‘Try it with the Tip of a Knife’: Looking Out for Fake Antiquities in Sixteenth-Century Italy

* I would like to thank the two anonymous readers for their generous comments and sound advice, which will help me to investigate this topic further. I would also like to express my gratitude to Alexandra Herlitz and Alexandra Fried for their help at every stage of the submission.

Summary

In 1565, the collector and art adviser Girolamo Garimberto congratulated Cesare Gonzaga on the recent acquisition of a series of ancient heads. In Garimberto’s words, what made this purchase so extraordinary was the “presence of an emperor [Geta] so rare, with his wife and two children, that, to tell the truth, this is an extremely rare and impossible occurrence, difficult to be arranged in any century, if not by sculpting them ex novo.” While approving the acquisition, Garimberto was voicing a deep concern: collectors’ high demand for “rare and impossible” works was encouraging the creation of forgeries. During the sixteenth century, for instance, the growing request for ancient coins with unusual reverses fostered a flourishing production of skilfully made fakes, which dealers were not ashamed to bring to the market that were still scorching hot. In such a competitive context, it was crucial to learn how to recognise an original coin from a fake, for instance by scratching the metal with the tip of a knife or hitting it to check its sound. As the market for antiquities boomed, so did the production of fake coins, sculptures, gems, inscriptions. This article highlights some of the problems scholars face when investigating the topic of fake antiquities produced in Italy during the early modern period. Through the discussion of some sixteenth-century forgeries, it also considers by whom and for whom fake antiquities were created, and what kind of expertise was required to identify them.

Notes

* I would like to thank the two anonymous readers for their generous comments and sound advice, which will help me to investigate this topic further. I would also like to express my gratitude to Alexandra Herlitz and Alexandra Fried for their help at every stage of the submission.

1 Mark Jones, “Why Fakes?” in Mark Jones, Paul Craddock and Nicolas Barker (eds.), Fake? The Art of Deception, London: British Museum Publications, 1990, p. 13.

2 For further considerations on this topic, see Barbara Furlotti, Antiquities in Motion from Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2019, pp. 5–6.

3 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori, ed. Paola Barocchi and Rosanna Bettarini, Florence: Sansoni, 1987, 6, pp. 207–208: “Ha auto ancora Milano un altro scultore che è morto questo anno, chiamato Tommaso Porta, il quale ha lavorato di marmo eccellentemente, e particolarmente ha contrafatto teste antiche di marmo, che sono state vendute per antiche; e le maschere l’ha fatte tanto bene che nessuno l’ha paragonato, et io ne ho una di sua mano di marmo, posta nel camino di casa mia d’Arezzo, che ognuno la crede antica. … Nessuno di questi imitatori delle cose antiche valse più di costui, del quale m'è parso degno che si faccia memoria di lui, tanto più quanto egli è passato a miglior vita, lasciando fama e nome della virtù sua.”

4 Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, eds., Collezionismo mediceo: Cosimo I, Francesco I e il cardinale Ferdinando; Documenti 1540–1587, Modena: Panini, 1993, pp. 103–104, doc. 104.

5 For Targone and Compagni as antiquities dealers, see Furlotti, 2019, pp. 58–60 and 63–63 respectively. For similar considerations in relation to fake coins, see Andrew Burnett, “Coin Faking in the Renaissance” in Mark Jones (eds.), Why Fakes Matter: Essays on Problems of Authenticity, London: British Museum Press, 1992, pp. 15–16.

6 Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, New York: Zone Books, 2010, chapter 22 (‘Forgery 1: Copy’), especially pp. 281–282.

7 For reference on l’Antico, see Filippo Trevisani and Davide Gasparotto, eds., Bonacolsi l’Antico: uno scultore nella Mantova di Andrea Mantegna e di Isabella d’Este, Milan: Electa, 2008, and Antico: the Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes, ed. Eleonora Luciano, Washington-London: National Gallery of Art, Paul Holberton Publishing, 2011. On the fashion of collecting small replicas of antiquities, see Davide Gasparotto, “The Pleasure of Littleness: The Allure of Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance” in Salvatore Settis and Anna Anguissola (eds.), Serial/Portable Classic: Multiplying Art in Greece and Rome, Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2015, pp. 81–87.

8 On the Barberini Pan as a collaborative work between Pirro Ligorio and Giacomo da Cassignola, see Fernando Loffredo, “Il Pan Barberini, Giacomo da Cassignola e la scultura in marmi colorati nella cerchia di Pirro Ligorio”, Nuovi studi, Vol. 18, No 19, 2013, pp. 145–174.

9 Ibid., p. 152.

10 For reference to this topic, see Silvia Orlandi with Maria Letizia Caldelli and Gian Luca Gregori, “Forgeries and Fakes” in Christer H. Bruun and Jonathan Edmondson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 43–48; and Silvia Orlandi, “Editing Ligorio’s Epigraphic Manuscripts: New Discoveries and New Issues” in Fernando Loffredo and Ginette Vagenheim (eds.), Pirro Ligorio’s worlds, Leiden: Boston, 2019, pp. 39–50, especially pp. 46–50, with accompanying bibliography.

11 Michael Hirst and Jill Dunkerton, Making & Meaning: The Young Michelangelo, London: National Gallery Publ., 1994, pp. 20–28, and Kathleen Weil Garris Brandt, “Sogni di un Cupido dormiente smarrito” in Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Cristina Acidini Luchinat, James David Draper and Nicholas Penny (eds.), Giovinezza di Michelangelo, Florence-Milan: ArtificioSkira, 1999, pp. 315–317. On the collecting history of this statue is still relevant Paul F. Norton, “The Lost Sleeping Cupid of Michelangelo”, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 39, No. 4, 1957, pp. 251–257. Attempts to identify Michelagelo’s work with existing versions have proved unconvincing.

12 The Memorie was first published as an appendix to Famiano Nardini, Roma antica, Rome: Giovanni Andreali, 1704, with separate page numbers. For a modern reprint, Flaminio Vacca, Memorie di varie antichità trovate in diversi luoghi della città, Rome: Colombo, 1988.

13 Vacca, 1988, p. 23 (no. 57).

14 Domenico Faccenna, “Il Pompeo di Palazzo Spada”, Archeologia Classica, Vol. 8, 1956, pp. 173–201; Lionello Neppi, Palazzo Spada, Rome: Edizioni d’Italia, 1975, pp. 55–56; Marina Sapelli, “Restauro della statua di Pompeo,” Bollettino di Archeologia, 5–6, 1990, pp. 180–185; Massimiliano Papini, Palazzo Braschi: la collezione di sculture antiche, Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000, pp. 148–149. According to Paolo Persano, “Una statua dalle molte vite. Biografie di un Menandro ‘romano' inedito in una collezione privata genovese”, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Römische Abteilung, Vol. 122, 2016, pp. 401-403, the head by Flaminio Vacca conforms to the Menander type.

15 On the finding of antiquities in Rome and its surroundings, see Furlotti, 2019, especially pp. 9–46.

16 For a discussion on illegal practices in the antiquities market, see Furlotti, 2019, pp. 181–200 and 213–216.

17 For further information on this topic, see Mark Jones, Paul Craddock and Nicolas Barker, eds., Fake? The Art of Deception, London: British Museum, 1990; Burnett, 1992, pp. 15–22; Wayne G. Sayles, Classical Deception. Counterfeits, Forgeries and Reproductions of Ancient Coins, Iola: Krause Publications, 2001; Federica Missere Fontana, “Tra aemulatio e frode. Storie di monete, storie di falsi” in Ulrike Peter and Bernhard Weisser (eds.), Translatio nummorum. Römische Kaiser in der Renaissance, Berlin: Franz Philipp Rutzen, 2013, pp. 279–299.

18 Martha A. McCrory, “An Antique Cameo of Francesco I de’ Medici: An Episode from the Story of the Grand-Ducal Cabinet of Anticaglie” in Le arti del principato mediceo, Florence: S.P.E.S., 1980, p. 316 (doc. 8).

19 Christina Riebesell, Die Sammlung des Kardinal Alessandro Farnese: Ein “studio” für Künstler und Gelehrte, Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1989, p. 183 (doc. 12).

20 Enea Vico, Discorsi di m. Enea Vico parmigiano sopra le medaglie de gli antichi, Venice: Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1555.

21 On Enea Vico, see Giulio Bodon, Enea Vico fra memoria e miraggio della classicità, Rome: L’ Erma di Bretschneider, 1997.

22 Vico, 1555, pp. 61–67.

23 Ibid., p. 62. For some considerations on cleaning techniques and the use of burin, see Federica Missere Fontana, “Rinettare e valutare monete antiche da collezione tra Cinquecento e Settecento”, Numismatica Ars Classica, Vol. 45, 2016, pp. 341–369.

24 Vico, 1555, p. 62.

25 Barocchi and Gaeta Bertelà, 1993, p. 263 (doc. 292).

26 Vico, 1555, p. 62.

27 Ibid., pp. 62–63. On this topic, see Giulia Zaccariotto, “Caratteri alfabetici e firme nelle medaglie italiane tra XV e XVI secolo” in Adriano Savio and Alessandro Cavagna (eds.), Saggi di Medaglistica, Milano: Società Numismatica Italiana, 2018, pp. 37–70.

28 Vico, 1555, p. 64.

29 Barbara Furlotti, “‘There Are People in Rome Called Antiquarians by Everybody’: Dealer-Antiquarians between Knowledge and Expertise in Sixteenth-Century Italy” in William Stenhouse (ed.), A Companion to Renaissance Antiquarianism, Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.

30 Ibid., p. 67.

31 Nagel and Wood, 2010, p. 287.

32 On this point, I disagree with Burnett, “Coin Faking”, p. 17, according to whom Vico considered “those who made coins resembling the antique as forgers rather than reproducers”. On the acceptability of interpretative copies, see Nagel and Wood, 2010, especially pp. 275–287.

33 Cases such as a 1510 letter sent by the sculptor Vittore Gambello, nicknamed Camelio, to Pier Matteo Giordani, in which the author explicitly defines his enclosed coin as a modern all’antica cast, are rare; see Giulia Zaccariotto’, “‘A misser Piero Mateo Jordano amico suo’: una lettera autografa del Camelio”, Prospettiva, Vol. 139–140, 2010, pp. 131–134 and in particular p. 132.

34 For discussion around Giovanni da Cavino, see Marcello Calogero, “Marco Mantova Benavides e le medaglie: tracce di una collezione e appunti dal Gymnasium (1568) su Giovanni da Cavino” in Lucia Simonato (ed.), Le arti a dialogo, Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2014, pp. 123–145; Sven Günther, “Mehr als nur Fälschungen der Antike: die Paduaner Giovanni da Cavinos” in Kathrin B. Zimmer (ed.), Rezeption, Zeitgeist, Fälschung – Umgang mit Antike(n), Rahden: Leidorf, 2015, pp. 269–278, and Michael Matzke, ed., All’antica - Die Paduaner und die Faszination der Antike, Regenstaug: Battenberg Gietl Verlag, 2018, pp. 97–180.

35 Missere Fontana, 2013, especially p. 295.

36 The bibliography on the multifaceted interests and varied production of Pirro Ligorio is vast. For reference, see David R. Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004, and Fernando Loffredo, Ginette Vagenheim, eds., Pirro Ligorio’s Worlds: Antiquarianism, Classical Erudition and the Visual Arts in the Late Renaissance, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019.

37 Pirro Ligorio, Delle antichità di Roma nel quale si tratta de’ circi, theatri, et anfitheatri, Venice: Michele Tramezino, 1553. The complete edition of Ligorio’s manuscripts is ongoing by the Edizione nazionale delle opere di Pirro Ligorio. For the volumes published so far, see https://www.delucaeditori.com/categoria-prodotto/collane/edizione-nazionale-delle-opere-di-pirro-ligorio/.

38 Pirro Ligorio, Libro dei pesi, delle misure e dei vasi antichi. Napoli, volume 4, libro XIX, ed. Stefania Pafumi, Rome: De Luca Editore, 2011, pp. 12–41 (fols 7r–44v). For a discussion on the part on fake coins, see Stefania Pafumi, ‘Introduzione’, Ibid., pp. XIV–XVIII.

39 Ibid., p. 12 (f. 7r).

40 It is worth reporting the passage in full: “Oh quale infamia han guadagnata costoro, deh qual nimicitia l’han tirati a deturpar per havaritia i bei concetti degli antichi et le fatiche delle sue historie! Certamente, a guisa che fanno i ladroni et assasini di strata, hanno oppresso costoro tante belle egregie opere senza alcun rispetto, si sono pure cavate le voglie loro in confondere la verità”, in Ibid, p. 14 (f. 8v).

41 Ibid., pp. 30–31 (f. 22v).

42 On this issue, see also Federica Missere Fontana, Testimoni parlanti. Le monete antiche a Roma tra Cinquecento e Seicento, Rome: Quasar, 2009, especially p. 128.

43 Although this practice was widespread among numismatists and collectors in the sixteenth century and beyond, it was not necessarily exempt from criticism. A passage of a seventeenth-century treatise on ancient coins and coin collecting compares mixing modern all’antica specimens with ancient ones to “put[ting] together a bad woman with good ones”; see Giulia Zaccariotto, “Discorso delle medaglie antiche: Collecting Ancient Coins and Finding Forgeries in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome” Getty Reseach Journal, 13, forthcoming. I would like to thank the author for allowing me to read her article before its publication. On casts and copies of gems, in particular as substitutes for the originals, see Leah Clark, “Collecting and Replicating Antiquities: Casts, Substitutions, and the Culture of the Copy in the Quattrocento”, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 28, No. 1,, 2016, pp. 1–13.

44 See for instance Ligorio, 2011, p. 35 (f. 26r).

45 Clifford M. Brown with Anna Maria Lorenzoni, Our Accustomed Discourse on the Antique: Cesare Gonzaga and Gerolamo Garimberto, Two Renaissance Collectors of Greco-Roman Art, New York: Garland, 1993, pp. 106–107 (doc. 91).

46 Following the advice of Fulvio Orsini, in 1566–1567 Cardinale Farnese bought Ligorio’s numismatic collections and the manuscripts he had written so far; see Pafumi, “Introduzione”, p. ix, with bibliography.

47 The circumstances of the finding are reported by Ligorio in Naples 7, f. 414 and in Turin 23, f. 78; for the latter, see Pirro Ligorio, Libro degli antich eroi e uomini illustri, ed. Beatrice P. Venetucci, Rome: De Luca Editori, 2005, p. 66.

48 On these busts, see Beatrice Palma Venetucci, ed., Pirro Ligorio e le erme tiburtine. I.1, Rome: De Luca, 1992, pp. 34–37; Stefano Corsi, “Le antichità Carpi a Ferrara. Cronaca di un acquisto,” Prospettiva, Vol. 69, 1993, pp. 66–69; Maria Luisa Morricone, “Il cosiddetto Omero della Galleria degli Uffizi”, Rendiconti / Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, Vol. 9, 1992, pp. 163–192.

49 Elena Berti Toesca, “Il cosiddetto Omero degli Uffizi”, Bollettino d’arte, Vol. 4, 1953, pp. 307–309.

50 For the theoretical framework to this problem, see Nagel and Wood, 2010.

51 Jones, 1990, p. 11.