Art Fraud

ART FRAUD IS THE deliberately false representation of the artist, age, or origins of a work of art in order to reap financial gain. Forgery of a famous artist's work is the best-known kind of art fraud. But fraud may also result from the knowing misattribution of the age or origin of a work of art, for example if an art dealer were to falsely assert, for the purpose of making a greater profit, that a statue was from 5th-century Greece, or that a vase was from the Chinese Ming dynasty; works from a particular region or time period may be deemed more valuable on the contemporary art market. Art fraud is motivated by the large sums of money that can be obtained for works of art by famous artists or are otherwise rare or unusual.

The copying of famous works of art dates to the origins of the history of collecting, and therefore to the beginning of the history of art. In the ancient world, replicas were made of famous works in order to satisfy demand by collectors for these works. One such statue was the 5th-century Spear-bearer by the Greek artist Polykleitos that had great fame for its perfect proportions and beauty, and was often copied for admiring Roman collectors in subsequent centuries. Polykleitos' statue, made of bronze, did not survive into the modern era, but the classical Roman marble copies remain, and these copies supply our only knowledge about the original.

A copy of a famous work does not constitute art fraud; rather it is the sale of a copy under false pretenses that is fraudulent. It was in the Renaissance that intellectual property, the idea that an artist creates a work of art that belongs to her, again became a significant factor in artistic production. When the value of a work of art resides not solely in the beauty of the object itself but also in the name of the creator, there is motivation for fraudulent claims of authorship. The Renaissance artist Michelangelo (1475–1564) objected to the misattribution of his work; it was reported that when he discovered that another artist was receiving credit for sculpting the famous Pietà (today in Saint Peter's basilica in Rome), Michelangelo returned with his chisel and added his signature across the center of the sculpture, on the prominent sash across the Virgin Mary's upper body: “Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this” (English translation).

[Page 54]In the 18th and 19th centuries, the mania for classification and study of the past resulted in an upsurge in forgeries as the art market adjusted to accommodate the new interest in the artistic past. This interest in the classification of the past also led to the founding of academic disciplines such as the history of art. The study of art history and the creation of agreed-upon bodies of work for artists and eras, as well as the advances of science, have made possible in the 20th century the winnowing out of forgeries and fakes from authentic works. As art historians gain more knowledge about the past and the style, materials, and working conditions of artists and historical epochs, fraudulent works are more readily exposed.

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