Verified by an expert. How to distinguish masterpieces of painting from a fake

According to the story of the artist and historian of the Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari, the sculpture of the brilliant Michelangelo "Sleeping Cupid" was buried in the ground, then dug up and passed off as an antique statue. The statue was recognized as truly antique and sold to Cardinal San Giorgio Raffaello Riario for 200 ducats, which once again confirmed the exceptional skill of Michelangelo.

Modern fakes are not made to confirm the skill of their author. The price of the issue (from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars for a picture of a recognized genius) is such that one successful forgery attempt out of a hundred can immediately enrich the dodger. Therefore, along with the development of methods for the examination of authenticity, to which all standing pictures, just as rapidly are the ways in which they can be circumvented.

For obvious reasons, the participants in this "race" - art historians, technologists and, of course, the authors of fakes themselves - do not seek unnecessary fame and are in no hurry to reveal their methods. For Popular Mechanics, a specialist from one of the leading Moscow laboratories made an exception, talking about the main methods for examining works of art.

first look

The study of any painting includes art history and technological expertise. To establish authenticity, experts work in two main areas - determining the date of manufacture of the painting and searching for the creative and technological techniques used in it, characteristic of a particular artist. Everything is clear with the date - Raphael could not paint with paints invented in the middle of the 20th century. Dating information, experts say, can be contained in every part of the picture, and classical masterpieces are not as simple as they seem at first glance.

The picture is painted on the basis - it can be canvas, wood, metal, stone. A simple canvas already contains a dating moment - with the spread of new types of looms, the quality of the canvas changed dramatically.

The artist covers the canvas with primer to make it smooth. The degree of smoothness and the number of layers of soil are determined by the fashion of well-defined times. In cases where the primer can absorb the binding base of the paint (most paints are a powder pigment and a binder - for example, walnut or linseed oil), it is necessary to put an insulating layer on it - imprimatura. A typical imprimatura is a thin layer of oil paint.

The first layer of the picture, which belongs to painting itself, is the bleach underpainting. White is the optical basis of color, a kind of “illumination” from the inside of the picture. It is not visible to the viewer, but has great importance- the final colors are obtained by applying transparent paints to the underpainting. For example, when an artist performs a portrait, he first builds the shape of the face with a thick layer of white. Whitewash not only creates a beautiful optical effect, but also helps to save expensive pigment, a much smaller amount of which is required for transparent paints.

The next layers create the visual content of the painting. They are written with paints that contain more varnish than oil, and therefore are transparent. These layers are called glazing by technologists. Lacquer is placed on top of the glazes - a transparent protective layer.

For each of the described layers, there are research methods that indicate the date of manufacture of the picture. At the same time, there are many pitfalls for experts. For example, a picture painted during the life of a great master does not necessarily belong to his pen. At a time when the aesthetic value of paintings was considered higher than collectible, a lot of copies came out of the workshops of geniuses, made by students, and signed by the maestro himself. Finally, on the creation of an unknown contemporary of the great artist, our contemporaries could simply forge a signature. Art critics carefully analyze the similarity of the studied painting with famous works certain periods of the artist's work, taking into account the technical and stylistic devices, the subject of the work, the details of the master's biography. However, an atypical picture may turn out to be a “pen test” or a “genius joke” ...

Unfortunately, absolutely accurate ways to determine the authenticity of the picture today do not exist and are not expected. Nevertheless, an experienced specialist, having looked at the picture with the naked eye, can already tell a lot about it.

armed eye

When studying paintings, experts use several types of microscopes. A section of the picture, enlarged 20-50 times, is a spectacle almost more beautiful than the picture itself. The canvas turns into a series of hills and depressions, glazing strokes take the form of either sea waves or mountain canyons. A binocular microscope is especially good, allowing you to look into the depths of the picture, feel the thickness and quality of the varnish and, of course, examine restoration interventions or defects. Reflected in broken cracks filled with dust long life a masterpiece or an attempt to age it artificially (by heating and cooling sharply).

In such a microscope, it is useful to look at the signature of the author. Washing off and changing the signature is one of the simplest and at the same time effective ways to fake paintings. The microscope clearly shows whether the signature lies under the lacquer, above it, or “floats” between two lacquer layers. The so-called "signature in the test", which the artist put on the dry varnish, should be slightly recessed. The aforementioned cracks in old varnish are called craquelure. If the signature lies on top of the cracks or flows into them, this is an indicator of a fake. Although the original signature could simply be unsuccessfully circled (as a rule, signatures are not restored).

Under a polarizing microscope (600 times or more), the sample from the painting looks like a scattering of sparkling gems. These "gems" are nothing but pigment particles. The vast majority of pigments in classical painting are minerals ground into powder. The type and combination of pigments gives the expert an idea not only of the date of manufacture of the painting (different pigments were used at different times), but also of the individual “handwriting” of a particular artist: different masters obtained the same color shades by mixing different colors on the palette.

In invisible rays

One of the main tools of experts is ultraviolet, x-ray and infrared radiation. Ultraviolet rays allow you to determine the aging of the varnish film - a fresher varnish in the ultraviolet looks darker. In the light of a large laboratory ultraviolet lamp, the restored areas appear as darker spots (it is clear that paintings untouched by restorers are valued much more than completed ones) and handicraftly copied signatures. True, this test is easy to bypass. Experienced restorers save swabs with which they wash off the varnish before restoring lost sections of the canvas. After washing these tampons in a solvent, they get ... the same old varnish, identical to the original. Currently, varnishes that do not darken in UV rays are even mass-produced.

X-rays are delayed by the heaviest elements. IN human body it is bone tissue, and in the picture it is white. The basis of whitewash in most cases is lead, in the 19th century zinc began to be used, and in the 20th century titanium. These are all heavy metals. Ultimately, on the film, we get an image of white underpainting. An underpainting is an artist's individual "handwriting", an element of his own unique technique, a part of the picture that he made for himself, and not for the customer. For the analysis of underpainting, bases of radiographs of paintings by great masters are used. Unfortunately, their publications play into the hands of not only experts.

Infrared rays, on the contrary, allow you to see another part of the spectrum of the picture. Experts use special thermal imagers that perceive wavelengths over 1000 nm. In infrared light, the underlying drawing made by the artist with black paint or pencil, or ... a grid of coordinates, with which an exact copy of the original painting was written, appears.

Chemical weapon

Chemical analysis in painting is divided into two categories: with sampling and without sampling. The study of the picture without sampling is carried out using an X-ray fluorescence analyzer (XRF). This instrument detects the metals contained in a substance. It is metals that are chromophores, that is, they are responsible for the color of certain substances, reflecting certain light waves (for example, lead - white, yellow, orange; copper - blue, green; iron - red, yellow).

A more accurate and detailed element-by-element analysis of a substance is provided by an X-ray microanalyzer, or a microprobe. For the microprobe, a sample is taken from the painting. It is so small that it is not visible to the naked eye, but it contains parts of all the layers of the picture. For each of them, the microprobe makes up the spectrum of the elemental composition of the substance. In addition, the microprobe can operate in the electron microscope mode. For chemical analysis, methods such as emission spectral analysis, emission spectral X-ray phase analysis, and many others are also used.

The chemical composition is extremely helpful information. To help experts, detailed reference books are issued indicating the dates of production of factory paints, varnishes, primers made according to a particular recipe.

At present, inorganic chemistry is at the service of experts. Paint binders, which are organic substances, have begun to be dealt with relatively recently all over the world. Some advanced organic chemistry techniques that could be applied to forensics already exist, but are at the disposal of the military, forensics and academic institutions, which are slow to share the technology with art historians. In the examination of paintings, the methods of liquid and gas chromatography, IR spectroscopy are already used.

It so happened that experts have always been in the lead in the “technology race”: counterfeiters had to quickly respond to the emergence of new examination methods and try to circumvent them. Experts say: “If we manage to finally understand the organic chemistry of binders, then we have won 50 years ahead!”

Well-known auction houses do not always conduct an examination of canvas and paints on famous paintings. This is used by talented scammers who come up with a pedigree of paintings and thereby deceive experts and even relatives of artists. I suggest you take a look at the most famous fakes of the world's works of art that scammers got away with.

Landscape with a Stream by Ivan Shishkin Purchase price: $1.1 million 1 million). However, shortly before the auction, the British Guardian newspaper published an article in which it demonstrated that the landscape is very similar to a painting of a little-known Dutch artist Marius Kukuk. The paintings differed only in that there are people in the Dutchman's painting, but they are not in the Shishkin landscape, although the artist's signature was in the corner of the painting. Sotheby’s assured that Shishkin’s signature was verified for authenticity, and the similarity of the paintings can be explained by the fact that it was written at a time when the Russian artist was influenced by the Düsseldorf school of painting. The Sotheby's estimate was 140 times higher than the one at which the Bukowskis auction house in Stockholm exhibited a painting by Kukkuk a year earlier. In a Guardian article, one of the employees of the house said that the painting was sold for $ 64,000, which surprised her and her colleagues a lot.

In mid-September, the trial of the art dealer Glafira Rosales was completed in the United States, who managed to sell 60 fake art objects worth $ 30 million under the guise of originals. Now Rosales is waiting for 20 years in prison, but for several years - from 1994 to 2009 - her fraud went unnoticed. The paintings were purchased by major New York galleries. Purchase price: $17 million

Forgery of Giacometti sculptures Alberto Giacometti is the most famous sculptor, painter and graphic artist, one of the greatest masters of the 20th century. And his work was forged by the Dutch artist Robert Dreissen, one of the most famous forgers. Like most of his "colleagues", creative destiny Dreissen turned out badly - he simply was not needed by anyone! He made his first fakes in the 80s. Then Dreissen met with the major authorities of the black art market. Among his first customers, for example, was Michael Van Ryne, one of the most successful dealers in the illegal art market. In the late 90s, Dreissen began to copy the style of Giacometti. The sculptor created few works in his life, traces of some were lost. Therefore, a story was invented that Giacometti's brother, Diego, made copies of the sculptures at night and hid them in the pantry. Copies sold around the world for millions of euros until Dreissen's intermediary was arrested and the forger himself fled to Thailand. He succeeded! Not everyone is so lucky! Dreissen himself, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, said that he had no regrets, and that people who are willing to pay tens of thousands of euros for a real Giacometti deserve to be deceived. The most expensive work by Alberto Giacometti, by the way, was sold at Sotheby's in 2010 for $104 million. The specialist shows a supposedly unknown sculpture by Giacometti.

"Christ at Emmaus" by Jan Vermeer Purchase price: $6 million Dutch artist Han van Meegeren, born in late XIX century, became famous for his work on fakes in the style of Jan Vermeer. The painting “Christ at Emmaus” brought him wealth. Meegeren, who worked as an art dealer, sold his work in 1937 under the guise of a Vermeer canvas. After this deal, the artist bought a house in Nice, where he painted several more paintings in the style of Vermeer, one of which - "Christ and the Sinner" - then sold to Hitler's ally Hermann Goering. After the end of World War II, the police brought the painting home to Meegeren so that the art dealer could help get the work back. Meegeren refused to say from whom he "bought" Vermeer, for which he was accused of treason. The artist faced a life sentence. In court, Meegeren admitted that he painted fakes, but they did not believe him, even when he was indignant: “Yes, how could you imagine that I sold the real Vermeer to Goering! I sold him a fake!”, because at one time critics unanimously recognized the authorship of Vermeer. To prove his skill, Meegeren painted another "Vermeer" and was sentenced to one year in prison.

Odalisque by Boris Kustodiev Purchase price: $6 million The sale of Odalisque, auctioned at Christie's in 2005 as a work by Boris Kustodiev, called into question the reputation of this auction house (together with Sotheby's, it accounts for the majority of all auction sales on the world market ). The painting was bought by Viktor Vekselberg for $2.9 million (a record price for Kustodiev). The auction house, according to all the rules, gave the buyer a guarantee for 5 years. However, some time after the purchase, specialists from the Aurora Fine Art Foundation (whose main owner is Vekselberg) said they doubted the authenticity of the painting. Leading Russian experts said that the author of the painting was not Kustodiev, but another artist who painted in the style of a Russian artist, while copying elements of his other paintings. Usually auction houses try to resolve such situations quickly and without publicity, but this dispute was resolved in the Supreme Court of London. After two years of hearings, the court allowed Vekselberg to terminate the deal and return the money.

Forest by Max Ernst Purchase price: $7 million German Wolfgang Beltracci drew the first forgery in 1965 when he was 14 years old. It was Picasso blue period". However, his main "specialization" was German artists, among which most often there were works made under the expressionist Heinrich Campendonk. On them, Beltrachchi and his wife Helen earned the first capital, and then switched to more “expensive” names - Fernand Leger, Georges Braque and Max Ernst. The couple came up with a story that Helen Beltracci inherited a collection of paintings by these artists from her grandfather, to whom the paintings, in turn, were sold almost for nothing by the famous Jewish collector Alfred Flechtheim (shortly after that, the Nazis came to power in Germany, and Flechtheim fled to France) . In the early 2000s, Beltracci painted "Ernst", the authenticity of which was not doubted even by Vernes Spies, the former director of the Pompidou Center in Paris, who is considered one of the main experts on Max Ernst. And the artist's widow, seeing the work "Forest", said that this is the best that Ernst has ever created. As a result, the "Forest" was sold to a Swiss company for $2.3 million, and after some time, the painting ended up with a well-known collector of surrealists - the French publisher Daniel Filipacci, who paid $7 million for it. After that, luck began to change Beltracci. One of the oldest auction houses - the German Lempertz - sold the Campedonk painting to the Maltese Foundation, which doubted the authenticity of the work and began to conduct an examination. As a result, deceit has surfaced. The court sentenced Wolfgang Beltracci to 6 years in prison and his wife to 4.

"Lilac Tablecloth" by Marc Chagall Purchase price: $500,000 Iranian origin Eli Sahayu. He sold both the original and a fake written from the original. At the same time, a fake, as a rule, was accompanied by a certificate that the art dealer received when buying the original. For example, Marc Chagall's "Lilac Tablecloth", Sahay bought in 1990 at Christie's for $ 312,000. He then sold a copy of this work to a Japanese collector for more than $500,000, and resold the original at the same Christie's eight years later for $626,000. Sahai's activities came to the attention of the FBI after two major auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's simultaneously put up for auction two identical paintings - "Vase with Lilies" by Paul Gauguin. The forgery was intended to be sold by an unsuspecting Japanese collector who had recently acquired the painting from Sahai. And Sahay himself decided to sell the real Gauguin through a competing organization. Eli Sahay sold most of the fakes in Asia, while the originals went under the hammers of auction houses in London or New York. Japanese collectors themselves were not always able to distinguish the real Chagall from a fake, and it made sense to invite an expert from Europe when a painting with a price tag of a million dollars was at stake, and Sahai was so expensive paintings did not trade.

"Tugboat and barge in Samoa" by Paul Signac After the discovery of forgery paintings are not always destroyed. In the West, there is a practice of transferring such paintings to art or history universities in order to educate students on the example of successful or unsuccessful fakes. IN Lately exhibitions of fakes organized by such universities are becoming more and more popular. One of the most popular was held in Ohio in 2012. It showed "Picasso", "Signac", "Carren" by Mark Lundy, who painted at least 60 fakes in his life. Despite the fact that the FBI revealed Lundy's activities back in 2008, no charges were brought against him, since he did not sell his paintings, but donated them to museums. But strictly speaking, the museums (and there were at least 30 of them) suffered financial damage - first of all, spending money now on checking the works that Lundy brought them as a gift. Often posing as a fictitious name and acting on behalf of a religious community, Landi gave a fake painting, allegedly in memory of a relative who was related to the museum or its directorate. One day he visited the director of the Hilliard University Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana, and presented him with a painting by the American artist Charles Curran. The expert, checking the picture, found that the oil was painted not on canvas, but on a printed reproduction of the picture. Due to the fact that the expert community is a close circle of people who know each other well, it soon became clear that shortly before the puncture with the Curren, Mark Lundy donated the Fields of Signac to the Oklahoma Museum (the original of the work hangs in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg). Moreover, at the same time he presented the same "Signac" to a museum in Georgia. Everywhere, pixels of a printed reproduction showed through under the oil.

"Modigliani" by Elmira de Hori About Elmira de Hori write books and make movies. During his life, he created thousands of fakes of the most famous and dear artists from the Impressionists to the Modernists. To convince of the true origin of the paintings, de Hory bought old catalogs with a painting by the desired artist, then carefully cut it out, drew his "Matisse" or "Picasso", photographed the picture and inserted the illustration back into the catalog. In this case, the buyer had no doubt that the original was in front of him. The hoax came to light when, in the 1960s, Texas oil tycoon Algur Meadows bought a large collection of paintings - Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse and others - from an art dealer, Fernand Legros, who collaborated with de Hory. After Meadows sued, de Hori chose to remain in Spain. There he continued to draw, but already signed his name. In the 1980s, after the death of the artist, large auction houses - Sotheby's and Christie's began to sell his work under his own name - the price started from a few hundred pounds and reached several thousand. However, in the early 1990s, experts noticed that the quality of the work was not always equally good, and they suspected that someone was also forging de Hory himself. Bidding of the artist's works decided to stop.

"Degas" by Tom Keating Briton Tom Keating, like many other artists who painted fakes, was not going to make a living in such an unsightly way. However, the artist by the name of Keating did not want to buy. He painted the first forgery while working as a restorer - it was a work in the style of the British artist Frank Moss Bennett. Keating's partner took the painting, without asking the artist's permission, to a nearby gallery, where it was accidentally discovered by Keating himself on his way to work. He himself considered himself a follower of Edgar Degas. He said that the famous artist was the teacher of his early teacher's teacher. Then, however, Keating claimed that El Greco woke up in him. In total, during his life he painted about two thousand paintings, which are now sold at auctions under the name of Keating. In the 1980s, when the artist's fraud was discovered, no one was interested in them, but ten years later, Tom Keating's paintings were sold for thousands of pounds and, according to experts, will only rise in price in the future.

As soon as you step on the threshold of the Center for Scientific Research Independent Expertise (NINE) named after P. M. Tretyakov, you immediately understand in what area its employees work: the room smells of wood, paint and something old, and from the number of paintings hung on the walls , eyes widen.

“Good afternoon, another Trubetskoy was brought to us. Let's hope it turns out to be genuine, ”one of the employees says on the phone in the reception. With these random but promising words, our immersion into the "kitchen" of experts in the field of fine arts begins.

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

Not all the paintings that fall into the NINE them. Tretyakov is worth an examination: “Sometimes they bring us complete nonsense,” one of the employees notes. Therefore, they always try to communicate with visitors in advance and give advice on whether it is worth conducting a study at all.

Over 8 years of work at the NINE named after Tretyakov, more than 10,000 items passed through the hands of experts, and according to statistics, more than half of them turned out to be falsifications. The expert organization even has its own rating of the most forged authors. Interestingly, the first place in it is not super popular today Aivazovsky and not in demand Serov, and one of the most cheerful Russian painters Konstantin Korovin.

As told administrative director of NINE named after Tretyakova Alexander Popov, who for one day became our guide through the research center, among the things that they happened to examine, there were specimens whose value is difficult to overestimate: the Lentulov triptych, the three-meter painting by Aivazovsky, the one and a half meter work by Levitan. As well as items that can surprise even the most experienced art historian, for example, an ancient Indian elephant bracelet (which, by the way, also turned out to be very valuable).

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

We were lucky: we witnessed the examination of a painting by the famous Norwegian artist Kron with the working title "Harbor", which was acquired by a Russian collector at one of the Western auctions. In order to verify the authenticity, and also to find out whether the real date of creation of the work corresponds to the year 1917 indicated on it, the new owner of the painting gave it to the NINE them. Tretyakov.

Alexander immediately warned that it was unlikely that any revelations would be expected: “This is most likely not a fake, since the picture looks safe.” But he immediately added that the authenticity of the work cannot be determined by eye, because even the most experienced art historians get into unpleasant situations and become victims of scammers (it is enough to recall the story of the art historian Basner and collector Vasiliev).

Having made sure that there are no express methods for determining the authenticity of a painting, we witnessed its full-fledged examination.

The first stage of the study was carried out under a microscope, the zoom scale of which is so large that it allows you to see not only the strokes and the artist's signature, but also the smallest particles of paint. “A little closer, and you can see microbes,” Alexander commented.

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

If an expert has doubts about the authenticity of the work, right there under a microscope with the help of tools, you can try the paint for plasticity and expose "not very trying accomplices." It turns out that fresh works are immediately visible to specialists: the paint can dry for a year or two, and scammers who want to quickly get money do not always take this fact into account and sell literally “raw” works.

But "our" Kron was not from the "raw". And in order to take a closer look at the particles of pigments in the composition of paints and determine their nature by optical properties, we followed the experts to the chemical laboratory, which, with its test tubes and glasses, can scare any unprepared visitor.

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

After the chemical laboratory, one of the most technologically advanced stages of the examination awaited us: an X-ray fluorescence analyzer. On the screen of a device that looks like a pistol, you can see almost the entire periodic table. The analyzer shows all the inorganic pigments that make up the paint.

A huge amount of data on the screen of a research instrument ordinary person says little, but Alexander lucidly explains the significance of this stage: “For example, we know from reference books that titanium white was invented at the beginning of the 20th century, but in industrial production for artists came only in the 20s. Accordingly, if we examine Aivazovsky and find whitewash there, then this picture can in no way be his work, because it does not coincide in dates with the appearance of paint.

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

It seemed that at this stage it was already possible to draw a conclusion about the authenticity of the painting, but this was only the middle of the road: now “our” Kron was waiting for the “test” by x-ray.

X-ray during examination works of art works on the same principle as a medical one, but with less radiation. “I know one small museum in the Baltics where x-rays are taken at the local clinic,” Alexander added. And then he joked: “Probably every time I have to make an appointment with the doctor.”

And at this stage, we were lucky with visual materials: in the collection of the NINE named after Tretyakov, there was one of the fake works, the X-ray image of which looks very unusual. As Alexander said, they recently got a work that accomplices passed off as a painting by a Russian émigré artist, known under the pseudonym Marevna. But thanks to x-rays, the experts determined that the picture was made on a cut poster “Peace! Work! May”, and since Marevna worked in England at that time, she simply could not draw on the Soviet poster.

The next spectacular stage of the examination was a study in the infrared (IR) range of radiation. This is one of the variations of the night camera, which reacts to graphite, so the examination always takes place in a dark room. The device breaks through upper layer paint and shows a pencil or charcoal drawing, thanks to which the experts see the sketches of the artist, hidden from the eyes of counterfeiters.

As we were told at NINE them. Tretyakov, this stage is perfectly illustrated by the works of Aivazovsky, who usually marked several horizon lines on his canvases at once. Even the most attentive person will not be able to see these lines (they are hidden under a thick layer of paint), but thanks to modern research, experts can look inside the painting and see the artist's creative search.

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

Another way to look at a painting from the inside is to examine it with ultraviolet light, which shows whether it has been restored or not. In the case of Kron, we did not see any hidden "patterns", but as an example, we were shown another work that looked like new, but under ultraviolet light turned out to be dotted with deep furrows.

It turns out that with the help of ultraviolet in the picture you can see the worn inscriptions. And Alexander shared with us a funny incident related to this stage of the examination: “Once they brought us a good-looking picture. And when we looked at it through ultraviolet light, we saw a three-letter word scrawled through the whole picture.”

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

Despite the fact that we have already witnessed the study of the painting using the most modern equipment, in order to make an expert opinion on the authenticity of the work, it is necessary to carry out one more stage: work with periodicals and exhibition archives. In particular, on the back of Kron's painting there is a mysterious indication "No. 28", it is possible that this is an exhibition number (the artist had two exhibitions this year alone: ​​one in Russia and the other in Oslo).

To make work at this stage easier, for several years experts have been digitizing old art-related magazines in libraries and creating an electronic database with information about artists. This information sometimes helps to expose short-sighted forgers. For example, in NINE them. Tretyakov recently got a picture of the artist Simova, which was passed off as more expensive Makovsky. The scammers erased the original signature and wrote in its place famous name. But in the Russian weekly magazine mid-nineteenth- the beginning of the 20th century, "Niva" experts saw that the picture was published under the authorship of Simov.

Photo: AiF / Alexey Vissarionov

After a chain of complex studies, we were convinced that the examination of a painting cannot be limited to one day, and in special cases it can even last up to 6 months. But after the stages of research that we have witnessed, we can hope that Kron's "Harbor" will not replenish the alarming statistics of the Tretyakov National Institute of Economics, according to which 2-3 fakes are examined in the center in 1 working day. And although these figures seem more than serious, Alexander did not agree with the popular statement that “most of the Russian art market is fake”: “This is all outright nonsense. Another thing is what is meant by the term "art market". If this means the market in Izmailovo, where they also sell Malevich, the percentage of fakes will indeed be 90%.

"Falshak": high art at a reasonable price
Do you already have antique pieces in your house? And how do they look? Does English furniture harmonize with Chinese porcelain, paintings by Levitan and a silver grandfather clock? Well, fine. Taste your quiet joy. True, it may later turn out that the only value of these, so to speak, works of art lies in the cost of paints and the canvas on which they were painted.

Rembrandt will be painted for you in Odessa
Take canvas, paints and brushes. Now draw something funny and sign it. No, no, not with their own initials, but, say, "Raphael", "Dali", or "Levitan".
Ready? Now quickly roll your work into a tube and into the refrigerator. No, not all yet - then in the oven.
Finished? Congratulations on the fake.
By the way, it is punishable by law. I do not like? Drop it.
People on this crazy money made at all times. True, some ended their journey in places not so remote. But this is a whim of fate. To the Dutch Han van Meegern, for example, Fortune kept smiling, smiling ... and stopped.
At first, van Meegern was not interested in money, but in fame. This genius of falsification yearned to see his works in best museums and collections of the world. His own artistic talent was clearly not enough for this, so Meegern wanted to take on some of the glory of the great Dutch of the 17th century.
He has been preparing for his debut as an author of old paintings for more than ten years. After several unsuccessful attempts, Meegern turned his attention to the work of Jan van der Meer from Delft, or, more precisely, the great Vermeer of Delft.
Vermeer for a long time remained in the shadow of his more famous compatriots. It was raised to the artistic Olympus only at the beginning of our century by the Impressionists. Therefore, not all of his works have been preserved. Some periods of life and work were not known to art historians at all.
Meegern decided to help suffering art lovers who were ready to pay a lot of money for Vermeer's paintings, and somewhat replenished the artist's legacy.
Experts say that Vermeer's paintings are difficult not only to fake, but even just to copy. Work on the first canvas took more than seven months.
having come up with romantic story about the find unknown painting Vermeer in Italy, Meegern managed to intrigue the European art market. In addition, he received from authoritative experts a conclusion on the authenticity of the canvas.
As a result, the painting was sold to the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam for 550 thousand guilders and was a resounding success. Experts and critics recognized the canvas as one of the most perfect works of Vermeer.
In total, our hero earned about six million guilders from Dutch painting.
But it so happened that one of his "Vermeers" got into the Goering collection (1650 thousand guilders), and after the war there were problems. Meegern was accused of collaborating and selling to the Nazis national treasure Netherlands.
I had to feverishly prove that he sold the Nazi Reichsmarschall a picture that he painted himself. Both investigators and experts resolutely refused to believe.
The artist was forced under police supervision to create his seventh (and last) masterpiece. As a result, Han van Meegern received not the highest measure, but only a year in prison for forging works of art for the purpose of profit.
The funny thing about this story is that some owners of van Meegern's Vermeers still ignore expert opinions and the author's confessions. They insist that Meegern was seized by megalomania, and the paintings continue to be considered the work of Vermeer.
In the difficult task of falsifying works of art, Khan van Meegern was, of course, brilliant, but far from being the first figure.
Forgery is an indispensable attribute of the antiques market from the time immemorial, from which this market exists. And what provokes craftsmen to mass-produce "falshaks" is our willingness to acquire anything - if only the name of the author was louder.

The collection of fakes is also becoming more expensive
The more popular this or that direction of art, the sooner when buying such a thing you will be given a fake.
For example, if you buy French Art Nouveau glass, it turns out that the products of the famous French firms Halle, Daum and the American Tiffany have been repeating many glass factories in Europe and America since the fifties. There is no stigma on these things, so it is not difficult to discern a forgery when buying. However, often no one passes them off as the original.
The exceptions are "daums" and "galles" made in Romania - these are high-quality marked samples, which can be distinguished only with considerable experience and a trained eye specifically for glass.
Their price has always been quite high - up to $ 1,000, while genuine ones cost up to $ 10,000. Such a Romanian "daum" also appeared on the Moscow market and was sold as genuine.
To a greater extent, collectors of antique furniture are guaranteed against fakes - a good replica here costs almost as much as the original. But quite often you can find items assembled from old parts with the addition of new ones. Their price in a "clean" transaction (when parts are not given out as "relatives") is a third, or even a half, lower than similar genuine samples. Depending on how many new parts are included in the product.
The same - with candlesticks and other lamps, among which prefabricated products today make up the vast majority.
Most at ease falsifiers feel among the old silver, icons, paintings and graphics. Here, as a rule, fakes are of very, very high quality, and with a "clean sale" they could count on half, and sometimes two-thirds, of the price of the original.
In the West (mainly in the USA), workshops that forge jewelry. We mostly counterfeit the so-called "lying silver" - cutlery. A sure sign that allows you to distinguish a fake - too deep - before going to the wrong side - a test of the brand.
Counterfeits of "standing silver" also entered the legal market - crystal vessels in a silver frame and luxurious silver mantel clocks.
The greatest skill was achieved in the falsification of painting and graphics, where the manufacture of replicas is least of all associated with technological difficulties and depends on the talent of the forger.
St. Petersburg masters specializing in forging the Russian school of painting of the 19th century are extremely revered. The quality of work is so high that only an experienced specialist can detect a fake using ultraviolet radiation and chemical-technological expertise.
You can also buy a fake, which itself is quite a respectable age. Any collector is familiar with the Renaissance forgeries of antique bronze figurines, the collection of which was so fashionable in the 16th century. Some of them are made with such skill that to this day they flaunt in the windows of the antique halls of museums.
About the same thing that almost all ancient greek sculpture has survived to our time, mainly in later Roman copies, is known to everyone.
If you are not an expert, you will definitely be cheated. And not just once. But this does not mean at all that if you bought a little thing on the cheap, and it turned out to be just a high-quality fake, you should throw it away.
Remake price high level often reaches 70% -80% of the cost of the original. It is possible, moreover, that after a certain (albeit long) time, an increase in its value is also possible.
Renaissance forgeries of antique bronzes, for example, have an independent artistic and collection value today. In the expert opinion, you will read more than once: "After the removal of the signature, it has an independent antique value."

In caring hands, everyone will become a Rembrandt
The falsification of works of art is, although profitable, but an extremely time-consuming process.
To make a high-quality fake, one must have an extraordinary talent, at least to some extent comparable to the talent of the forged master. True, this is required if the fake is made from scratch.
The main problem of falsifiers is the material, or rather, its age. Most of the materials from which antiques are made give out fakes.
The ideal material for fakes is gold. It does not change even if it has lain in the ground for hundreds of years.
It was on this that the Odessa antiquarian Shepsel Gokhman played at the end of the last century. He first suggested Imperial Museum in Vienna, and then to the Louvre, the golden tiara of the Scythian king Saythophernes, allegedly found during excavations of an ancient burial mound near Ochakov. The best Viennese and then French experts confirmed the authenticity of the tiara.
As a result, the thing was sold to the Louvre for two hundred thousand francs, a grandiose sum for those times.
After some time, it turned out that the tiara was made, if not on Malaya Arnautskaya, then certainly in Odessa: the jeweler who made the tiara for Gokhman had "split". (Either they paid a little, or something else). If not for this recognition, the Louvre might still be proud of the unique antique exhibit.
If the material from which the thing is made, at first glance, you can determine the age, it has to age for several hundred years.
This procedure requires a thorough knowledge of not only the style and manner of the original, but also the compositions and formulations of primers, paints, varnishes of former times, the ability to use ancient instruments and technology.
For the manufacture of fake paintings, old canvases are used, from which the image is washed off, after which they write new picture. When the picture is ready, it is covered with dark varnish (allegedly darkened with time), which gives the canvas a special "museum" flavor.
After this procedure, the picture is subjected to severe tests to give it the appearance of a time-worn canvas: dried, heated, rolled onto a cylinder. Often the cracks in the paint layer (carcelures, as experts call them) are so natural that even an experienced restorer undertakes to restore them like real ones.
According to experts, there are not so many good deliberately "aged" fakes (they make up about three percent of the works undergoing examination).
The easiest and most cynical way to falsify works of art is to forge the signature of the artist, the brand of the workshop or the factory on an existing work that is close in spirit and style to the original. To do this, use cheaper things, the authors of which are not listed among collectors.
In the event that the author's mark is made correctly enough, only an art history examination can determine the fake, the results of which are largely subjective.

An art historian must
I must upset you right away - there is no radical means of how to protect yourself from fakes. If the Hermitage and Pushkin Museum periodically ran up against fakes, what can we say about us - orphans and unreasonable ones.
One of the main rules that antique dealers repeat after doctors is to beware of casual connections.
It is best, especially at the initial stage, to completely refuse to buy things that are offered by strangers, dealers with a dubious reputation, or at clearly underpriced prices.
Buy art from reputable auctions, galleries or shops. But remember that at prestigious auctions all things are sold at maximum, and even inflated prices, and it is not easy to make an acquisition that is profitable in terms of capital investment.
Optimal for a collector who does not have many years of experience is the presence permanent partners- regularly looking for you noteworthy objects and experts, just as regularly attributing works of art that you intend to purchase.
But even buying at well-known auction houses - Sotheby`s, Christie`s, or Drouot - cannot completely insure you against mistakes.
For example, it was these solid houses, as well as several well-respected galleries in 1991, that were sold fake Giacometti (Giacometti) for more than 28 million dollars.
Do you think that an expert opinion of a specialist or a certificate signed by the closest heirs of the artist gives a 100% guarantee of the authenticity of the work?
Most likely no. It will not be difficult for a virtuoso who has made a high-quality fake of a painting or other work of art to forge a certificate.
In the mid-sixties, a Canadian who bought a Matisse painting in Paris and wanted to verify the authenticity of the painting, which cost him 240 thousand dollars, turned to the experts.
The painting entitled "Resting Model" was accompanied by a photograph of the same work, on reverse side which had the inscription: "I, the undersigned Marguerite Duthui-Matisse, confirm that the work depicted in this photograph is indeed the work of my father, Henri Matisse."
Based on this photo, experts issued an official certificate of authenticity of the painting. However, Matisse's daughter, having learned about this story, stated that her signature was forged.
Do not try to buy the best from the very beginning. expensive works art. One of the largest pre-revolutionary Russian collectors gave wonderful advice: "Start collecting with engravings. If you get into trouble - for example, run into three or four fake Rembrandts at a ruble and a half (pre-revolutionary) apiece - the loss is not great, and the teaching will cost you cheaply" .
The history of a painting can also tell you a lot about whether or not it is genuine. It is foolish to assume, for example, that the Gioconda offered to you really belongs to the brush of Leonardo - even a schoolboy knows that it is in the Louvre.
True, it is not always possible to obtain information about the whereabouts of works of a lower rank. But there are catalogs of museums, private collections and auctions, which can be used to trace the movement of certain values.
Alas, even the most impeccable and known in all details fate of a work of art (provenance) cannot serve as a guarantee of authenticity.
Before you engage in collecting, you need to at least get a little familiar with the history of art.
One well-known German falsifier, for example, was summed up by ignorance that in the 13th century Europe did not know such a bird as a turkey, which he depicted on an allegedly genuine church fresco. But you should be the "pro" who noticed it.
You may find it useful to know that until the 16th century inclusive, artists preferred boards, and in more recent times, canvas.
That in different places they used boards of various types of trees and canvas of various types.
It was only from the 17th century that artists began to sign paintings more or less regularly.
That the laws of precise construction of perspective in painting and graphics were discovered only at the beginning of the 15th century.
That Prussian blue was only invented in the 18th century.
But you never know the subtleties that speak of the authenticity of the picture, which you should keep in mind.
In order not to become a specialist in the field of general history, cultural history, literature, mythology, theology, heraldry, when buying works of art, it is better to immediately turn to experts.

Expert - persona grata
The examination system that is used to determine the authenticity of a work, even in developed countries artistic culture is highly simplified and subjective.
Experts sometimes become only because they once wrote a book or defended a dissertation. Or are the direct heirs of the author. If in the case of spouses and children one can still somehow understand the reliability of such an examination, then the conclusions about the authenticity of the work issued by grandchildren and great-grandchildren are doubtful.
The history of art expertise has not been without curiosities that called into question the competence of art arbitrators.
So, at the beginning of the century in an unexpected way ended a long-standing dispute between two famous "experts" of ancient plastics - Anatole France and Auguste Rodin: the collections of antiques they collected turned out to consist mainly of late fakes.
For the examination of your painting, you can contact either the museum or the restorers.
Distinctive feature expert school - All-Russian Art Research and Restoration Center. Grabar (VKhNRTS) - a comprehensive study of the work using various technical methods of analysis (X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared rays, photographic texture, chemical and technological analysis).
Of the technical methods, spectral analysis gives the most accurate results, but it is expensive, moreover, it does not exclude the need to use other methods and is carried out in exceptional cases.
In museums, the services of technologists are used much less frequently (in 10% of cases - in Pushkin and 30% - in the Tretyakov Gallery). Here, basically, they use the classic art criticism method of attribution "by eye". As experience shows, the method is quite worthy.
True, as one Moscow art collector said: “If I need to sell a painting and I doubt its authenticity, then I’ll go get the conclusion in the Tretyakov Gallery. But if I buy a painting, I’ll do a full technical examination in the center of Grabar.”
Qualitative expertise requires highly qualified specialists and sophisticated technical means. Therefore, we do not recommend entrusting the examination of the works you purchase to newly created firms or private experts who do not have necessary materials, equipment and qualifications.
If you are offered a work with an attribution receipt, you should check it, as there are cases when the receipts turned out to be fake or were written out for other works.
To avoid such situations, in museums the opinion of the expert commission is now written on the back of the photograph of the work. The annotated photograph must be accompanied by a receipt with the date and number, according to which a detailed record of the attribution of this work can be found in a special book of examinations.
However, such information is provided mainly government organizations(museums, customs and law enforcement agencies).
A documented expert opinion (on a letterhead and with a seal) has much more authority. In museums, they are still issued only to state organizations or firms that have entered into a special agreement. This is in line with Western practice. In the West, museums generally do not consult individuals.
"Private traders" use the conclusions of specialists from antique firms, resort to the help of specialized expert offices or receive expertise from employees of museums and state restoration structures on a private basis. What is not forbidden with us.
Today, the only place in Moscow where an individual can obtain a documented detailed expert opinion is the VKhNRTS.
Depending on the complexity of the work, such a conclusion for one work costs up to 200 thousand rubles. A consultation (with a receipt) costs from 20 thousand here.

Authenticity is a vanity issue
So, there are no absolute guarantees of authenticity. A biased examination of the collections of many museums, not to mention private collections, would certainly reveal a fair amount of false or dubious works.
Scandals of this kind occur almost every year, but they prove absolutely nothing and prevent nothing. For example, in American museums of fakes, miserable imitations - from furniture to paintings - about 35%. Much more than in Europe.
If you're buying a piece of art just to decorate your living room, it might make sense to sort of forget about determining the authenticity of the thing.
The requirement of authenticity is due to the fact that the buyer pays not for the work, but for the signature. The exposed fake loses only one thing - its legend. But you have already bought it (the painting), and perhaps you have already fallen in love with it. Right here: above your bedside table with your mother's vase.
Well, so is God with her, with this authenticity, in fact.
When it comes to failed collectors, the story of the collection of Texas oil tycoon Meadows, the owner of the collection of works, is remembered. modern painting and recognized connoisseur of art.
It turned out that in the famous collection worth about $ 2.5 million, out of 58 exhibits examined by a group of experts, 44 turned out to be fakes, 11 - "possibly originals", 3 - "inspiring strong suspicion."
Among the unconditional fakes were the "works" of Dufy, Derain, Modigliani, Vlaminck and Bonnard.
All of them were purchased in France at "preferential" prices, and each painting had a certificate of authenticity.
"It is even easier to make such guarantees than to forge paintings," Stern magazine commented on this fact.
The deceived Midauz placed a collection of his fakes in a special room of his villa, adding to it his own portrait with the signature - "Doodle".

Very often scammers fool experts. Auction houses do not always conduct a thorough examination of the canvas or paints, dealers, if desired, forge certificates of authenticity and come up with a convincing pedigree of the painting. As a result, not only novice buyers are deceived, but also experts, art historians and even relatives of artists. As a rule, the falsifiers themselves are talented artists, whose paintings did not cause any excitement either at auction, or in galleries, or even at opening days.

"Modigliani" by Elmira de Hori

Books are written about Elmira de Hori and films are made. During his life, he created thousands of fakes of the most famous and expensive artists - from the Impressionists to the Modernists. To convince of the true origin of the paintings, de Hory bought old catalogs with a painting by the desired artist, then carefully cut it out, drew his "Matisse" or "Picasso", photographed the picture and inserted the illustration back into the catalog. In this case, the buyer had no doubt that the original was in front of him.

The hoax came to light when, in the 1960s, Texas oil tycoon Algur Meadows bought a large collection of paintings—Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, and others—from an art dealer, Fernand Legros, who collaborated with de Hory. After Meadows sued, de Hori chose to remain in Spain. There he continued to draw, but already signed his name. In the 1980s, after the death of the artist, large auction houses - Sotheby's and Christie's began to sell his work under his own name - the price started from a few hundred pounds and reached several thousand. However, in the early 1990s, experts noticed that the quality of the work was not always equally good, and they suspected that someone was also forging de Hory himself. Bidding of the artist's works decided to stop.

Fake Giacometti sculptures

Alberto Giacometti is a famous sculptor, painter and graphic artist, one of the greatest masters of the 20th century. And his work was forged by the Dutch artist Robert Dreissen, one of the most famous forgers. Like most of his "colleagues", the creative fate of Dreissen was bad - he simply did not need anyone!

He made his first fakes in the 80s. Then Dreissen met with the major authorities of the black art market. Among his first customers, for example, was Michael Van Ryne, one of the most successful dealers in the illegal art market.

In the late 90s, Dreissen began to copy the style of Giacometti. The sculptor created few works in his life, traces of some were lost. Therefore, a story was invented that Giacometti's brother, Diego, made copies of the sculptures at night and hid them in the pantry. Copies sold around the world for millions of euros until Dreissen's intermediary was arrested and the forger himself fled to Thailand. He succeeded! Not everyone is so lucky!

Dreissen himself, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, said that he had no regrets, and that people who are willing to pay tens of thousands of euros for a real Giacometti deserve to be deceived. Alberto Giacometti's most expensive work, by the way, was sold at Sotheby's in 2010 for $104 million.

"Christ at Emmaus" by Jan Vermeer

The Dutch artist Han van Meegeren, born at the end of the 19th century, became famous for his work on fakes in the style of Jan Vermeer. The painting “Christ at Emmaus” brought him wealth. Meegeren, who worked as an art dealer, sold his work in 1937 under the guise of a Vermeer canvas.

After this deal, the artist bought a house in Nice, where he painted several more paintings in the style of Vermeer, one of which - "Christ and the Sinner" - then sold to Hitler's ally Hermann Goering. After the end of World War II, the police brought the painting home to Meegeren so that the art dealer could help get the work back. Meegeren refused to say from whom he "bought" Vermeer, for which he was accused of treason. The artist faced a life sentence. In court, Meegeren admitted that he painted fakes, but they did not believe him, even when he was indignant: “Yes, how could you imagine that I sold the real Vermeer to Goering! I sold him a fake!”, because at one time critics unanimously recognized the authorship of Vermeer. To prove his skill, Meegeren painted another "Vermeer" and was sentenced to one year in prison.

"Odalisque", Boris Kustodiev

The sale of the Odalisque painting, auctioned at Christie's in 2005 as a work by Boris Kustodiev, called into question the reputation of this auction house (together with Sotheby's, it accounts for the majority of all auction sales on the world market).

The painting was bought by Viktor Vekselberg for $2.9 million (a record price for Kustodiev). The auction house, according to all the rules, gave the buyer a guarantee for 5 years. However, some time after the purchase, specialists from the Aurora Fine Art Foundation (whose main owner is Vekselberg) said they doubted the authenticity of the painting. Leading Russian experts said that the author of the painting was not Kustodiev, but another artist who painted in the style of a Russian artist, while copying elements of his other paintings.

Usually auction houses try to resolve such situations quickly and without publicity, but this dispute was resolved in the Supreme Court of London. After two years of hearings, the court allowed Vekselberg to terminate the deal and return the money.

"Landscape with a stream", Ivan Shishkin

In 2004, the auction house Sotheby's put up for auction, which took place as part of the "Russian Week", Shishkin's painting "Landscape with a stream" with an estimate of 700 thousand pounds ($1.1 million). However, shortly before the auction, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article in which it showed that the landscape is very similar to a painting by the little-known Dutch artist Marius Kukkoek. The paintings differed only in that there are people in the Dutchman's painting, but they are not in the Shishkin landscape, although the artist's signature was in the corner of the painting.

Sotheby’s assured that Shishkin’s signature was verified for authenticity, and the similarity of the paintings can be explained by the fact that it was written at a time when the Russian artist was influenced by the Düsseldorf school of painting.

The Sotheby's estimate was 140 times higher than the one at which the Bukowskis auction house in Stockholm exhibited a painting by Kukkuk a year earlier. In a Guardian article, one of the employees of the house said that the painting was sold for $ 64,000, which surprised her and her colleagues a lot.

"Forest", Max Ernst

German Wolfgang Beltracci drew the first forgery in 1965 when he was 14 years old. It was the Picasso of the "blue period". However, his main “specialization” was German artists, among whom the most common were works made under the expressionist Heinrich Campendonk. On them, Beltrachchi and his wife Helen earned the first capital, and then switched to more “expensive” names - Fernand Léger, Georges Braque and Max Ernst. The couple came up with a story that Helen Beltracci inherited a collection of paintings by these artists from her grandfather, to whom the paintings, in turn, were sold almost for nothing by the famous Jewish collector Alfred Flechtheim (shortly after that, the Nazis came to power in Germany, and Flechtheim fled to France) .

In the early 2000s, Beltracci painted "Ernst", the authenticity of which was not doubted even by Vernes Spies, the former director of the Pompidou Center in Paris, who is considered one of the main experts on Max Ernst. And the artist's widow, seeing the work "Forest", said that this is the best that Ernst has ever created. As a result, the "Forest" was sold to a Swiss company for $2.3 million, and after some time the painting ended up with the famous surrealist collector, French publisher Daniel Filipacci, who paid $7 million for it.

After that, luck began to change Beltrachchi. One of the oldest auction houses - the German Lempertz - sold the Campedonk painting to the Maltese Foundation, which doubted the authenticity of the work and began to conduct an examination. As a result, deceit has surfaced. The court sentenced Wolfgang Beltracci to 6 years in prison, and his wife to 4.

Lilac Tablecloth, Marc Chagall

One of the most daring schemes for the sale of fakes belongs to the American art dealer of Iranian origin, Eli Sahai. He sold both the original and a fake written from the original. At the same time, a fake, as a rule, was accompanied by a certificate that the art dealer received when buying the original.

For example, Marc Chagall's "Lilac Tablecloth", Sahay bought in 1990 at Christie's for $ 312,000. He then sold a copy of this work to a Japanese collector for more than $500,000, and resold the original at the same Christie's eight years later for $626,000.

The FBI drew attention to Sahai's activities after the two main auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's simultaneously put up for auction two identical paintings - "Vase with Lilies" by Paul Gauguin. The forgery was intended to be sold by an unsuspecting Japanese collector who had recently acquired the painting from Sahai. And Sahay himself decided to sell the real Gauguin through a competing organization.

Eli Sahay sold most of the fakes in Asia, while the originals went under the hammers of auction houses in London or New York. Japanese collectors themselves were not always able to distinguish the real Chagall from a fake, and it made sense to invite an expert from Europe when a painting with a price tag of a million dollars was at stake, and Sahay did not trade in such expensive paintings.

"Tugboat and Barge in Samoa" by Paul Signac

After the discovery of fake paintings, they are not always destroyed. In the West, there is a practice of transferring such paintings to art or history universities in order to educate students on the example of successful or unsuccessful fakes. Recently, exhibitions of fakes organized by such universities have become more and more popular. One of the most popular was held in Ohio in 2012. It showed "Picasso", "Signac", "Carren" by Mark Lundy, who painted at least 60 fakes in his life.

Despite the fact that the FBI revealed Lundy's activities back in 2008, no charges were brought against him, since he did not sell his paintings, but donated them to museums. But strictly speaking, the museums (and there were at least 30 of them) suffered financial damage - first of all, now spending money on checking the works that Lundy brought them as a gift.

Often posing as a fictitious name and acting on behalf of a religious community, Landi gave a fake painting, allegedly in memory of a relative who was related to the museum or its directorate. One day he visited the director of the Hilliard University Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana, and presented him with a painting by the American artist Charles Curran. The expert, checking the picture, found that the oil was painted not on canvas, but on a printed reproduction of the picture. Due to the fact that the expert community is a close circle of people who know each other well, it soon became clear that shortly before the puncture with the Curren, Mark Lundy donated the Fields of Signac to the Oklahoma Museum (the original of the work hangs in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg). Moreover, at the same time he presented the same "Signac" to a museum in Georgia. Everywhere, pixels of a printed reproduction showed through under the oil.

"Degas" by Tom Keating

The British Tom Keating, like many other artists who painted fakes, did not intend to make a living in such an unsightly way. However, the artist by the name of Keating did not want to buy. The first forgery he painted while working as a restorer was a work in the style of the British artist Frank Moss Bennett. Keating's partner took the painting, without asking the artist's permission, to a nearby gallery, where it was accidentally discovered by Keating himself on his way to work.

He himself considered himself a follower of Edgar Degas. He said that the famous artist was the teacher of his early teacher's teacher. Then, however, Keating claimed that El Greco woke up in him. In total, during his life he painted about two thousand paintings, which are now sold at auctions under the name of Keating. In the 1980s, when the artist's fraud was discovered, no one was interested in them, but ten years later, Tom Keating's paintings were sold for thousands of pounds and, according to experts, will only rise in price in the future.