The scientist and the forger insight into the scientific detection

The scientist and the forger : insights into the scientific detection of forgery in paintings / Jehane Ragai, The American University in Cairo, Egypt.. In 2012, Dr Ragai read a paper, ‘

‘Most books related to art forgery focus on the techniques of

forgers and of ‘art forensic’ investigators Jehane Ragai evidently

discloses these aspects with fresh insights and with the required

sophistication in her excellent book; but previous authors on the

subject rarely developed so crisp analyses of the psychological

facets of art forgery from the perspective of the forger and more

interestingly from the owner of a forged art piece This gives this

book a special flavor and provides enticing views on the subject.’

Christian Amatore, Member of the French and Chinese

Academies of Science

‘This timely, splendidly researched and very readable book provides

the educated layman with illuminating insights into the many

social, technical and psychological factors associated with both the

act of forgery and the process of authenticating a genuine original

vision Whilst demonstrating how competent science can provide

verifiable facts the author also presents a compelling argument to

show how working in tandem with the less easily quantifiable

instinct of connoisseurship — validated perhaps by being closer in

aesthetic impulse to the hand and mind of the creative artist — the

result will be a mutually enhanced balance of informed opinion.’

David L Carpanini, Past President of the Royal Society of

Painter-Printmakers

‘A couple of years ago I attended an evening lecture at the Fitzwilliam

Museum in Cambridge on the topic of forgery in the art world The

speaker was Jehane Ragai, a distinguished academic scientist from

Cairo, and I was completely fascinated She managed to weave

together images of a multitude of paintings with authoritative

descriptions of the latest scientific techniques that were being used to

distinguish between those that were real and those that were not

After her talk I asked Jehane if she had written anything on this

sub-ject and was very disappointed when she replied that she had not

done so yet But now all that is changed, and this wonderful book

has emerged in which she describes her thoughts and conclusions

from delving yet deeper into this topic As well as describing a series

of intriguing examples of forgeries involving a wide variety of

differ-ent styles of painting, and explaining in a highly accessible manner

the scientific methods used to distinguish them from the genuine

article, she has explored, again on the basis of scientific

investiga-tions, the psychology of both those forging and those viewing such

works of art The result is a highly original and informative volume

that is not only impossible to put down but also makes one think in

a new way about how we view the world around us.’

Chris Dobson, John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical

and Structural Biology and Master of St John’s College

Cambridge

‘Dr Ragai’s book is a delight for all those who have an interest in

both fine arts and science The number of forged paintings is

sur-prisingly large and many of these are very cleverly made

Unravelling the fakes is often a scientifically very demanding task

The book provides fascinating examples of forgeries, some which

are well known, and some which are less known to the general

public The book describes the key techniques used for proving if

the artwork is an original or not It also provides the reader with

the interesting psychology of the viewer and forger.’

Krister Holmberg, President of the Royal Society of Arts and

Sciences in Gothenberg and Member of the Royal Swedish

Academy of Sciences

‘In an elegant and engaging style, Professor Jehane Ragai provides

us with an exceptional exposé of art, science, and business Her

description of the state-of-the-art scientific techniques is

pedagogi-cal and overarching, from microscopy to spectroscopy and from

mass spectrometry to chromatography And, the psychology of the

viewer and forger is dealt with to highlight the impact of art

for-gery on the business industry This book is a must-read for those

who are interested in the science and business of art.’

Ahmed Zewail, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1999)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ragai, Jehane.

The scientist and the forger : insights into the scientific detection of forgery in paintings /

Jehane Ragai, The American University in Cairo, Egypt.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-78326-739-2 (hardcover : alk paper) ISBN 978-1-78326-740-8 (pbk : alk paper)

1 Painting Forgeries 2 Art Psychology I Title

ND1660.R34 2015

751.5'8 dc23

2015021512

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: The Virgin and Child with an Angel, after Franceso Francia, © National Gallery, London,

Picture Library.

Copyright © 2015 by Imperial College Press

All rights reserved This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,

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For my husband John

and daughters Nazli and Heddy

with love

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Jehane Ragai is a woman of many talents and an unusual

combina-tion of interests A professor of chemistry in the School of Science

and Engineering at the American University of Cairo, Dr Ragai, in

addition to her research in gas/solid and liquid/solid interfaces,

has a keen interest in archaeological chemistry She is a scientist

much at home in several fields in the humanities: art, archaeology,

poetry, and music

She has served for several years as a member of the

interna-tional jury for the L’Oreal–UNESCO Women in Science Award, and

has been a member of two national committees for the

develop-ment of higher education in Egypt In the mid-nineties she was

appointed a member of the National Committee for Basic Sciences

and Development by the Minister of Scientific Research in Egypt

Her professional training in chemistry and her interest in

archaeol-ogy has involved her as a member of the Egyptian National

Committee for the Study of the Giza Sphinx, and she was both a

chemical consultant to the American Research Center (ARCE) in

Egypt’s Sphinx project, and a member of its board of governors

In 2012, Dr Ragai read a paper, ‘The Scientific Detection of

Forgery in Paintings’, at the spring meeting of the American

Philosophical Society, making the case that, in the detection of

for-geries in works of art, the scientist has become a more and more

useful partner for the curator and the art historian To verify the

authenticity of an artwork, a good curator will study a work’s

provenance, determining the sequence, as far as possible, back to

the artist who painted it, while a trained art historian will make a

stylistic analysis to determine whether the style and brushwork

match that of the artist to whom the work is attributed A scientist

is now able to add a wide spectrum of scientific techniques to help

unravel forgeries in painting All of these steps are most

interest-ingly explained in The Scientist and the Forger.

Dr Ragai’s paper was a precursor to this book and is just the

sort of paper welcomed by the Society for consideration at one of

its biannual meetings The American Philosophical Society,

estab-lished for ‘promoting useful knowledge’, is the oldest learned

soci-ety in the United States and now one of the liveliest organisations

of its kind in the scholarly world Founded by Benjamin Franklin,

the Society was formed originally to provide an opportunity of

‘virtuoso’ or ‘ingenious’ men, and subsequently women, from

across the colonies to come together and share their observations,

experiments, and research Through these exchanges, new ideas

could be generated, and the work of one thinker could benefit from

the scrutiny and the insights of another More importantly, such

collaborations could yield inventions and improvements of use to

a broad public Today the Society numbers 1,015 elected members

(845 domestic and 170 international members) The total number of

men and women elected to the Society since Franklin’s day is 5,506

A paper such as Dr Ragai’s, which explores new ideas of

inter-est to experts across several fields, as well as to the educated

layperson, promotes just the sort of discussion that fuels interest in

the Society’s meetings

Dr Ragai’s new book develops the themes of her paper by

describing in detail both new and long-held approaches to the

authentication of paintings and the detection of forgery, focusing

especially on the new scientific techniques introduced in the last

decade Examining the age-old question of why knowing a work of

art is a forgery makes us view it differently, gives both the expert

and the layperson ways to consider the implications of deception,

and the question of authenticity in aesthetic appreciation

The increased attractiveness of the art market to investors has,

not surprisingly, inspired a large dose of both greed and fraud

Consequently there has been a heightened interest in and a demand

for information on forgery, the forger, and on the methods of the

unscrupulous expert This book provides useful knowledge of the

most up-to-date scientific techniques, simple as well as

sophisti-cated, that can assist in providing verdicts on valid authentication

The Scientist and the Forger covers a wide spectrum of

interre-lated subjects: the current state of forgery in painting (touching

upon some of the most singular cases), the potential and the limits

of the new scientific methodologies, aspects of the psychology of

the forger as well as of the viewer, and finally the current efforts at

redressing the problem of authenticity in the art market, which

must involve the marriage of competent scientific approaches with

honest connoisseurship

M.P McPherson

President Emeritus, Bryn Mawr College Executive Officer Emeritus, American Philosophical Society

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I am indebted to the many people who helped me produce this

book: to all those who provided encouragement and support,

offered comments and suggestions, sent me relevant articles,

talked things over, generously allowed me to quote their remarks

and granted me permission to use their images

First and foremost I am immensely grateful to my daughter

and remarkable copy-editor Nazli who went patiently through the

manuscript line by line, making numerous valuable comments and

bringing focus and clarity to the text

To my husband John, and to Christopher Dobson (both from

the University of Cambridge) I owe a special debt: they were the

first to encourage and motivate me to write this book

I thank the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the

American Philosophical Society (APS) in Philadelphia, each for

inviting me to give a lecture entitled ‘The Scientific Detection of

Forgery in Paintings’ Had it not been for these two lectures I might

have never written this book Grateful thanks here also go to Pat

McPherson and Annie Wescott from the APS

I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to a long list

of scholars who have read sections (and often entire chapters) of

this book, and generously given me the benefit of their respective

expertise: Ann Dell (Imperial College London); Charles Falco

(University of Arizona); Don Johnson (Rice University); John

Asmus (University of California, San Diego); John Meurig Thomas

(University of Cambridge); Martin Kemp (University of Oxford);

Matteo Bettuzzi (University of Bologna); Nicholas Eastaugh (Art

Access & Research UK Ltd); Pakinam Askalani (American

University in Cairo); Pascal Cotte (Lumiere Technology); Robert

Switzer (American University in Cairo) and Spike Bucklow

(Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge)

For their generosity in allowing me to use, pro bono, their

images in my book, I wish to thank Art Roster, Mt Shasta; Charles

Falco (University of Arizona); Franco Cavali (Enrico Fermi Research

Center, and University of Bologna); Franco Faranda (National Art

Gallery of Bologna); Gianluca Poldi (University of Bergamo);

Gregg D Smith (Indianapolis Museum of Art); The Fogg Museum,

Harvard; Gabriele Wimmer (ddp images, Hamburg); Matheo

Bettuzzi (University of Bologna); Pascal Cotte (Lumiere Technology);

Paula Dredge (Art Gallery of New South Wales); The Princes

Czartoryski Foundation; the Rhode Island School of Design;

Richard Whurher (University of Technology, Sydney) and Siva

Umapathy (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore)

Special thanks go to Ashok Roy (the scientific department at

the National Gallery in London), who had carried out the technical

analysis of Francisco Francia’s Madonna and Child with an Angel and

allowed me to use the infrared reflectograph of the painting, and

the image of its faked craquelure I am also grateful to Kenny

Daragh (National Gallery Picture Library) for his excellent service

in addressing my requests for permission to use some of the

National Gallery’s pictures

I am also grateful to Andrew Parker (University of Oxford);

Elena Basner (former curator of St Petersburg’s Museum of Fine

Arts) and Franco Cavali for sending me useful articles that were

relevant to topics addressed in my book Special thanks also go to

Robin Clark (University College London) for a fruitful discussion

on one of the cases

I am most grateful to the American University in Cairo

(espe-cially Vice Provost Ehab Abdel-Rahman and Department of

Chemistry Chair Tamer Shoeib) for financial support

Special thanks go to the editorial board of Imperial College

Press, in particular to Laurent Chaminade, who has believed in

my work, Thomas Stottor, who has guided me through and

metic-ulously overseen the final editing of this book and to Tasha

D’Cruz for her grace and patience in addressing last minute

changes to the text

I owe a special debt to Amir Gohar for his help in some of the

drawings; Fadia Badrawi for her patience and her excellent

draw-ings; Gehan Ghali for her invaluable help with the references and

the glossary; my daughter Heddy for her help in launching the

book; Lisa Graham for clarifying copyright issues and Yasmin

Atasi for her legal advice

Producing this book has indeed been a collaborative effort and

I thank the many people who made it come to fruition; doubtless

some mistakes and omissions are still present If they are, the

responsibility is entirely mine

Last, but not least, I would like to pay tribute with gratitude

and love to my wonderful husband John, to my very special

daugh-ters Nazli and Heddy and to my dear sister Aziza Thank you so

much for the constancy of your support and encouragement

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Had it not been my good fortune in being invited to present a talk

at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 2012, this

book would never have been written; I am grateful for the

audi-ence’s enthusiastic reception of the topic which has prompted me

to expand the paper I had written for the Society

My interest in the subject of forgery in paintings was first

aroused in 1995, while teaching a core curriculum science course at

the American University in Cairo In an opening public lecture (an

earlier and different version from the 2012 one) I decided to focus

on the topic ‘The Scientific Detection of Forgery in Paintings’

hav-ing been impressed by the approach of Stuart J Flemhav-ing in his 1976

book: Authenticity in Art: the Scientific Detection of Forgery In the

latter, Fleming interwove famous cases of forgery with

explana-tions of the scientific techniques used to unravel the crime The

response my lecture elicited in the 350 or so students in attendance

first convinced me of the subject’s appeal

In the intervening years, as a researcher and teacher, I have

delved into the nature of a number of modern cases of forgery, their

discovery, and the new investigative approaches used, and have

lectured on this subject to university and museum audiences in the

UK, US, France, Sweden and Egypt

In 2008, while lecturing at Princeton University on the subject,

I visited its art museum, including its conservation centre, where

I was shown different techniques for the analysis of paintings I was

interested to observe how X-ray radiography was being used to

analyse underdrawings in paintings, and Raman spectroscopy to

identify pigments in manuscripts This visit was followed by

sev-eral to other institutes, especially the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the

University of Cambridge, where Dr Spike Bucklow kindly

intro-duced me to a range of approaches used in his laboratory I also

visited the Centre interdisciplinaire conservation et restauration du

patrimoine, Marseille (CICRP) where Dr Sebastien Aze introduced

me to the different activities and scientific techniques used in their

centre

When I lectured at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, at

the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, and at Chalmers University

of Technology at Gothenberg, audience interest almost invariably

revolved around issues of authenticity, and focused on the value

placed on original masterpieces as opposed to copies and forgeries

Numerous queries also related to the psychological factors driving

individuals to become forgers

Little did I suspect when I first lectured on this subject to my

students, and later to lay audiences, that the issues surrounding

forgery in paintings would move so fast A major new scandal or

speculation arises almost every month, and receives much excited

attention in the media

In this work I have endeavoured to present, in a manner

acces-sible to the layperson, a holistic approach to the study of painting,

discussing both long-established scientific methods and

innova-tive/state-of-the art techniques developed in the last decade or so

I also attempt to address some of the questions raised at my

lec-tures on related philosophical and psychological issues It is my

hope that an understanding will be reached as to the crucial role

played by science in complementing the connoisseurship of art

experts

What motivates fraud? Why do we care so much

References 9

Chapter One Establishing the First Link

The Ely Zakhai case — connoisseurship’s role

References 25

Chapter Two Microscopy-Related Techniques 29

Observation by optical microscopy of the craquelure

Craquelure and The Virgin and Child with an Angel 36

Polarised light microscopy plays a crucial initial role

Portrait Group depicting Frederico da Montefletro

(Forgery confirmed by SEM/EDX) 45

The Kandinsky and Popova cases

(Analysis by micro-Raman spectroscopy) 50

The unexpectedly dramatic case of a Chagall painting

(More tricks from the Russian market, Raman

microscopy unravels a mystery) 51

Infrared spectroscopy (IR) and Fourier transform

Pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry

Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass

Determination of the radioactive isotopes

Mahmoud Said’s Girl with Green Eyes 73

Multiple collector inductively coupled plasma

Authentication of paintings by lead isotopic ratio

Introduction 87

Vincent van Gogh’s Sunset at Montmajour 90

Electron probe microanalyser 92

Portrait of a Woman 93

Image alleged to have been created by Antonello

References 107

The Virgin and Child with an Angel 116

Portrait of Anna Zborowski 117

The Prado Mona Lisa 120

References 122

Chapter Six Digital Techniques in Art Authentication 125

Multispectral imaging and the layer amplification

Lady with an Ermine 132

References 137

References 142

Chapter Eight The Beguiling Odalisque —

Is the Courtroom the Proper Venue

References 155

Chapter Nine Three Portraits, Two Women —

Multispectral imaging and X-ray fluorescence

Geometric analysis and the Vitruvian Man 166

La Bella Principessa 167

Chapter Eleven Psychology of the Forger 189

EDX/ED-XRF — Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence

ESRF — European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

ETHZ — Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich

FPC — Frontopolar cortex

GC — Gas chromatography

HPLC-MS — High-performance liquid chromatography mass

spectrometry

INFN — Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare

IRR — Infrared reflectography

IR — Infrared

MS — Mass spectrometry

LAM — Layer amplification method

LA-ICP-MS — Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass

spectrometry

LD-TOF-MS — Laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass

spectroscopy

MC-ICP-MS — Multiple collector inductively coupled plasma

mass spectrometry

micro-FTIR — Fourier transform infrared micro-spectroscopy

MLF — Mona Lisa Foundation

OM — Optical microscopy

PIXE — Proton-induced X-ray emission

PLM — Polarised light microscope

Py-GC-MS — Pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry

RISD — Rhodes Island School of Design

RRP — Rembrandt Research Project

SEM — Scanning electron microscopy

UCL — University College London

UV — Ultraviolet

UVF — Ultraviolet fluorescence

XCT — X-ray computer tomography

XRD — X-ray diffraction

XRF — X-ray fluorescence

XRR — X-ray radiography

Major artworks bear the imprint of grand thoughts, subtle emotions, powerful and singular artistic vision.

Thierry Lenain1

hundreds of years, over the last few decades they have reached

untenable proportions The scandalous scale of paintings recently

art-works and a simultaneous increase in the knowledge and skills of

the professional forger, underscore the importance of modern

sci-ence for exposing artistic fraud There is a crucial need today for

sophisticated technical methods to identify fakes, and provide a

reliable guarantee that a work of art is authentic

Such a need was recognised by Stuart Fleming in his

which he stresses the importance of science in assisting

connoisseurship:

I have little time for those who believe authenticity judgment is

possible solely by eye and regard scientific analysis in this field as

superfluous … But a blind confidence in technical evidence would

also be misplaced.7

In the past, experts relied predominantly on a combination of

‘intuition’ and on a close study of the painter’s oeuvre and approach,

but it has become apparent that there is a pressing need to move

from the exclusive use of the realm of intuition and

connoisseur-ship to that of the laboratory, so that both scientists and art experts

can unite their efforts at providing a valid certificate of

authentic-ity As forgers become more knowledgeable and skilled,

sophisti-cated scientific approaches need to be developed, as new pigments

need to be identified, manufacturers tracked down and painting

techniques scrutinised

Today a forger who creates a painting in the style of a known

master and claims its authenticity is aware that the hoax may be

uncovered as a result of the detection of questionable

underdraw-ings, by the discovery of anachronisms in the pigments or even by

something as simple as the scrutiny of the painting’s surface

cracks Modern forgeries are created by meticulous and skilled

forgers, with an increased knowledge of what science can reveal,

and have scrupulously tried to avoid any pitfalls, making it more

of a challenge to identify forgeries

In choosing the proper pigments for an intended forgery a

con-temporary forger might, for instance, find it useful to refer to

their near comprehensive list of modern synthetic pigments, the

dates of their discovery, and their use However, as Craddock

argues:

The continual approaches and improvements in established

tech-niques soon nullify attempts to create the undetectable forgery.9

In modern paintings, the forger would certainly find great

difficulty in identifying and imitating the range of new organic

pigments, novel synthetic binders and additives that have recently

flooded the art market, and that are used today by contemporary

masters Even the cleverest of forgers would almost necessarily

blunder when choosing painting materials To test a modern painting,

the new organic materials need to be meticulously analysed and

are generally challenging to identify

There are normally three different approaches in the creation of

a forged painting:

• The first is to copy an artist’s work and pass it off as being

cre-ated by the master artist

• The second is to alter an authentic work by a lesser artist in

order to pass it off as the work of a greater artist, thus raising

the sale value

• The third, and maybe most widespread approach, is to create a

new artwork in the same style as that of a master artist and pass

it off as being authentic

With regard to the first approach one might recall the side-by-side

display of two identical versions of The Virgin and Child with an

Angel by Francesco Francia at the National Gallery’s 2010 London

exhibition Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries One

version was acquired in 1924 by the Gallery as a bequest from

Ludwig Mond, a wealthy businessman who had allegedly bought

it from a Roman dealer, its earlier provenance being unknown The

second version appeared in a London auction in 1954 and belonged

to the art dealer Leonard Koetser As I shall describe at a later point

(Chapters Two and Five), scientific analysis indicated that the 1924

version was the forged copy

Research by the Gallery’s scientific department also showed that

works attributed to Sandro Botticelli, Hans Holbein and Rembrandt

were mistakenly thought to be genuine and these were later

removed from view and placed in a storeroom These artworks had

been bought or received by the Gallery in the genuine belief that

they were masterpieces

With regard to the second approach, one may recall when in

May 2004 Sotheby’s London had to withdraw from auction a

Center identified it as a forgery The painting, which was in fact

Landscape with Figures and Cattle by Dutch artist Marinus Adrianus

Koekkoek, had been doctored by forgers, and reappeared at

Fraud and scandal had previously swept over the Russian

art market, with the identification of forged signatures added

onto retouched artworks by other Western artists, falsely

attributing the works to painters including Ivan Aivakovsky,

Wassily Kandinsky, Isaac Levitan and other Russian masters

However the most widespread strategy on the part of a forger

is to create a new work of art in a style akin to that of the master

artist, and claim it as original

Many are familiar with the case of Han van Meegeren who

made himself acquainted with the palette and techniques of,

among others, Johannes Vermeer, and embarked on the clever

crea-tion of a new Vermeer, Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus (Fig I.1)

The painting was viewed and enthusiastically authenticated by

Dr Abraham Bredius, regarded as the most important art critic of

Fig I.1 Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus

the time Encouraged by such an important authentication, van

Meegeren subsequently forged five additional Vermeers

Creating a new artwork in the style of a famous artist was also

the approach adopted by artist Wolfgang Beltracchi who, along

with three other forgers, was convicted to six years in prison in

October of 2011 for creating, over a period of 35 years, a large

Leger, André Derain and other famous masters Considered to be

Germany’s biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era, the fakes

were discovered in 2008 after a buyer bought what was claimed to

be a work by Heinrich Campendonk and had the work

scientifi-cally tested A modern scientific test, of the kind that will be

described in the present book, showed that the painting contained

a pigment not yet invented when the artist was supposed to have

painted the work

Art critic Elena Basner attracts our attention to the gravity of

the situation when considering Russian avant-garde art:

specialists in the Russian Avant-garde art have already expressed

an idea that we are now witnessing how a new, alternative history

of the Avant-garde art is being created, in which the originals play

the role of a primary stylistic impulse – primary examples that lose

their position under the overflow of fakes that persistently pack the

whole space of Avant-garde art …10

As shown in the case of Glafira Rosales, it may also happen that

an art dealer commissions an artist to create forgeries Rosales, who

was caught and convicted in April 2013, paid a few thousand

dol-lars per painting to a talented Queens artist working out of a studio

in his garage to create forgeries attributed to titans of modernism

such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and

Franz Kline Dozens of these paintings were sold at two Manhattan

Galleries in New York City over a period of 15 years for more than

US$80 million Here again forensic analysis indicated that in a

number of the paintings, the pigments used were not available at

the time they were purported to have been created

Scientific tools of the art detective

In this book the reader will be introduced to a wide variety of old

and new scientific methods for authenticating paintings,

progress-ing from the simple to the complex, and entailprogress-ing the examination

of the surface, frame and body of the artworks, as well as looking

through paint layers (see Fig I.2)

The initial approach of the scientist and art historian alike in the

evaluation of a painting is the examination of the surface of the

artwork, determining if the craquelure (the pattern of fine cracks

that appear on the surface of a painting) is genuine, and if the

brushwork is in keeping with the artist’s style Ideally, this is

car-ried out through the use of a stereomicroscope This first step is

generally assisted by the use of raking light (light placed at an

oblique angle to a painting) particularly valuable in revealing the

painting’s surface texture Ultraviolet fluorescence provided by a

simple UV lamp then reveals the fluorescence properties of the

surface, enabling differentiation between old and new additions to

the painting

Fig I.2 Different layers in a painting

It is, however, in examining the ground layer and the paint

lay-ers that, in recent years, a wide spectrum of improvements have

been made to old techniques, and where novel and sophisticated

methods of analysis have been introduced

As far as the ground layer is concerned, in the last few decades

a standard approach has been the detection of underdrawings by

detected through the discovery of anachronisms with the artist’s

own stylistic development or through the uncovering of an

under-drawing belonging to a painter who lived after the purported

mas-ter’s death However these systems have the disadvantage of being

very time consuming, expensive and sometimes exhibiting low

resolution A description will be given in this book of new

approaches developed in recent years using specially designed

ultra-sensitive digital charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras that

in both modes of analysis have resulted in timesaving, and much

With regard to the body of the painting, in addition to the wide

spectrum of available investigative techniques, novel approaches

complementing the results obtained by traditional scientific

approaches have mushroomed in recent years Some of these

(Py-GC-MS) which has proven invaluable in the analysis of synthetic

polymers incorporated as binding agents in paints; and

iden-tification of pigment composition We may also add the technique

of laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

allowing the identification of paint manufacturers even within the

same pigment and binder amalgamation

When, in 2005, Alex Matter (the son of Herbert Matter, a close

friend of Jackson Pollock), discovered in his parents’ attic 32 works

allegedly painted by Pollock, he asked Harvard University’s

Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art to study three of the

paintings The Center, using LD-TOF-MS and Py-GC-MS, found

anachronistic pigments both in the body of the paintings and in the

In the Beltracchi affair (see Chapters One and Seven), scanning

electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence

(ED-XRF) played a crucial role in identifying pigments in the

paint-ing alleged to have been by Campendonk that did not exist durpaint-ing

the artist’s lifetime On the other hand, a new digital technique for

the automatic counting of canvas threads from digitised X-ray

images confirmed the authenticity of the recently discovered artwork

Sunset at Montmajour, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1888.20,21

Similarly, the dark colour enveloping the face of Leonardo da

Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine gave it an uncharacteristic harshness

which generated suspicion regarding the authenticity of the

work Results obtained by the revolutionary technique of

background’s bluish-grey hue unequivocally confirming the

In spite of the crucial role played by science in identifying

forgeries, one must be wary of blindly relying upon the results of

technical analysis alone Indeed scientific tests should not, in

isola-tion, be the sole determinant of fraud, nor can connoisseurship

play the definitive role in the evaluation of works of art Intuition

and a deep understanding of the artwork, together with a close

analysis of technique, appearance and design, are essential in

com-plementing objectively collected scientific data

For instance, if technical analysis alone were the sole

determi-nant of authenticity, then the recently discovered 2012

have been deemed to be an original due to the identical details and

corrections in its underdrawings with those of the Louvre’s

‘origi-nal’ Mona Lisa This would have caused confusion and uncertainty

It is here that the role of the art historian becomes crucially

impor-tant in detecting the creative process in the artist’s mind, quite

dif-ferent from the imitative exercise of the copier

What motivates fraud? Why do we care

so much about authenticity?

The reader will be provided with a window into the turbid

psychological makeup of forgers as revealed by recent art scandals

What drives individuals to imitate the style of famous artists or

copy their paintings and pass them off as originals? Is it the flawed

psychological makeup of the forger, the pursuit of wealth, the

desire to undermine experts and make a fool of the art

establish-ment with a resulting sense of power, a desire to punish what

forgers perceive as the greed and vanity of the art market? Or is it

a combination of two or more of these factors?

Further, why do we place so much value on original

master-pieces, and why should it make such a difference if an artwork was

not created by the credited artist? The factors behind the attraction

exerted by an ‘authentic artwork’ provide fascinating food for

thought In this book we examine the range of views provided by

philosophers of art, including the place of snobbery, societal

pres-sures, aesthetic elements in relation to originality and creativity,

and the mindset of the artist as opposed to that of the forger All

these factors are shown to converge, ultimately, on one single

con-clusion revealed by recent psycho-physical experiments and

observations

The book concludes by discussing some of the problems of

authentication faced by the art world today, and stresses the

importance of an integrated collaboration between the competent

scientist, the connoisseur and the art historian in order to detect

forgery in paintings, and arrive at a valid verdict on authenticity

References

1 Lenain, T (2011) Art Forgery: The History of a Modern Obsession,

Reaktion Books, London, p 238

2 Röbel, S and Sontheimer, M (2011) ‘The $7 million fake: Forgery

scandal embarrasses international art world’, Spiegel Online

Inter-national Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/

the-7-million-fake-forgery-scandal-embarrasses-

international-art-world-a-768195.html [accessed 7 November 2013]

3 Child, B (2011) ‘Steve Martin victim of German art forgery gang’, The

Guardian Online Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/

culture/2011/jun/01/steve-martin-german-art-forgery [accessed

7 November 2013]

4 Singer, R (2012) ‘In Spain, nine nabbed in far-reaching Picasso and

Goya forgery ring’, Blouin Artinfo International Available at: http://www.

blouinartinfo.com/news/story/813180/in-spain-nine-nabbed-in-far-reaching-picasso-and-goya-forgery [accessed 11 November 2013]

5 Rashbaum, W K and Cohen, P (2013) ‘Art dealer admits to role in

fraud’, The New York Times Online Available at: http://www.nytimes.

com/2013/09/17/arts/design/art-dealer-admits-role-in-selling-fake-works.html?_r=0 [accessed 7 November 2013]

6 Leigh,D and Borissova, E (2004) ‘How forgery turned £5,000 painting

into £700,000 work of art’, The Guardian Online Available at: http://

www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/jul/10/arts.artsnews [accessed

7 November 2013]

7 Fleming, S J (1976) Authenticity in Art: The Scientific Detection of

Forgery, Crane, Russak and Company, New York.

8 Eastaugh, N., Walsh, V., Chaplin T and Siddall, R (2008) Pigment

Compendium: A Dictionary and Optical Microscopy of Historical Pigments,

Routledge, London

9 Craddock, P (2009) Scientific Investigation of Copies, Fakes and Forgeries,

Elsevier Ltd, Oxford, p 19

10 Basner, E (2013) Private communication

11 Rossi, M., Casali, F., Golovkin, S V and Govorun, S V (2000) ‘Digital

radiography using an EBCCD-based imaging device’, Applied

Radiation and Isotopes, 5, 699–709.

12 Bettuzzi, M (2010) ‘A high resolution low-dose digital X-ray scanner

for paintings’, Presentation to the Italian Physics Society SIF National

Congress, Bologna

13 Falco, C M (2009) ‘High resolution digital camera for infrared

reflec-tography’, Review of Scientific Instruments, 80, 071301.

14 Falco, C M (2010) ‘High-resolution infrared imaging’, in Creath, K

and Shaw, J A (eds.), The Nature of Light: Light in Nature III: Proceedings

of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), 7782.

15 Dik, J., Janssens, K., Van der Snickt, G., Van der Loeff, L., Rickers, K

and Cotte, M (2008) ‘Visualization of a lost painting by Vincent Van

Gogh using synchrotron based X-ray fluorescence elemental

map-ping’, Analytical Chemistry, 16, 6436–6442.

16 Kirby, D B., Khandekar, N., Sutherland, K and Price, B (2009)

‘Applications of laser desorption mass spectrometry for the study of

synthetic organic pigments in works of art’, International Journal of

Mass Spectrometry, 1, 115–122.

17 Johansson, S A E (1986) ‘Proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE)

spectrometry: State of the art’, Fresenius’ Zeitschrift für analytische

Chemie, 7, 635–641.

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by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry’, Analytical

Chemistry, 59, 1437–1444.

19 Khandekar, N., Mancusi-Ungaro, C., Cooper, H., Rosenberger, C.,

Eremin, K., Smith, K., Stenger, J and Kirby, D (2010) ‘Technical

analysis of three painting attributed to Jackson Pollock’, Studies in

Conservation, 55(3), 204–215.

20 Barney, H (2013) ‘Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunset at Montmajour

Discovered in Attic Unveiled in Amsterdam’, The Telegraph Online Available

at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/

art-news/10295733/Vincent-

Van-Gogh-painting-Sunset-at-Montmajour-discovered-in-attic-unveiled-in-Amsterdam.html [accessed 12 March 2015]

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at Montmajour: A newly discovered painting by Vincent van Gogh’,

Burlington Magazine, 155(1327), 696–705.

22 Cotte, P (2014) Lumiere on the Lady with and Ermine: Unprecedented

Discoveries, Vinci Editions, Paris.

23 Gera, V (2013) ‘Vibrant hues return to Da Vinci masterpiece Lady with

an Ermine’, Orange County Register Available at:

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[accessed 20 December 2013]

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Chapter One

Establishing the First Link

in the Art Chain: Attribution

Forging a Giacometti or a Braque was the easy part

The genius of the con rested in faking the provenance.

The art world may never know how much damage was done.

Peter Landesman1

The curator and gallery dealer

The curator and gallery dealer play a crucial role in the initial

evaluation of a painting allegedly executed by a renowned artist

It is their responsibility to study the work’s provenance by

deter-mining a sequence of ownership all the way back to the artist

Correct verification of each one of the links in the ownership chain

can prove elusive however, especially in light of the convincing

information forgers have been known to present on the work’s

origin, successive whereabouts and on the reasons for its obscurity

up until then

As pointed out by art historians Duane R Chartier and Fred G

Notehelfer:

Provenance is probably the most critical element in authentication

There is no substitute for an iron-clad provenance back to the hand

of the artist touching the canvas However, this is relatively rare

even in the most established of collections.2