pick off few
Specks, analyze them and then joyously cry
that this particular pigment did not come into
common use until 20 years ago.
One would think that the execution of the
painting, the fine brushwork, the many little
things that made Botticelh a genius, would
be the greatest problem in forging art, but it
is not.
The art schools-and this goes for Rome,
Paris, Berlin, Florence, Amsterdam and the
others-turn out many pupils who have no
creative genius, hut who become extremely
clever copyists These men generally spe-
cialize in some favorite master, studying his
technique until they have it at their finger
tips. Failing to produce anything of their
own. they become the ghosts" of their ancient
masters and rather than starve, put them
selves at the service of an INSCRIPTIONS dealer
to fill up American collections with MASTER
pieces. dozen ghosts" will be pointed out
in any art center of Europe any day. A smart
dealer always has several well trained ones in
his pay.
To make a Botticelli for example, the
"ghost" will simply give a variation of some
authentic BotticelH, keeping closely to the
masters style. After the paint has been well
dried-even the most gullible millionaires don't
like them Sticky-the work must be artificially
cracked, faded and battered up a hit AS old
paint always cracks, forgeries must be cracked
in exactly the same way, and this is one of
the most delicate steps in taking art. Some
GHOSTS who have no great love for their
craft, simply put the painting in a lightly
heated oven for several hours This cracks
the paint. but very irregularly, and an expert
will become suspicious.
Some genius discovered a better way He
first made a tracing of the cracks on an
authentic old painting and then scratched the
same design on his masterpiece with q pin
point. In the baking process the cracking
followed the pin lines faithfully and all the
hest takers now use this system. An even