Art Forgery the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin v 26 No 6 February 1968

8/13/2019 Art Forgery the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin v 26 No 6 February 1968

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R T FORG RYThis Bulletin is devoted o variousaspectsoJ art forgery.Thefirstfour articlesare adaptedrom a seriesof seminarspresentedby the Museumin Novemberand December 967.

h e a m e o uplicityTHOMAS P. F. HOVING Director ContentsTHE GAME OF DUPLICITY, the fine -or unfine-art of forgery is something thatinvolves everyone in the museum businessalmost daily. These seminars will discussfour aspectsof forgery: this one will cover the general aspectsof the forger'sgame andthe detection thereof. The secondprogramwill concernstyle and the eye: the intuitiveinvestigation of a work of art that reveals it as a genuine piece or as nothing. In thismuseum the eye is king. The scientificapparatus hat one bringsto bear in discoveringa forgery is first minister to the king, and the technical analysisof art objects will bedealt with in the third session.The last one will discuss the extremely complex legalaspectsof investigating and revealingforgeries.

Why are we having this seriesof seminars?There are several reasons.First of all, thesuddenrash of news storieswas a very important factor in deciding to air some of theseproblems.And secondly, we think that such discussions- the types of fakes and theirdetection-are a vital part of the Museum'seducationalobligation to the public: thisis part of the daily life of people who work in museums;it's something that we worryabout, often after the fact. Another reasonis a feeling that the public has many ques-tions that it would like to pose; I hope this will become an arenawhere some of thesequestionsfind answers.If you're going to discuss forgery in the broadest possible sense, you must erectaround this term two wide parentheses.The first is that there has not been a singlecollectorin the entire history of collecting who has not made a mistake. And the otherparenthesis s a quotation from the great art historianMax Friedlander: It is indeedan error to collect a forgery, but it is a sin to stamp a genuine piece with the seal offalsehood. That's pretty rough stuff, but I've met many a young student who will

The Gameof DuplicityTHOMAS P. F. HOVING

The StylisticDetection fForgeriesTHEODORE ROUSSEAU

The Forgeryof Our GreekBronzeHorseJOSEPH V. NOBLE

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25The LegalAspectsof Forgeryand the Protection f theExpert

DUDLEY T. EASBY, JR.RALPH F. COLIN 2

The Art FraudsLegislationInterview ithLOUIS J. LEFKOWITZ

The Mystery of the EightEvangelistsCARMEN GOMEZ-MORENO

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26Chinainto Delft

CLARE LE CORBEILLER 26241

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FIGURE 2

FIGURE 1

Forgery

come and dismiss as a fake, offhandedly, somethingyou've just purchased. The point is that collectors andmuseums have this tension of apprehension, and it takesa great deal of study, knowledge, expertise to be able tosuspect and then prove that something is no good. Atthe same time you have to watch very carefully thatyou don't commit the sin of branding something a false-hood when it is, in fact, a genuine piece that you simplydon't have the perceptivity to know about.Forgery is not a modern phenomenon. Just after thefirst true artist began to do his first work of art, you canbe sure that the first forger began to do his. During theRoman Empire, for instance, there was an extraordinaryamount of copying: some of it straight forgery, I'm sure,although it's not easy to prove; a great deal, however,was not forging, but an artistic harking back to earlierstyles, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes forfamily or traditional reasons. It must have been hair-raisingto live in Rome during the time of Hadrian. Youcan imagine the clank of chisel upon marble as peoplehurried to get genuine Greek things, just brought overfrom Greece to impress the emperor.In my particular field of endeavor, the medievalperiod, artists and patrons were scandalously keen aboutforging things. In Venice, in the thirteenth century, agreat workshop of mosaicists, of sculptors, of document

Forgery

writers spent years turning out work done in earlierstyles, trying to prove that the Cathedral of St. Mark'swas at least as old and traditional as Rome itself.

Throughout the entire history of art, for many reasons- from the basic reasonof a young artist urgently want-ing to be discovered all the way up to sheer duplicity -you have forgeries: in the Renaissance, in the baroqueand rococo periods, and then, of course, in the nine-teenth century (although every day we're learning thatlots of the antiquities we thought were faked in the latenineteenth century actually are forgeriesof earliertimes).THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART BulletinVOLUME XXVI, NUMBER 6 FEBRUARY 1968Published monthly from October to June and quarterly fromJuly to September. Copyright ? I968 by The MletropolitanMuseum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York,N. Y. I0028. Second class postage paid at New York, N. Y.Subscriptions $5.00 a year. Single copies fifty cents. Sent freeto Museum members. Four weeks' notice required for changeof address. Back issues available on microfilm from UniversityMicrofilms, 313 N. First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Asso-ciate Editor in Charge of Publications: Leon Wilson. Editor-in-chief of the Bulletin: Katharine H. B. Stoddert; Editorsof the Bulletin: Suzanne Boorsch, Joan K. Foley, and AnnePreuss; Designer: Peter Oldenburg.

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Today forgersseem to be all aroundus, and indeedthere'sa cleverness ow, an acuteness, hat often defiesdescription.I want to categorize he types of forgeries hat haveoccurred hroughout he historyof art. Before I start,though, there is one thing that I want to make veryclear:you mustdistinguishbetweenhard-coreorgeries,worksmadeto fool, and thosepiecesthat aremisattri-butions: he paintings, orexample, hat comefrom theworkshopof one of the great painters,but that havebeenattributed o the master,have fallenoff fromthatstatus,and too often have beendismissed s fakes.Thetwoaretotallydifferent: neis an outrightactofdeceit,the other is a questionof opinionand analysis.What are the categories?The types, in ease of de-tection, are, first, the directcopy. Figure I showstwojewel-encrusted ookcovers.The one on the right is acopy-a neater, smoother,characterlessopy-of themid-thirteenth-centuryoveron the left. If you knowyourstuff,you'relikely to spot a forgery ike thisas acopyof a famous ype, andyou'lldismisst quickly.The secondcategory,which sa littlemoredifficult, ssomethingcalled a pastiche.The forgertakeselementsfrom many thingsand patchesthem togetherin sucha clever mannerthat you don't put your eye on thesinglethinghe hascopied.The tapestryon the rightin

Figure 2 takes its inspiration from a variety of latefifteenth-century examples, and combines these authen-tic ideas into an extraordinarily lackluster whole. Con-trast the vigor of the good one, on the left, with thesickliness of the other. (Don't hesitate to use derogatoryadjectives in describing forgeries. They should not begiven any sort of adulation, despite the fact that at cer-tain times in art history people have collected forgeriesfor their own sake. I'm not one of that school.)The next category is the most difficult of all to detect.This is the evocation, when a forger does not go to asingle model or several, but tries to pick up the spirit ofthe time, tries to evoke what an artist would have done.This category could not be better summed up than inthe works of van Meegeren. In the next seminar TedRousseau will discuss van Meegeren's famous forgeriesof Vermeer, which he was brilliant enough to paint inwhat might have been Vermeer's early style. On rareoccasions van Meegeren attempted to do other things,and Figure 3 shows his attempt at capturing the styleof Pieter de Hooch. Of course you can tell that the oneon the left has a life and a light and a feeling to it, whilethe painting on the right is wooden, hesitant. These arethe categories of forgeries. There are only three distinctones, although naturally you can get combinations ofthem.

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FIGURE 3

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FIGURE 4

FIGURE 5

Now I'd like to take up those things that involve notforgery, but the problems of repair, of historical retro-spective, and of our lack of knowledge. The head at theright of Figure 4 is a good example of a work of art thathas been heavily repaired. In the picture on the left theadditions have been taken off: it becomes a perfectlyhonest piece of the late twelfth to early thirteenth cen-tury -not, perhaps, of the highest quality, but a strong,living thing. You can see what the restorations did toit, how horrible they made it.Then, in very rare cases throughout history, you findan artist going back to earlier styles in creating a workof art. In the lowerpartof Figure 5 you see an enamelplaque that probably dates from the middle or latefifteenth century, which is quite clearly based upon theAnnunciation plaque (above) created in 1181 for thegreat altarpiece in Klosterneuberg by Nicholas of Ver-dun. The iconography, the manner in which the sceneis depicted, is the same, but various changes have beenmade: there is an almost bourgeois monumentality inthe lower one that is lacking in the pensive, delicate .quality of the twelfth-century piece. The fifteenth .century plaque was discovered in the city of Mainz inthe mid-nineteenth century; it waspresented to Kloster-neuburg and they kept it in the treasury there untilThe Cloistersmanaged o acquire t. In the middle tolate fifteenth century, particularly in Austria, artistsmade a deliberate attempt to pick up significant stylesfrom Romanesque and Gothic miniature painting andenamelwork, and inject them into their own works of 'art. In a case like this, you've got to be very careful, andnot just say, Oh, a nineteenth-century fake. Wetested our plaque not only by our eye and by technicalanalysis, but by the greatest grace of all in forgeries:.how it stands the test of time. It seems to be perfectly244


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genuine. It's not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,but it is a significant fifteenth-century document. I'drather have the one on top.The last of my non-forgery categories is representedby the ivory cross in Figure 6, which comes from Eng-land and was probably made around the year I 18I.Because of its inconsistencies with other medieval worksof art-it had errors in iconography, it had a curiousstyle, it had misreadings of the inscriptions -people satback and said, No good. But is there an explanationfor these inconsistencies? One, for example, is this: onthe titulus, on the front of the cross, to which the littlehand is pointing, you can see a curious mixture of Greekand Latin and pseudo-Hebrew that says not IesusNazarenus, Rex Iudeorum (Jesusof Nazareth, King ofthe Jews) but Iesus Na[z]arenus Rex Confessorum -King of the Confessors-which is about the only time inhistory that the plaque above Christ's head has not said

King of the Jews. There's a very good reasonfor that:in the particular monastery in which this particularthing was made at this particular time in English history,it was very important that Christ was not King of theJews, who at that time were considered total infidels,but that he was king of the confessors, because a con-fessorwas a man of the faith. It turned out that its veryinconsistencies made the cross very rare-and very fine.I want to end by telling you how to look at a work ofart. I have a very deliberate process that I automaticallygo through to help me overcome any urgency, any feel-ing of grab it. First of all, what is your immediateopinion? Do you feel strong about it? Do you feel cool?Do you feel doubtful? Write that word down; put itaway someplace.Then describe it. Not just pass your eyes over it, butreally describe every bit of it. What is it? Did it have apurpose?Even a painting has to have had a use if it wasof antique time.What about its condition? Does it show wear? Getyour microscope or your loupe and see whether theworn parts are really where human beings would havetouched it.

What is the subject? Did the subject have a meaningand purpose in its own time? What is the iconography?Is it wild? And if it's wild, for what reason? Does it haveinconsistencies? If so, list them; put them aside.What is the style? Its individual style, and the widerstyle of its period. Compare it with everything else ofthe epoch in which it was supposed to have been made.Then go into its history. Investigate the documentsconcerning it, which are vitally important. We fool our-

FIGURE 6

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selvessometimesby trustingdocuments hat arejust asphonyas the piece; they shouldbe examinedon theirown.Anotherthing: stop, take stock. Make a list of thethings hatbotheryou anda listof things hat makeyoufeelgreataboutthe workof art.Takethat list of thingsthatbotheryou andpeelthemlikeanonion.Try to dis-cover the weakness,because f you do, everythingelsewill shatter.Once a forgerybeginsto be detected, itfallsapart.Then takea look at yourmood at the timeyou wantto buy the piece.Whetheryou'rea privatepersonor amuseum,yourmood can be categorizedn threewords:speed, need, greed. Do you have to buy it quickly?Why? Take more time; living with something s theonly way you will reallybe able to tell. Need: do youhave o haveit to showyourfriends, o showother nsti-tutions?The confidencegame, which is part of theforger'sgame,is basedupon crawling reed.More for-

CAPTIONSFIGURE 1Left: Thirteenth-century German book cover. From thechurch of H6xter, Westphalia. Diocesan Museum, Pader-born.Right: Forgery: book cover. Metropolitan Museum,17.I90.405.FIGURE 2Left: Detail of a German (Franconian) tapestry, datedI497. Sebalduskirche, Nuremberg. From Plate 310 ofDie DeutschenBildteppiche es Mittelalters Vienna, 1926),III, by Betty Kurth.Right: Forgery: tapestry. Metropolitan Museum,32.I00.388.FIGURE 3Left: The Card Players, by Pieter de Hooch (i629-after1684), Dutch. Buckingham Palace, London.Right: Forgery: painting in the style of de Hooch, byHan van Meegeren (I889-I947), Dutch. Photograph:Copyright Laboratoire Central des Musees de Belgique.

gerieshave been perpetrated nd collected becauseofgreedthan because f anythingelse.Then,finally,go backto your nitialreaction. f thereareany doubtsat all, dropit.What are the responsibilitiesf a museum ike oursconcerningorgeriesn its collections? believe t's im-portantfor the MetropolitanMuseumto clean ts ownhouseoccasionally;o discussand revealfakes.No col-lector, indeedno enormouscollector ike us, has evergonethroughts historywithoutevermakinga mistake.But be sure,first, that they are fakes:remember hatthe worstthing you cando is to stampa genuinepiecewith the markof falsehood.One finalword. Somepeoplesay, Well, f it's fooledso manyexperts,why isn't it so greaton its own? Theobvious answer s somethingof a parable:a woman sfine and wonderful,but aftershe tells you her firstlie,she may not be different,but she has changed-verydeeply.

FIGURE 4Left: French head of the late twelfth to early thirteenthcenturies. Metropolitan Museum, Bequest of Mrs. H. O.Havemeyer, The H. O. Havemeyer Collection, 29.100.29.Right:The head before later restorationswere removed.FIGURE 5Above: Annunciation plaque, i181, by Nicholas of Ver-dun, Mosan. Abbey of Klosterneuburg, Austria. FromPlate 3 of Der VerdunerAltar (Vienna, 1955) by FloridusRohrig.Below: Annunciation plaque. Upper Rhenish or Aus-trian, xv century. Metropolitan Museum, The CloistersCollection, 65.3.FIGURE 6Above: Back view of the Bury St. Edmunds Cross.English, about 181. Metropolitan Museum, The Clois-ters Collection, 63.12 and 63.127.Below: Titulus. Detail of the front of the cross.

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h e t y l i s t i c etection o ForgeriesT H E O D O R E R 0 U S S E A U Chairmanof the EuropeanPaintingsDepartment

THIS SEMINAR, devoted to the detection of forgeriesby stylisticanalysis, nd the nextone,onscientificmeth-ods of detection, houldbethoughtof together, ortheyare complementarynd one can'tstandindependentlyof the other. Modern sciencehasbroughtus new tech-niquesof analyzingworksof art that reinforce nd areaconsiderable elp to the stylistic methods that haveexisted for a long time, whichwe will discusshere thisevening.I'll beginby trying to give you an idea of what wemeanbystyle.This isa verysubtleandcomplexmatter,and thereforean extremelydifficultone to presenttoa largeaudience,but I thought the best way to do itwouldbe todiscuss well-knownforgery.First,awordofwarning:weshouldallrealize hatwe canonlytalkaboutthe badforgeries,he onesthathave beendetected;thegoodonesarestillhangingon thewalls.A senseof humoris importantn thissubject,and so is common enseandthe realizationhat therearen't so manyforgeries,dis-covered or undiscovered, s the newspaperswould liketo make us believe. Forgeriesare exceptionalat anytime.They'recreatedby a market:f the market's oodthere are morethan whenthe market s quiet.To get backto my subject,theforgery hat I'mgoingto talk about s an exceptional ne, because t wascon-sidereda beautiful hing-and forgeries arelyare.Oneof thecharacteristicsf average orgeries,he kindwe'veheardaboutrecently,is that they'remediocre.That iswhy they pass: they escapenotice. But this one wasthoughtto be very fine: it is the pictureof Christandthe Pilgrimsat Emmaus FigureI), attributedto Ver-meer but actually paintedby Han van Meegeren, heDutch forgerwho flourishedjust beforeand during heSecondWorldWar.

I'll startby pointingout the reasons or thispicture'ssuccess, he thingsin it that were donewell. Then I'mgoingto showyou a paintingby Vermeer.By comparingthe stylisticqualitiesof the two, we can draw our con-clusions.The key to the whole questionof van Meegeren's

success is that he did not try to imitate the classicalVermeer- the Vermeer we all think of, in the picturesupstairs and in the Rijksmuseum and other great gal-leries. Van Meegeren chose Vermeer because he was aDutchman, because he was famous, and because hisworks are very rareand very expensive. At the time vanMeegeren began, there were rumors all over Europe thatAndrew Mellon had offered more than one milliondollars-an enormous sum in those days, much greaterthan it is today-for the famous Artist in His Studio,now in the Vienna museum, which was then still in pri-vate hands. Van Meegeren, who had studied and knewart history, took advantage of the fact that Vermeer's aman we know little about. We have a group of worksdone when Vermeer was mature, some of which aredated. The work of his youth is missing. We have threeor four pictures that we believe were painted when hewas young. They are quite different; so different thatthe one in Figure 2, Christ in the House of Mary andMartha, in the Edinburgh museum, would not, I be-lieve, have been attributed to him if it were not forthe fact that it bearshis signature. (Even with the sig-nature, it has taken people a long time to accept it ashis.) In other words, part of Vermeer's oeuvre is miss-ing. Well, van Meegeren saw this gap and decided thathe would fill it. He wouldn't copy Vermeer: he wouldcreate the missing part of Vermeer's oeuvre.

Every forger, when he paints, has to begin by gettinga feeling for the period and the place in which the pic-ture is supposed to have been painted. Van Meegerenhas captured this feeling to some extent in the Pilgrimsat Emmaus. The simplicity of the background and thearchitecture, the solemn, Protestant atmosphere, fit ouridea of seventeenth-century Holland. The way the bulkof the figures fills the picture is a seventeenth-centurycharacteristic, as is the composition. Here, in fact, is aninstance of van Meegeren's cleverness. He knew that arthistorians were looking for an Italian origin for Vermeer'sstyle, for Italian influence in his works, and so he tookthe composition from the Caravaggio painting in Figure

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3, confirming the hypothesis of twentieth-century arthistorians about Vermeer's sources.Van Meegeren took certain elements from pictures

by Vermeer.But he did not make an exact copy; rather,he evoked the artist's style. The head of Christ is prob-ably inspired by the head of Christ in the Edinburghpainting. For the head and hand of the disciple at theright, van Meegeren took his inspiration from TheAstronomer (Figure 7). And for the head of the womanin the background, he seems to have used the head of

the girl in The Procuress (Figure 4) as a model. Certaindetails, such as the still life, were taken directly out ofpictures by Vermeer: the jugs in The Procuress and theMuseum's Girl Asleep (Figure 5) are very close to theone in van Meegeren's Pilgrims at Emmaus.Van Meegeren studied Vermeer's harmony of color,its predominant blue tone, and imitated it. He imitated,too, some of his characteristic "pointillist" brushwork,particularly in the still life. Finally he put in the signa-ture, which is, of course, always the easiest thing to add.

i. Christand the Pilgrimsat Emmaus, in the style of Vermeer,by Han van Meegeren i889-I947), Dutch. MuseumBoymans van BeuningenFoundation, Rotterdam.Photograph:CopyrightLaboratoireCentraldes Musees de Belgique


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4. Detail of The Procuress,by Vermeer.PictureGallery, Dresden.Photograph:Bruckmann

2. Christ n the House of Mary and Martha, byJohannes Vermeer(1632-1675), Dutch. National Gallery of Scotland,Edinburgh.Photograph:T. & R. Annan & Sons

5. Detail of The Girl Asleep, by Vermeer.MetropolitanMuseum, BequestofBenjaminAltman, 14.40.611

3. Christand the Pilgrimsat Emmaus, by MichelangeloMerisida Caravaggio 1573-161o), Italian. Pinacotecadi Brera,Milan. Photograph:Alinari- Art ReferenceBureau


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6. Detail of van Meegeren'sChristand the Pilgrimsat Emmaus

7. The Astronomer,by Vermeer.Privatecollection, Paris.From Plate62 of VermeerLondon, 958) byLudwigGoldscheider

Now let's look at a painting that we are certain is byVermeer, and see if we can isolate the qualities that areoutstandingly his. The Girl Reading a Letter (Figure 8)in the Rijksmuseum is recognized by everyone as Ver-meer'swork. It is a true expression of the spirit of seven-teenth-century Holland: the feeling of peace, security,and prosperity, the people's satisfaction with themselves,the delight in material riches natural after a long periodof disaster and war, and the Protestant reserve andreticence. These are all characteristic of Dutch paintingin the seventeenth century. The things that are per-sonal to Vermeer are surely the picture's cool serenity,the feeling of completely arrested movement and ofsilence - the silence that Claudel describes so well in hisbook L'Oeil Ecoute. There is also the fact that there isnothing personal about the human being; the girl israther like the still life. She doesn't make you want toput your arm around her waist. The delight you takein the picture is entirely a visual, aesthetic delight, notsensuous or emotional in any way.Other important characteristics of Vermeer's styleare the incredibly lovely nuances of light and color thatrun all through the picture, and the way each form issurrounded by crystal clarity. Vermeer doesn't modelhis form: he creates it by a series of colored facets, evok-ing rather than representing it. These are things thatoccur in all pictures of Vermeer's mature period.

Compare this painting to Christ and the Pilgrims atEmmaus. Once we've looked at a true Vermeer, thefaults of the other come out, the weaknesses, the failureof the forger. None of the fundamental qualities of Ver-meer's style, which reflect his special habits of feelingand working, really exist in this other picture. Theclarity is gone: you don't feel the space around eachfigure. There is a sentimentality to the head of Christthat is quite foreign to anything of the real Vermeer.It's actually much closer to our time. This is a majorweakness of any forger: he can't help interpreting pastart in terms of present predilections. The modeling isnot done in a series of facets, and the touch is greasy,without that wonderful cool and measured quality thatyou get in Vermeer. The overall harmony and balanceof Vermeer's pictures is also missing: look at van Mee-geren's exaggerations, his insistence on the seams on thesleeves and the highlights on the bread-impossible forVermeer.

In spite of these faults, van Meegeren was almostsuccessful. But he was almost successful not because ofthe painting-I think that is plain, although stylisticdiscussions cannot be fully convincing when they're


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8. Girl Readinga Letter,by Vermeer.Riiksmuseum,Amsterdam.Photograph:Bruckmann


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basedon illustrations atherthan on actual works ofart-but becauseof the trickshe played.He wasa re-markableconfidenceman, an extremely intelligentcrook.He createda provenanceor the picture;he hadan intermediarywho soldit for him;he got one of themost prominentart historians-AbrahamBredius-towrite an articleon it, whichwaspublishedn TheBur-lingtonMagazine;t was then exhibitedpublicly.Finallyit wassold to the Boymansmuseum.The museumhes-itated about takingit, althoughthey were urged byD. G. van Beuningen,an important ollectorwho laterboughtothersof vanMeegeren'sworks. n the end, themuseumwas pushed nto buyingit becausevan Mee-gerenfloated the rumorthat the Rijksmuseumwantedto get it.At the end of the warI interrogated ne of Goring'sagents,a manwho represented im in Holland.It washe who bought,or was the intermediaryor Giring'spurchaseof, a pictureby van Meegerenafterwarwasdeclared.Thisman,AloisMiedel,told me the story ofhow thishappened, n instanceof vanMeegeren's stutesense of timing and his exploitationof circumstance.Miedel ran a smallbank in Amsterdam.His wife wasJewish,and they finally fled from Holland to Spain,whereI found andinterrogatedMiedelhimself.He toldme he aidedthe Resistance ndercoverall through hewar,helpingpeopleto escape,out of loyaltyto hisJew-ish wife. One night a man, who, he knew,was in theResistance, ameto himandsaid,"Mr.Miedel,I knowyou buy paintingsor the Reichsmarschallnd I have apicture oryou. But I will sell it to you onlyon onecon-dition,and thatis thatyou don'tinquirewhere t camefrom, because t belongsto an old Dutch familywhowantto give themoneyto the Resistance."At that timeMiedel had stayingwith him an old friend,HeinrichHoffmann,Hitler'sphotographerndadvisoronartisticmatters. Van Meegeren knew Hoffmannwas there.Miedel took the paintingup to Hoffmann,who said,"Why, t's a Vermeer wantit for theFiihrer."Miedelwent to the telephoneand calledGoring,whosaidhe'dsenda planefor it the next day. Van Meegerenwas arealopportunist, nda very cleverone.He was finally arrestedfor financialcollaboration,since t wasdiscovered hat he hadamassed napparentlyinexplicableortuneduringthe Occupation.Hopingtoget out of this collaboration harge,he admitted topainting akeVermeers.As a resulthe wassentenced oonly one year in jail. During his confession, nd afterlaterstudies,his trickswere revealed.He paintedwith

colorsused n theseventeenthcentury,makingonlyonemistake,whichcameout in scientificanalysis:he usedcobaltblue,not inventeduntil the nineteenthcentury.The mediumhe usedwasa substanceimilar o Bakelite.When heated, this mediumhardened,and the pictureseemed o haveagedcenturiesn a few hours.Asa con-sequence, he x-rayof a picturepainted n thismediumlookslike the x-rayof an old picture.It alsoresists ol-vents the way an old picture does. Van Meegeren's paint-ings were done on top of old ones that already had acraquelure, and by heating and rolling them he trans-ferred this craquelure to his own work.What made it possible for him to get away with allthis was, of course, that soon after the first picture waswell publicized and bought by the Boymans museum,warwasdeclared.Allpaintingsby Vermeerwerehiddenaway and the experts were in hiding, so it was impossibleto compare enuineVermeerswithvanMeegeren's.VanMeegeren's later pictures were much worse in quality.I think there's no doubt that with time the forgerieswould have come out because of their stylistic weak-nesses. That's a very important aspect of forgeries, par-ticularly of old masters: a forgernot only has to put him-self into the skin of the artist and understand his times,but he also has to realize what in the artist's work isattractive to us today. Of course tastes change as timepasses.It's all very well to say that we can detect the for-geries easily now, stylistically, but every time I think ofit I feel, "There but for the grace of God go I." There'sno doubt that twenty years ago van Meegeren's paint-ings were much more appealing. Time is essential in acase of this kind.

A curious consequence of today's sudden burst ofscientific knowledge is that we now tend to look tooclosely at the physical components of a work of art. Theother day one of our most prominent scholarsin Dutchpainting told me that when he saw the article in TheBurlington Magazine and the photographs of the Em-maus he said to his pupils, "That's a forgery." But thenhe went to Holland, and when he saw the picture in frontof him, with its convincing craquelure,convincing colors,convincing aging, he began to doubt his own first impres-sion. There, close to it, he saw all the convincing detailsand not what was wrong with the style.

For any of you who intend to buy works of art, all Ican say is, don't go into it unless you're willing to give ita tremendous amount of time, to train your eye, to lookand look and look. And, even then, probably the bestlesson you can have is to buy a forgery.

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T h e F o r g e r y o u rG r e e k r o n z e o r s eJOSEPH V. NOBLEVice-Director for Administration

AT THE FIRST SESSION Tom Hoving spoke about amuseum'sresponsibility to set the record straight in thecase of forgeries that were discovered in its collection.This is the responsible thing to do, because the truth iswhat we are all seeking. We have an announcement tomake tonight; since we were holding this technicalsymposium and since the announcement concernsa tech-nical analysis, we thought it most appropriate to tellyou about it here.The subject is an important object in the Museum'scollection: our famous Greek bronze horse (Figure 3).This piece was bought on February I6, 1923, from adealer in Paris, and it has always been dated between480 and 470 B.C. Many scholarlyworks present the horseas being a high point in the history of Greek art. Thehorse has been so popular that over the years thousandsof plaster casts have been made of him and you can stillbuy them -up until tonight.Now the horse, unlike our Etruscan warriors, wasnever questioned. It was never questioned on any stylisticbasis and it was never questioned on a technical basis.All right, if it was never questioned, what happened?Well, I like the horse a tremendous amount. In fact,in I946 I bought a plaster cast of him and have had it inmy home ever since. And I've passedthishorsea thousandtimes, I've looked at it in every light and from everyangle. But one time, in the summer of 1961, as I waswalking toward the horse, I saw something I had neverseen before. I saw a line running from the tip of his noseup through his forelock, down the mane and back, upunder the belly, and all the way around (Figure I). Irecognized it as the casting fin caused by a piece mold.The sections of a mold had come together there and themetal had oozed out, forming a casting fin that had beenfiled off, leaving this line. Now, you might say, "Well,

.

I. Head of the Museum's horse,showing the mold line

of course the horse was cast in a mold " Yes, of course hewould have been cast in a mold, but if he had beengenuine he would have been cast by the lost-wax process.In ancient Greece, a piece of this size would have beencast by making a wax model of the horse and coveringthis model with clay, leaving a hole in some inconspic-uous place. Next you heat the clay, causing the wax torun out through the hole (hence "lost-wax process").Then you pour in the bronze, breakaway the mold whenthe metal has cooled, and you get a bronze casting. Youget a seamless bronze casting. Our horse's mold line isfrom a mold made out of sand, a process not inventeduntil the fourteenth century A.D.

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2. Horse. Greek,about 460 B.C. Bronze, height8156inches.ArchaeologicalMuseum, Olympia.Photograph:GermanArchaeologicalInstitute,Athens

Once you find one thing wrong with a work of art,then your eyes are clear and you can see more errors.Wesee, for instance, the hole in the mane; it's obviously forthe harness.But the hole is misplaced; the harnessstrapsshould tie right behind the ears (Figure 2), and this holeis much too low. There's another hole, running deepinto the forelock. What was it for? That kind of hole isfound on the life-size marble statues on the Acropolis ofAthens; whether they're female korai or marble horses,they have a hole on the top of their head. It's for abronze or iron spike, called a meniscus, to keep thepigeons off. The forger saw the marble statues on theAcropolis, he saw the hole and thought it was for aplume or something like that, and so he put a hole ontop of his small bronze horse.I was sure that this was a forgery and turned in a re-port on August 25, I96I. You don't just rush out andsay things are fakes, however; you check your conclu-sions until you come up with some definitive proof thatthe piece, and not just your knowledge, is faulty.Dietrich von Bothmer, the curator of Greek andRoman Art, was going to Greece in a few days, and Iasked him to examine the horses at Olympia (includingthe bronze one that resembled ours, shown in Figure 2),

the marble horses on the Acropolis, and other compar-able Greek statues. He did, and sent back a letter say-ing, "Remove the horse from exhibition," which we didon September 15, I96I.A month or so after Dietrich came back, we went toGreenpoint, Brooklyn, to visit the Bedi Rassy Foundry,one of the few companies in this area that still uses theFrench sand piece-mold process (most use the lost-waxtechnique). We took along a plaster cast of the horse,and told Mr. Rassy that we were interested in having abronze cast of it; how would he do it? Mr. Rassy tookthe horse and laid it on its side in a bed of sand mixedwith clay. Then he said, "Now I would fill the moldwith sand up to this point"-and he indicated a linethat exactly followed the line running around the bodyof our horse. "I would put lumps of sand mixed withclay all over the upper part; then I'd take them away,take out the model, and put the pieces of the mold backtogether again. You could cast a solid bronze horse init."

We were about to thank him and go away, when headded, "But I wouldn't do it that way." "What wouldyou do?" I asked. "I'd cast the horse hollow." "How?""Well, you do it exactly as I've said, but then you makea core out of this sand and clay, and you stick ironwire - about the thickness of coat-hanger wire - throughit to support the core so the bronze can flow around it.The iron wire won't melt." I objected that the ends ofthe wire would stick out. "You cut them off," Mr. Rassysaid, "and make little bronze plugs to cover the holes."Dietrich and I thanked him and rushed back to theMuseum, because we realized that we had seen theselittle plugs on the horse. We had always thought thatthey were ancient repairs, because in ancient castingsyou get little bubbles and it's normal for these to berepaired with rectangular bronze plugs like the ones onour horse. We counted them, and they were exactlywhere Mr. Rassy said they would be-on the head andback, and several along the sides.How could we find out what really was inside thehorse? Of course we thought of x-rays, but in those daysthere was no way of getting through this much bronzewith x-ray equipment; if you did penetrate it, the x-rayswould be so scattered that you could not get a clearimage of the interior. But the following day, a youngassistant curator in the Greek and Roman Department,an Englishman by the name of Brian Cook, came upwith a very ingenious thought. "If there's iron in there,"he said, "a magnet will stick to it." So he took a littlemagnet, attached it to a string, moved it around the

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horse,andplottedthepointsof magneticattraction n achart(Figure4). Insomeplaces hemagnet tuckto thehorse'sbody;most of thesecoincidedwith the locationof the plugs.Therewereotherplaceswherethe magnetswungtowardthe horse,but did not stick; these areplaceswherethe irondoesnot comeas closeto the sur-face. And so, in the spring of 1962, we had a chart ofthe internal tructure.Since then Dietrich and I continuedto searchforancientexamplesmadeby thissandpiece-moldprocess.Theydonot exist. Wewerealsosearchingorevenmoredefinitiveproofthat the horsewasa fake.This past summerI heard of an organization alledRadiographynspectionnc. thatusesx-raysandgammaraysto inspectfor flaws n the nine-inch teelplatesonatomicsubmarines.And I thought,"That'sfor us " Icalledthemup andsaidthat we hadan art objectthat

3. The Museum's horse.Bronze, heightz5'6 inches,weight25? pounds. Acc. no. 23.694. Chartshowingthepoints of magneticattraction

5. X-ray showingthe iron wires and sand core

Magnet ticksMagnet s attracted,butdoesnotstickIron,as seen n x-rayIron, as conjectured

(beyond limits of x-ray)Sand core

LEFT RIGHTz AEl A

CONTOUR--9


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we wanted them to x-ray for us. On September 15, I967,just a couple of months ago, they arrived here with atruckload of equipment. Figure 6 shows us in the NorthParking Lot of the Museum. The radioactivity signs arefor real; the chap who is setting up the equipment islicensed by the Atomic Energy Commission. The pic-ture shows the preparation of the first test: very heavyx-ray equipment, the horse, and the film behind it. Theimage produced by these x-rays was not clear, so weswitched to their heavy gun-Iridium 192, which ishighly radioactive. This was exposed by gamma rays;they rushed the film into the truck and developed it;and in Figure 5 you will see, for the first time, the insideof the horse. You can see the cavity filled with the sandcore, and then the faint, telltale line: the main iron wirerunning through the horse. The white spots are the endsof the transversewires that also held the core. The shad-owgraphconfirmswithout doubt that the horse was madeby the sand piece-mold process; it is the definitive proofof the forgery.You may wonder why we know the horse is a forgery,

and not simply a work of art made in a neoclassicalstyle.Because it was made with the intent to deceive: notonly does it have a poor patina (since patina is a rathernebulous subject, I didn't even bother to bring it up),but it has deliberate mutilation-of the legs and thetail, for instance.How old is it? Since it was done in the very sophisti-cated French sand-casting technique, I believe the horsewas made in Paris between I918 and I923. I do not thinkthat its style, the neoclassical stylization of archaic art,would have been possible earlier. This brings up a sub-ject that Ted Rousseau touched on: why are art for-geries so attractive? The horse appeals to us, and has ap-pealed to us for forty years, because it is closer to ourtaste than it is to the taste of the ancient Greeks.

What happens to it now? All forgeries found in theMetropolitan Museum are kept here for study purposes;they do not go out on the market. It will be on exhibi-tion and available for study for aslong as there is interest.And that is the story of our Greek bronze horse. It'sfamous, but it's a fraud.

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h e e g a l s p e c t s o F o r g e r ya n d t h rotection o t h E x p e r tDUDLEY T. EASBY, JR. Secretary f The MetropolitanMuseum of ArtR A L P H F. C 0 L I N Trusteeand Vice-Presidentf The Museumof ModernArt,and AdministrativeVice-Presidentf the Art Dealers Associationof America,Inc.

MR. EASBY: In a light moment, Viscount Buck-master, a former Lord Chancellor of England, once ob-served: Law and legal procedure have always been amystery to the uninitiated, a snare to the unwary, anda red rag to the unhappy man possessed by reformingzeal. Our taskwill be to abandon the lawyer'slegendaryrole of mystifying the uninitiated, and, instead, to tryto clear away some of the incontestable fog that en-velops the topic assigned to us. This topic is the legalaspects of forgery and the protection of the expert.Although the subject is a relatively narrow one, werewe to speak with the tongues of men and of angels, it isdoubtful whether we could come up with all the answers.If we do not add to the confusion, you -and we -willbe that much farther ahead.

Mr. Colin and I will be speakingas individual lawyers,and not as representatives of, nor spokesmen for, ourinstitutional clients.I think we should open the discussionby hearingfromMr. Colin on the legal definition of art forgery and thePenal Law of the State of New York concerning it.MR. COLIN: There is, unfortunately, no readily avail-able legal definition of art forgery. The statutory law ofNew York is simple. Up to a short time ago, Section 959of the Penal Law, headed Reproductionor Forgery of

ArchaeologicalObjects,covered the field accurately de-fined by the title-that is, only archaeological objects.Effective on September i, I967, aspart of the new PenalLaw, the new Section I70.45, headed Criminal Simula-tion, was added. It's short, and the easiest thing to do isto quote it in toto. It provides, A person is guilty of

criminal imulationwhen:i. With intent to defraud,hemakesor altersany object in such manner hat it ap-pears o havean antiquity,rarity,sourceor authorshipwhich it doesnot in fact possess; r 2. With knowledgeof its truecharacter ndwith intentto defraud,he uttersorpossessesn objectsosimulated. The sectiongoesonto statethatcriminal imulationsa classA misdemeanor(whichis punishableby not more than a year in jail).The nub of this statuteis the phrase, with intent todefraud. Here,as in manyotherphasesof the law, theproblems proving ntent. It'sobvious hat the court orattorneyor jury can't make a hole in the head of thepersonunder investigationand read what appearsonhis mind. Intent must be proven by the circumstancessurroundinghe event. For instance, f a reputableartdealer,who repeatedlyhassold honestgoods,is foundone day with a work that is ultimatelydetermined obe a fake,ordinarily o conclusionwould be drawn romthis that he was offering he fake intentionally.If, onthe other hand, a dealerwere in existencewho con-tinuallyoffered akes,one would be led to presumehatsomewherelongthe line he must haveknown hatmostor all of what he wasofferingwasfalse,andaccordinglya jury or a judgewould be entitled to drawthe con-clusion that he was dealing with intent to defraud.

Of coursethere areotherways that intent might beproven.The dealermight have mentionedto a friendthat he knew he had fakes, but this is unlikely:onedoesn'tusuallyprove fraudout of the mouth of thepersonaccused.So, underany statutoryprovisiondeal-ing with intentional raud,you have to provecircum-257




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stances hat lead to the inevitableconclusion,by judgeor jury, thatsuchan intent waspresent.It might be helpfulto the layman or us to mentionhere that there is a great differencebetweenwhat aperson'segal rightsare and what he can prove.This isalways rue;it's true in the worldof art and it's trueinall other fields.A personmay have a right, but if hecan'tprovethe factsnecessaryo substantiatehatright,he's out of court.MR. EASBY: You have the sameproblemof provingintent in the civil remedythat'savailable o the victimof an art fraud.In common aw it's calledan actionfor

deceit,and the plaintiffmustshowthat the sellerknewhe had a fake.MR. COLIN: That's trueif the civil actionis for de-

ceit, but ordinarily he art fraud caseneed not be anaction for deceit, and therefore ntention need not beproven.It is the common aw,even without the recentstatute,thatwhena dealer ellsa workthathe describesas Corot, I867, DancingNymphsin a Forest, he isrepresentinghat the pictureis by Corot, that it waspainted n 1867,andthatit is known n the literature sDancingNymphsin a Forest.So, if the paintingturnsout not to be what it wasrepresentedo be,alloneneeddo is provethatfact- it wasnot asrepresentedandthedealerhas therebybreachedhis warranty, ntentionallyor unintentionally.

MR. EASBY: The proofthat an artobject s not whatit wasrepresented s is basedon the stylisticandscien-tific criteriadiscussed n the earlierseminars. t's thesamesortof proof, ncidentally,hatyou relyon in anylegalactioninvolvingexperttestimony:partfact, partopinion.

This bringsus to the secondhalf of our topic, theprotectionof the expert. Who or what is an expert?Somewritershavepreferredo use theword authorityrather than expert, but I think we'll agree that hemightbe a dealer,museumcurator, ritic,arthistorian,professor,onservator,esearcher,metallurgist, hemist,x-rayman, or even a nuclearphysicist.One thing allthesepeoplehave in commonamongthemselves ndincommon with other expert witnesses s some specialknowledgebasedupon long study and experience.An-otherthingthey havein commonand this is contraryto popularbelief- is that theyare not possessedf papalinfallibility.MR. COLIN: The true expert is more modestthanone wouldexpect.He is satisfiedf he knowseverythingthere s to knowabout a verynarrowield.I cangive asan exampleLloyd Goodrich, he formerdirectorof theWhitneyMuseum,who claimsto be an authorityonly

on four nineteenth-century American painters. I wouldtake his opinion on a much wider field than that, butthat's all he claims. The true expert doesn't pretend tobe all-knowing.MR. EASBY: Twenty-seven years ago, HuntingtonCairns, who was then general counsel of the National

Gallery of Art, and I got together on a document thatwe thought would protect the curatorial people in ourrespective museums. In that document, the undersigned(who is the person bringing in the work for an opinion)certifies that he is the owner, that he requests an ex-amination and an informal oralopinion as to the probabledate and attribution for his personal information only,and not for use in connection with any past or contem-plated commercial transaction. In consideration of thegiving of that opinion, the person requesting it agrees toindemnify the Museum, its Trustees, and the membersof its staff, and save them harmlessfrom any and all lia-bility in the event of any claim based in any way uponthe rendition of the opinion.It was our feeling then -and it is my feeling now as alawyer, and not as secretary of the Metropolitan Mu-seum speaking for the Museum- that that is about asmuch protection as the expert on the Museum's staff canever hope for.The New York State Attorney General's office is cur-rently drafting a bill designed to protect art experts fromlawsuits for uttering disparagingopinions of the authen-ticity of certain kindsof works of art. As far asI can makeout, the apparent urgency for passingsuch legislation toprotect the expert stems, in part, from an article pub-lished in the December 1965 issue of The Recordof theAssociation of the Bar of the City of New York.There amember of the bar opened his article by stating, TheUnited States has been inundated with fraudulent art.This is a direct consequence of the laissez-faire attitudeof all branchesof the art community. He goes on to saythat he is limiting himselfprimarily to contemporary art.Mr. Colin, as vice-president of The Museum of ModernArt and also as vice-president of the Art Dealers Associa-tion, where your membership includes a number of peo-ple dealing in contemporary art, I'd like to have yourcomments on those two statements.

MR. COLIN: I would say that both of them are quitefalse and, in my opinion, irresponsible. Let's take themseparately. The United States has been inundated withfraudulent art. Bearing in mind that the writer of thearticle states that he is dealing mainly with contem-porary art, I state as a fact that it is only a very, verysmall fraction of one per cent of all art dealings in theUnited States or in the world, in any one year, that in-

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volves fake art. Hundredsof millionsof dollars'worthof artis soldevery year by honestdealers, ndcompriseshonestworksof art. Whena fake s sold anddiscovered,it hits the newspapers. he saleof honestworks s notnewsworthyand doesn't hit the newspapers.This isanalogouso the situationwithrespect o airplaneravel:millionsof miles of airplaneraveloccurwithout a com-ment from hepapers, uteverytimethere's naccident,there'sa headline.Thisis whathappensn the worldofart. Thereis no inundationof fraudulentworks.Thereareafewfakers ndwhentheyarediscovered,heymakethe headlinesand are given an importance hat is en-tirelyunwarrantedn termsof percentage f themarket.Let's take the secondstatement, that this so-calledinundation f fraudulent rt is a directconsequencefthe laissez-fairettitudeof all branches f the art com-munity. What areall branchesof the art community?Well, that certainly includes museums and dealers,primarily; ollectorstoo, incidentally.I don't believethere'sa laissez-faire ttitudeon the partof museums;I think museumsare extremely careful n what theypurchase.The fact that every so often they make amistakedoesn'tmeanthatthere'sa laissez-fairettitude.On thecontrary, hey'reveryshamefaced boutit; theyadmittheyarenotperfect buttheyare arfrom aissez-faire.Whenit comes to dealers,bear n mind that a dealernotonlysellsart,buthe buysit. And when a dealer ayshismoneyon the line,you can be certain hathe'sjustas carefulas he can be that what he buys is what hethinks t is, andis something hat he cantherefore esellfor whathe thinks t is. Of course 'm talkingabouttheresponsible ealers.There are crookeddealers,as thereare crooked awyersand crookeddoctorsand crookedstockbrokers.But I choose to believe that most seg-ments of any industryor profession re honest,and Ithinkthefactis thatmostartdealers rehonest.They'recertainly areful, ndthere'snolaissez-fairettitudethatI'm awareof.I wouldthink that if there s anylaissez-fairettitudein the art world, t may be amongsome collectorswhotry to outsmartthe market and buy bargains.Whenthey're doing that, they are engaging n laissez-fairepractices,but knowingly.They'retakingtheir chanceson somethinghatlookscheap:cheaper han t oughttobe, and therefore hey ought to be suspicious.MR. EASBY: In that samearticle n the Bar Associa-tion Record,the writersaysthat Museums ave beenjust as lax as collectorsand dealers,n obtainingdocu-mentationon authenticityof contemporaryrt- partic-ularlywhen the acquisitioncomes from a patron or a

potential patron. It is no secret among the better-in-formed members of the art community that unscrupu-lous owners of art of questionable authenticity who wantto salvage their investment, but do not want to risk theembarrassment hrough public sale, resort to tax-deduct-ible gifts to their favorite museums. The writer goeson to say that perhaps museums accept these becausethey are afraid of what they may find and whom they

may offend. In any event the museums in this countryare becoming the custodians of a prodigious number offakes. It was brought out earlier by the representativesof The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney thatthis statement is without foundation as regards thosetwo museums.

MR. COLIN: I would say it's entirely without foun-dation. I'm aware of the care with which works offeredto The Museum of Modern Art are scrutinized, becausefor many years I've been a member of the acquisitionscommittee. This statement is just false.

MR. EASBY: And, although in this context it's lim-ited to contemporary art, it certainly is false as appliedto other than contemporary art in any responsible artmuseum.

The writer continues, The museums have also facili-tated the marketing of fakes by prohibiting members oftheir staff, often consisting of the leading art experts,from rendering opinions on authenticity to a prospectivepurchaser of art. This prohibition by museums is notmotivated by a perverse willingness to countenancefrauds, but rather for the practical purpose of insulatingthem and their staffs against costly lawsuits that can beextremely difficult to defend. Nevertheless, the silencingof the art expert permits those dealing loosely with artto become more brazen. Who is left to accuse them?MR. COLIN: I'd like to answer that question verysimply: The answer is the Art Dealers Association ofAmerica, which has been accusing people right and leftwhen they find that the accusations are warranted.Thereis a very active, competent, and responsible agency atwork in the art world today to accuse when action iswarranted.

MR. EASBY: The passage continues, The silencingof the expert also leaves the collector in a quandarywhen he is about to make a purchase, particularly if theartist is not available. The writer then discusses brieflythe practice in the major New York museums, referringto the fact that The Museum of Modern Art and theGuggenheim prohibit any member of their staffs fromgiving an opinion for the public on questions of authen-ticity; he refers quite correctly to the practice at theMetropolitan, where we will permit our staff members

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to give an oralopinion not a writtencertification andhe refers o the samepracticeat the Whitney.He thenconcludes, Perhaps he solutionmay rest in the pas-sage of legislation o protectcertainmuseumcurators,art professorsnd the like fromliability f they renderopinionswithin the area of their competency n goodfaith. I think the law is that now,withoutlegislation.The final statement is, Exculpationwill break thesilenceof the expert.I submitthat that statement s reallybasedon a mis-understandingf the facts, and the present egislationnow understudy, whichrefersonly to the fearof liti-gation,seems to be based argelyupon it. Fear of liti-gation is certainlyan importantelement in the reluc-tance of museums o have their staffparticipaten ex-pertise.But thereare morefundamental onsiderations.One is the unreasonable emandsmadeon the timeof the staff.You can'tpickandchoose,andsay, Well,we'llgiveanopinion o so-and-so ut we won'tgive oneto somebodyelse. It's a public nstitution,and if youhave a policylike ours of givinginformalopinions,youhave to give them to everyone.I have a secondpracticalreason or questioning hevalueof theseopinions: t bestthey'recursory nd can'tbe basedon extendedresearch. n the earliersessionswe've heardof studiesthat have gone on for twenty-five or thirty years before conclusionswere reachedand even then you can't be sure that they'rethe finalconclusions.t'sunreasonable,think,to expecta man-even an artexpert to lookat somethingor five or tenminutesand come up with an absolutejudgment.Hemay,in the clearcases,be able to pulldown a bookandshow the personthe answer to his question.On theother hand, it may be something hat has to go to alaboratoryo be tested.There are other considerations, thical ones. TheEuropeanpracticeof supplementing museum man'sincomeby paid expertise s frownedon in this countryand,in fact,is regarded sunethicaln the museumpro-fession.Both the Association f Art MuseumDirectorsandthe Internationalnstitute or theConservationndPreservation f Historicand ArtisticWorkshave pro-visions pecifically rohibitingwrittenexpertiseorpay.Anotherethical considerations that the staffof a mu-seum,being primarily cademicpeople,do not wish tobe put in the situationof assistinghe makingof a sale,or of running ninvestment ounselingervice orsome-bodywho wishes o buycheapand sellhigh.Nor shoulda museum be a Consumer'sUnion, nor put a GoodHousekeepingeal of approvalon worksof art:I think

thatdemeans he worksof art.It's for thesereasons hatcurators on't want to comeforward ndcounsel ome-body, You shouldpurchase his.Now it's true,we all know,thatmembers f museumstaffsdo give advice to collectorswho are well knownto the museum and whose collections are ultimatelygoingto come to the museum.But that'squitedifferentfromadvisingany strangerwho, for all you know,maybe a runner or somedealer,asking oran opinion o hemay then go out and say, The Metropolitan aysit'sthus and so, and puffs the price. (It's amazinghoweven the simplestcommentby a museumcan be used.A friend old me of havingseen, n a little curioshop nthe country, a paintingmarkedwith a card saying,Authenticatedby The MetropolitanMuseumof Artasanoilpainting. He toldtheshopowner e would iketo see thatauthentication,nd t turnedout to beone ofour form letters, thankingthe man for a photographand sayingwe wouldn'tbe interested n acquiringhispainting.)That situationis especiallydelicate in artcenters uchasNew York.So far, in consideringhe reluctanceof museums obecomeinvolved in issuingcertificatesof authentica-tion, we've referredto the practicalreasonsand theethical considerations. omingbacknow to the statuteunder tudy,whichis addressedo the fearof litigation,it addressestselfonly to one type of litigation.That isan actionbasedon disparagementf title or disparage-ment of quality. If the statutewerepassed,I think itwould createa falsesenseof security n a museummanif he thoughthe wasbeingprotectedagainstall possiblelitigation.One of the mostimportant ypesof litigationthatan expertcanget himself nvolvedin, of course, sinducinga breachof contract.If something s up forpurchaseand he tells the prospectivepurchaser, Layoff that, it's not right, the dealercan comebackandclaimhe's lost a sale,so the expertmustdefendhimselfagainstthat type of action. Another action may bebasedon the negligentrendering f an opinion;f some-body sets himselfup as an expert, qualifiedto giveopinionsn a particular reaof his competence andthestatutewould set museumsup to do this),he maywellfind himselfbeingsuedfor negligencef, in an opinionbasedon a cursoryexamination, e recommends fakeor a pasticheas a rareand desirableoriginal,and thepersonreceiving hatopiniongoesout and sinksa lot ofmoneyin it. The reverse wist would be the caseof amanwho comes n with, say,a genuineEl Grecoandistold thatit is unfortunately ot by the master.He goesout andsells t for a hundreddollars, ndlaterdiscovers

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that the purchaserhas put it up at auction and it'sbroughta hundred housand. think he wouldhave anactionfornegligence here.Then, there'sanotherpossibleaction that is not asremoteas it sounds.There'sa pretty thin line betweencondemning n objectand condemninghe dealerwhohasthe object.I canwell imaginea curator, iredafterfour hoursof inspecting hingsof relativelyminorim-portance,beingshownsomething rom the Joe SmithGalleryand exclaiming, Oh my heavens, s this an-other of JoeSmith's akes? Any defamatorytatementabout a man n his trade,profession,r calling s action-able per se-and that meansyou don't have to proveany specialdamages,you merelyhave to prove thatsomebodyhasmade the defamatorytatement hat thisis an unreliable ealer.So there areat leastfour actionsnot coveredby this statute.Anotherweaknesss that the bill,as now drawn,de-finesa workof fineart as apainting, culpture,drawingor workof graphic rt. It completelyeavesout of con-sideration, swaspointedout by Mr. Hovingat one ofthe hearings,urniture,glassware,metalwork, eramics,porcelain, arpetsand tapestries, nd even the archae-ologicalobjectscoveredby the penalstatute that Mr.Colindiscussed arlier. t should be possible o drawastatute that would coverall typesof worksof art. TheCustoms aws,after all, have been administered or along time without any statutorydefinitionof art orantiquity,other than that the object in questionbe ahundredyearsold.If you could put througha statute that coversall

works of art and all types of action, this would be anideal world.I think museumswould welcomehavingthe additionalprotection.On the otherhand,my per-sonalopinion s-and this is not simplyprideof author-ship that what CairnsandI workedout twenty-sevenyearsago givesalmost he same hingwithout the neces-sity forlegislation.MR. COLIN:I agree entirely, and I think, in addition,

that if a true expert,at the requestof an interestedparty,givesan opinion n an area n which he is reason-ably expert,he is safewithoutany law,or withoutanyrelease, r withoutanything lse.He is safe,thatis, fromliability,but nobodycanstopsomeone romsuinghim.Anyonecan sue anyonefor anythingat any time, andyou can'tpreventsuitseither by laws or by piecesofpaper.If peopleget angryenough,they'llsueyou.MR. EASBY: The Metropolitan's racticeof givingoral opinions s directed to the genuinecollector andseekerafter truth,who reallywantsto knowabouthiswork of art andnot primarilywhat he cansell it for. I

hopethe timewill comewhenwecangivemoreof these,but I think that'sall the publicreasonably as a rightto ask for. The purchaseof a work of art is, afterall,primarilythe collector'sresponsibility.Ted Rousseaugavesomeprettysoundadviceto truecollectors: Don'tgo into it unlessyou'rewillingto give it a tremendousamountof time,to trainyoureye, to lookandlookandlook. All the expertadviceand all the legal protectionin the worldcannotguaranteehat a buyerof a workofart- be it a novice collectoror a great museum-willneverget stuckwith a fake.

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T h e r t r a u d s egislationL O U I S J. L E F K O W I T Z AttorneyGeneralof the Stateof New York

I AM A FIRM BELIEVER in self-regulation. Everybusinessshould police itself, keep its own house in order.Government should not step in unless a businessrefusesor fails to do this. Then we have an obligation to pro-tect the public interest, not to mention the good peoplein the business.

Works of art are an important part of our economicand cultural world: art frauds hurt those who buy andthose who sell. Over two years ago, my office had heardenough complaints to warrant undertaking an investi-gation into what we could do to protect the rights of theartist, the buyer, the reputable dealer. There were com-plaints, but no pat solutions. So we set out to find whatcould be done. For months we held one public hearingafter another, we solicited opinions from all parts of theart world, we talked to many, many people-artists,collectors, dealers, lawyers, museum people.

What have we accomplished? More important, whatdo we still have to do? Well, two years ago three newlaws were passed. One specifies that whenever a work ofart is sold, the artist retains reproduction rights unless hespecifically transfers them. Another law provides thatif a dealer puts the name of an artist on the bill of sale,that bill is an express warranty of the work's authentic-ity. The third law makes it a crime for a dealer to mis-appropriatean artist'sproperty held by the dealer as theartist's selling agent.These lawsare on the books, but there are many otherareaswhere the law needs strengthening. We have morebills in the drafting stage that are under considerationbut by no means final. One is aimed at making the

expresswarranty aw more effective.As thingsstandnow, a man who discovers hat he has boughta fakemay be helplessf the dealeror auctioneerhas excludedhis own liability (includinghis consignor, f any) bydisclaiming,at the time of sale, any warrantyof itsauthenticity.To preventunconscionableesults, his billprovidesthat disclaimers re inoperativewhen a workturns out to be a forgeryand the buyerseeksonly thereturnof the work of art and the repaymentof theprice.A secondbill underconsiderationmakes the falsifica-tion of certificates f authenticitya misdemeanor.A third billunderconsiderations primarily imedatprotecting xperts rom lawsuitsorany statement heymake to governmentagencies hat tends to deny ortendsto disparagehe authenticity,quality,condition,or valueof a workof fine art. The InternalRevenueServicemustdependon outsideopinions o helpit sortout thelegitimate axdeductions ndappraisalsordona-tions of arton tax returns.Otherpossibleprovisionsorprotectionof art experts n exposing orgeriesare stillunderstudy.All of thesebills arein the drafting tage. They havein the pastand will in the future be submittedto in-terestedparties ortheirviews.It is hopedthatthroughconstructive riticismbillswillbe drafted or submissionto the legislaturehat will have somedeterrenteffectsupon the proliferation f fraudulentart in the NewYork art markets.

Interview yAlexander tuart,withJosephRothman

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T h e ystery o t h eE i g h t vangelistsCARMEN GOMEZ-MORENOAssociate Curator of Medieval Art and The Cloisters

WHEN YOU WORK in an art museum and, moreover, in a curatorialcapacity, youhave to get used to the reactionit produceson outsiders.First comes surprise,reflectedin, "How very interesting " A question follows: "And what do you do?" It takes along time to explain and even longer to sound convincing. One thing is certain, how-ever: there can be days, even weeks, of tedious routine, and then a little detail catchesyour eye and all the wheels of excitement are set in motion and everything becomesdifferent and worthwhile. It is a feeling that must come quite close to what a gooddetective feels when, after he has had nothing really interesting to work on for sometime, a sudden and exciting crime makes him recover his faith in the inexhaustible re-sources of the evil nature of man.

Surroundedas it was by objects visually more attractive, the slender Mosan crossona large rounded base (Figure i)-very much like a turtle that has stopped its slowmotion to wonder what has been put on its back- had never attracted my attention.One day I had to take it out of its case and, having it in my hands, I became ratherpuzzled at the abundance of symbols of the Evangelists on such a simple and com-paratively small object. A set of them was at the four ends of the cross (Figure 4):the eagle of St. John at the top, the winged man of St. Matthew at the bottom, St.Mark'swinged lion at the left, and St. Luke's winged bull at the right; the four Evan-gelists themselves, together with their symbols, were representedon the base (Figure3). I also observed that on the cross the eagle of St. John had the name of Matthew,while the winged man of St. Matthew had the name of John. I thought, moreover,that the style and the quality of the enamels on the base were far superiorto those ofthe cross.

My curiosity made me look through the dossierof this piece and I found that manyyears earlier,in I933, the cross had been separatedfrom the base and held under sus-picion. It would have remained that way if a famousscholar, who visited the Metro-politan Museum in I956, had not defended the authenticity of the crossand its rightto remain together with the figure of Christ and the base. His verdict was accepted,the reasons for suspicionwere dropped, the case was closed, and the three pieces werereunited.

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I was not convinced that the verdict wasright. Perhaps because I was not at the Mu-seum when it was delivered and I was free ofoutside influences. Perhaps because I believethat even the greatest and most knowledge-able men can make mistakes. Perhaps becauseI could not stop myself from rememberingthe story of the Emperor's new clothes. WhenI found the time I set about searching forsome more clues, trying to be impartial, me-thodical, objective, and scientific.

Apart from the wrong names on the sym-bols of Matthew and John, a comparativestudy of the inscriptions on the base and onthe cross brought out, quite clearly, that theinscriptions on the cross were taken fromthose on the baseby somebodywho wasneitherfamiliar with the lettering and abbreviationsystem in medieval writing nor with themeaning of the words themselves. As a re-sult of this lack of knowledge, MAHEVS(Matheus) became MAHEVS; IOHS (Iohan-nes), IOBS; LVCAS, IVCAS; and MARCVS,OAVSRC (Figure 5). If there were only onemistake or two we could suppose that who-ever wrote them was just clumsy, but in thiscase all the names are wrong and meaningless.The ignorance of the manufacturers of thecross is even more obvious in the inscriptionabove Christ's head - the titulus (Figure 5) -the text of which was usually taken, in thetwelfth century, from the Gospel of St. John(I9:I9: "Scripsit autem et titulum Pilatus,et posuit super crucem: erat autem scriptum:IESUS NAZARENUS, REX IUDEORUM").The name of Jesus usually appears in abbre-viation in the medieval representationsof thecrucifixion, as IHS or IHE (from the LatinIHESVS) or, if there is Byzantine influence,as IHC (from the Greek IHcovc). In thiscross the name appearsalmost complete. That

I. Cross,corpus,and base. Copper-gilt,withchampleveenamel on cross and base.Base and corpus:Mosan, XII century.Cross:later reconstruction.Overallheight12 inches. Gift ofJ. PierpontMorgan,17.190.341 a-c


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is not wrong in itself, but the I has been in-serted between the H and the E, and slightlyabove them, and the v (always used for theletter u) has been replaced by a curve thathas no meaning. The word NAZARENUS hasbeen omitted entirely. I have checked a con-siderable number of tituli, not only of thetwelfth but also of the tenth and eleventhcenturies, and I have not found a single onewhere that word was omitted and very fewwhere it was abbreviated. The word IVDE-ORVM or, rather, its abbreviation IVDEORhas been divided in a peculiar way, with theE above by itself as if it were an abbreviation,although there was enough space for it on thebottom line. Instead of a v there is a u, whichbelongs to another type of lettering thatwas never used in inscriptions of the Mosanschool of that period. This inscription shouldbe enough to condemn the cross, but thereare other factors that are quite conclusive inthemselves.

The cross seems too narrow for the figureof Christ, and too small for the base and,certainly, for the large knob. Rectangles atthe four ends, such as we see here, were usedsometimes in larger crosses-processionalcrosses-but not in small ones such as this.The arms are not horizontal but inclineddownward. This peculiarity could be easilyexplained in an ivory or wooden cross whereone has to work with a material that has ashape of its own and a grain that sometimesmakes shaping difficult. In metal, however,I cannot find an excuse for such clumsinessunless it was a deliberate attempt to makethe piece look handmade.The use of the four symbols of the Evan-gelists on the front of the cross is very rare,though there are a few examples that showthat this is not impossible. To my knowledgenone of these examples occurs in Mosan artof the twelfth century. The symbols appearmuch more frequently on the reverse ofcrosses around the Lamb of God, Christ inMajesty, or even the Virgin Mary. In anycase, they are never represented twice in thesame piece. The head of the winged man,symbol of Matthew, at the bottom of ourcrossappearsin profile. This is most unusual.

In very few examples have I been able to findheads in profile in Mosan enamels, and theyusually are in groups with other heads seenfrontally or in three-quarter view (the mostfrequently used device). In the case understudy, I believe that this winged man wastaken from the St. John on the base, copyingthe shape of his nose, mouth, chin, hair, andeven the upper part of his mantle, but show-ing the face in profile. This may account forthe awkward shape of the head, and also forthe presence of the name of John instead ofMatthew: the copyist was carried away andforgot that he was representing somebodyelse.

Because of the narrownessof the cross, thecruciferous nimbus had to be too small forthe head of Christ. The serpent symbolizingevil (Figure 4) under Christ's feet, which isdescribed with a very weak incised line andlooks up with a placid smile, is utterly ridic-ulous and alien to Mosan style or any othermedieval style. The beaded motif around theborder of the cross s too even and mechanical;the same can be said about the scroll decora-tion on the back (Figure 2), which is almostRenaissance in flavor, particularly in thefleurons at the four ends and the rosette inthe crossing.The enamels completely lack the boldnessof design and technique that we see in thebase. While in the latter the incised lines aredeep, strong, and full of meaning, in the crossthey are weak and superficial,and the enamelpaste poured into them has overflowed, form-ing ridges that confuse the already confuseddesign. This is particularly obvious in deli-cate areas such as hair, feathers, or wrinkles.If the base had enamel in places such as theseor in the incised lines of the faces, it has alldisappeared. Only the inscriptions and largerareas, such as garments or floral decoration,still have enamel, at least in part. It is diffi-cult to believe that the base could have suf-fered so many losses and the cross so veryfew if they had been made at the same time,with the same technique, and had remainedtogether for centuries.The colors of the enamels on the cross areclose to those on the base. If they had been

2. The back of the cross

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3. The base. The Evangelists,startingrom the bottomandproceedingcounterclockwise, re: St. John, St. Mark, St.Luke, and St. Matthew

used in a more convincingway, without somuch being squeezedin such a restrictedspace, hey mighthavebeenagood mitation,difficultto detect. We took a smallparticleof the only color of the cross that had abreak-the turquoiseblue bandaround thebordersof the rectangles-andanotherpar-ticleof the samecolorfrom the bandaroundthe bottomof the base.The enamel rom thecrossproved to be very hard and corre-sponds accordingo the technicians to en-amelsmaderecently,while the enamel romthe basewasvery brittleandbrokewith theslighttouch of a needle,asis characteristicfenamelsof considerableage. Both particleswere submitted to spectrographic nalysis,the resultsof which were inconclusivebe-cause,thoughthey showeddifferencesn thecomposition f the enamels, he colorwe hadto use is not a very importantone and theamountwas too small.To test othercolors twould have been necessary o damagethecrossseriously,and we felt that a step likethatwasnot compulsorywhenwehadseveralother means of provingthe authenticityorfalsehood f thispiece.The metalof the basehas a verywornsur-face, quite pitted, and has a brownpatinathat doesnot ruboff. Thesurface f thecross,on the other hand,is smoothand perfectlypreserved,and the patina is so superficialthat it disappears henyou rub it with yourfingertips, evealing he shinycopperunder-neath. A greenishareawith the appearanceof corrosion,below the arms of Christ,wasremovedvery easilywith solvents,revealingthe uncorrodedmetal beneath.The spectro-graphicanalysisof small particlesof metalfrom the base and the crossshowsenoughdifferenceoindicate hattheywerenotmadeat the same time. The compositionof themetalof the crossvaries romtypicalmodernalloys,suggestinghatit wasnot made n theimmediatepast.The gilding on the base is almost com-pletely gone. Only a little remainson thefloral-decoratedorderaround t and in thelion'sfeet, whicharealmostcertainlya laterrestoration.We alsofind tracesof gildingonthe cross,along the incisedlines around t


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(both on the front and on the back) and inthe nimbus. It seems logical that if the orig-inal gilding had worn away through use,the area under the corpus, inaccessible totouching, would show at least some gilding.No traces of it appear.The corpus itself is perfectly genuine, butwhether it was meant to be on the cross thatwent with this base cannot be proved. It isconsistent with twelfth-century Mosan cruci-fixes, and the wear and remains of gilding arecompletely convincing. The feet, placed sideby side, were meant to rest on a suppeda-neum - or support for the feet-as was cus-tomary in the Mosan school of that period.Most frequently the suppedaneumformspartof the feet, but in this case it must have beenpart of the original cross. When the crossunder study was made, the manufacturersdidnot know about that particular feature, andthey ran into trouble when they tried toplace the figure of Christ on the flat surfaceof the cross. There was not much of a problemwith the hands, though they had to make theholes on the arms of the cross a little low inorder to keep the head at the crossing, butthey must have been quite puzzled at findingthat the feet had no holes. They opened oneon the left foot, but when they tried to passa nail through it they found that the feetformed a forty-five-degree angle with thecross and so the nail would have to curve along way to reach the flat surface. They gaveup the idea, filled in the hole with a metalthat looks identical to that of the cross, anddecided to put one nail between the two feet.Although this too has to curve, it is less con-spicuous than if two nails had been used. Thisdetail would be enough to indicate that thecross and the corpus were not made at thesame time and that the corpus was originallymade for another cross.

Summing up the facts: We have, i) Around base made of copper with remains of

4. Theplaques on the cross. The symbolsoJthe Evangelists,starting rom the bottom andproceedingcounterclockwise,are: the wingedman of St. Matthew, the wingedbull of St.Luke, the eagle of St. John, and the wingedlion of St. Mark


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gilding, decorated with champleve enamelsrepresenting the Four Evangelists in quatre-foils with their corresponding symbols on theleft and floral motifs in between. The shapeand style are close to the well-known Foot ofthe Cross of St. Bertin, a Mosan piece ofabout II8o in the Museum of Saint-Omer,but ours is less spectacular, in part because itis so damaged. It is interesting to note thatin both cases the cross has disappeared. 2) Afigure of Christ from a crucifix, perfectly con-sistent in style and iconography with Mosancrucifixes of the twelfth century, but, in myopinion, less good stylistically than the base.3) A copper cross with the symbols of theEvangelists in champleve enamel. Poor inshape and proportions compared with theother two pieces, it is very bad in style. Itshows a considerable number of mistakes thatcannot be easily explained within the Mosanschool of metalworkers and enamelers, whoappear to have been reliable and accurate intechniques, knowledge of iconography, andreading and writing of religious texts.After all these findings, it was decided to

exhibit the base; to keep the corpus as agenuine piece but not important enough toleave on display; and to put away the crossfor life and, this time, not under suspicionbut as definitely guilty.

Noteof advice ocolleagues:Neverbeashamedof readingmysterystories. Sometimes t can beveryuseful.BIBLIOGRAPHYCollectionBourgeoisFreres-Katalogder Kun-stsachen ndAntiquitdtenesVI bisXIXJahrhun-derts (Cologne, 1904), No. 361, ill. (called Mae-stricht,about II70).Otto von Falke and Heinrich Frauberger,DeutscheSchmelzarbeitenes Mittelalters(Frank-furt, I904), pp. 80-81, fig. 29 (called Maestricht,workshopof Godefroidde Claire,about1165).JosephBreck,"NotesonSomeMosanEnamels"in MetropolitanMuseum StudiesI (New York,1928), p. 8I (refers to Otto von Falke's publi-cation).Richard H. Randall,"The Medieval Art andIndustrializedArt" in Apollo (New York, De-cember I966; special Christmas issue on theWaltersArt Gallery), p. 44 (considereda "rareand complete" exampleof a work by differenthands).

5. The inscriptionson the base, on theplaques, and on the cross

O C sI O S

L V CO S R

C V S

101BEV

Vv

IBSCIUD

v


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C h i n a i n t o D e l f to t e o i s u a l ranslation

C L A R E L E C 0 R B E I L L E R AssistantCuratorof WesternEuropeanArts

NOVELTY is exhilarating; it pleases, it in-forms, it challenges.Novelty came to Hollandin I604 in the form of an estimated Ioo,ooopieces of blue and white Chinese porcelaintaken off the captured Portuguese carrackCatharina.Such a quantity of porcelain hadnever been seen in Europe. Until then, onlya few celadons and blue and white pieces had,from 1338, enriched the collections of royaltyand the nobility. Highly admired, these wereoften elaborately mounted in silver gilt, likea group of Wan-Li pieces in the Museum,traditionally said to have belonged to QueenElizabeth's favorite, the Earl of Essex. In thesixteenth century some few dozen blue andwhite porcelains painted to order documentthe first direct contact between Portugal andChina in I5I7 and a subsequent unofficialtrade. Italy, advantageously linked by herseaports to the Levant, was most familiarwith the porcelainsof the Near and Far East,and both Islamic and Oriental traditions areevident in the earliest surviving Westernimitations of blue and white wares, made inFlorence between I575 and I587 (Figure i).But these were isolated occasions; Orientalporcelain remainedan exotic, enviable rarity.The sudden appearance of an "untold massof porcelain of all kinds" in I604, and itsdispersal by auction in Amsterdam set off areverberation that echoed for two centuries.On the one hand it stimulated a traffic inporcelain which, in just the short period be-tween that year and 1657, brought well overthree million pieces of porcelain to Holland-an extraordinary amount in proportion tothe population. And on the other hand it setoff an equally lively industry of domesticimitations.

For at first, from about I640 to I660, theblue and white wares of the Delft factories

were quite literally imitative: the potterswere too uncertainof their material (tin-glazedearthenware, roughand readysub-stitute for hard-paste porcelain) and tooignorantof Orientaldesignto strayvery farfrom their models.

Despite their limitations he effect of theDutch wares s often surprisingly ersuasive.Werethey, in fact,meantto be so persuasiveas to deceive?Acknowledging ertain com-mercial motivations, they probably were.Enthusiasmor Orientalblueand whitewassuch that everyonewanted it, and despitethe enormousquantitiesarriving n Hollandtherewereyearswhenshipsandtheircargoeswerelost at sea,andyears sometimesmanytogether-when negotiations between theDutch and Chinesemerchantsbroke downand no porcelain was either ordered orshipped. Locally producedwaresthat satis-fied the visual requirements and perhaps,not so incidentally, he tablecustoms)of theDutch were thereforen demand,andinsofaras theywere meantto fool the eye theywereindeed deceptive. But the deceptioncouldonly havebeensuperficial.A close nspectionof these optical illusionsof the mid-seven-teenth century reveals a number of diver-gences,quite apartfromthe obviousonesofcertainshapesunknown n the Orient: theall-important ifference f the materialtself,irregularcontrol of the tones of blue andwhite, unevennessof glaze and painting,overcontrasting utline drawing,and- ulti-mate innocence the Dutch potter's ownmark.(Chinesemarks, t is true,wereoftenimitated or paraphrasedn Europe, as inFigure6. Therewascertainly mple raditionfor the practice, ince the Chinese hemselvesfrequentlyemployedthe reign mark of anearlieremperorout of veneration or the ex-

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cellence of the porcelain original to thatperiod. Some such reasoning may haveoperated in the West; the application of apseudo-Chinesemark on what must have beeneven then an unmistakably domestic piece ofceramic was perhaps simply a rather naivetribute to The Real Thing.)All these details, however, are irrelevant tothe Dutch potters' intention. Their achieve-ment was to provide a substitute for Chineseporcelain that satisfied not so much an ob-jective (or curatorial) idea of its correctnessas a highly subjective "feel" for the thing.And it is precisely this subjective qualitythat ensures Delft blue and white waresagainst being mechanical repetitions or for-geries. Perhaps it would be more accurate tothink of them as translations that, while de-pending for their existence on the creativityof other artists, possess an independent cre-ativity of their own. For as a rule we are notsatisfied with a literal translation from onelanguage to another; we require not a point-by-point correspondence, but an equivalenceof intention-of spirit, of effect. What weaccept as a "good" translation is in fact onethat, being essentially idiomatic, is really aparaphrase of the original. Each translatormust analyze and choose the idioms and ele-ments of design that will produce what hefeels to be an equivalence (Figure 9).Success depends, in effect, on the purposeand style of the translator, and in evaluating

the legitimacy and originality of a transla-tion contemporaneity appears to be an im-portant factor: what we accept as enthusiasmfor novel ideas or techniques we tend to dis-miss as eclecticism, pedantry, or outrightcalculation when it appearsat a later period.In this light we may consider, for example,our reaction to the Renaissance Italian andGeorgian English approaches to classicalarchitecture; to certain passages in the KingJames and Revised Standard versions of theBible; and to seventeenth-century and latereighteenth-century European interpretationsof Oriental porcelain.The Delft experience was repeated severaltimes later as new surprisesreached the Westfrom China and Japan.Toward the end of theseventeenth century red stoneware from I-hsing excited considerable enthusiasm inEurope, where

Documents

Art Forgery the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin v 26 No 6 February 1968