Historian discovers a prized Galileo manuscript was forged | Hacker News Reader

Historian discovers a prized Galileo manuscript was forged

smithsonianmag.com

50 pointsHooke17 comments

What do you think they'll do with it? What do museums and universities do with objects they discover are forgeries? Do they throw them away? Do they keep them? Do they move them in storage?

There are Picassos younger than this forgery. Maybe old and high quality forgeries are of some historical value after all? Indeed, what if the only remaining copy/copies of an old object or painting was a forgery/were all forgeries?

It seems that something related to this actually came up recently. Someone with institutional cred claimed that a famous alleged Biblical manuscript from the 19th century, long accepted to be fake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapira_Scroll , was actually genuine all along, and it's a lot harder to settle the question definitively because no-one can find the thing anymore: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/arts/bible-deuteronomy-di... .

This is an important consideration - we do not have perfect knowledge of the last century let alone the last millennia.

Imagine a painting being determined to be an elaborate forgery; it is NOT a genuine Da Vinci, it was faked!

Later research determines that the faker was Michelangelo! But we already destroyed it ... not realizing it had just been mislabeled ages ago.

Imagine a Jesus Mono painted on top of an actually valuable painting that can only be seen with x-rays.

Reading that, it's a scroll with unknown provenance (many wildly inconsistent stories were told about where it was found) from a guy who promulgated other frauds and all we have left is apparently a drawing of it.

I don't think you can meaningfully authenticate a scroll from just that, especially not one with a dubious history like this.

FTA: Per the Times, the University of Michigan is considering taking a similar approach to the fake Galileo. Rather than tuck it away, the university may make it the centerpiece of a future exhibition on the art of forgery.

If it's like this forged Chagall which you have sent to this expert panel in France for authentication, the panel will unilaterally destroy it for you: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/arts/design/chagall-sothe...

Conveniently, there's no second opinions after that.

Maybe they should let the public get up close and personal. If it's a worthless forgery, where's the harm? Failing that, there's always the museum gift shop.

The 1973 Orson Welles docudrama "F for Fake" is worth watching if you're interested in art forgery. It posits that there is value in the art of the forgery itself, if the forgery is high enough quality and fools enough people.

Even a casual search on google will show you that art forgeries are at epidemic levels. Modern forging techniques are so good that the copies are indistinguishable from the original with all non destructive testing techniques. Which of course are of course very undesirable to perform. I now find it difficult to accept much of what is in museums are authentic. The incentive to steal these artworks and such are simply too great. You can literally make generational wealth from selling a single famous artwork if you can pull off the swap. How hard can it be to buy off underpaid under funded museum staff?

If it's really so easy to make forgeries now, it seems like the street value would plummet. Even if that's not the case, instead of swapping the original and risking jail time, why not just sell the cheap, perfect forgery to whatever idiot is buying stolen art? That way everyone wins! You (criminal), society (still have the original in the museum) and the buy (thinks he has the original).

Who said it's easy?

It seems to require a team of people based on some stuff I saw. A painter that has mastered the technique of the artist being copied. A canvas/substrate maker. ,Or sometimes they can find an old unused canvas and they paint on it so it passes dating tests. The paint ingredients usually have to be gotten from very specific locations, then require an expert in creating the old style paints from it. Sometimes they can find authentic old paint to use. Someone that knows how to recreate wear, tear and time damage to match the original. Finding old materials from the same time period and working it into the forgery is a common tactic.

Its quite an interesting situation if you have some free time to read or watch the many documentaries on the subject.

The mona lisa has a crazy history of being stolen, borrowed and lost so many times it could easily be a fake. And that is one of the most famous well known and closely watched artworks. What does that say about the rest...

I'm sure you are right that the majority of fakes are probably just sold directly to rich suckers. I don't think jail is a very high risk either. It seems most of the time these things are quietly swept under the rug when discovered even when reputable sellers get caught up in it. Of course this is on of those things that stats basically don't exist since it is all back room deals and confidential accounts. Hard to prove and as you mentioned no one wants to crash the market.

Reminds me of the Tom Baker Dr. Who episode where the Jaggaroth commander is split through time, existing in multiple centuries. He has daVinci paint multiple copies of the Mona Lisa which stay hidden away for centuries. He then steals the "original" in the 20th century and sells all of them on the black market to fund his time experiments.

Of course the Doctor goes back in time and paints FAKE on all but one canvas, leaving a note to daVinci to "nevermind the scribble, just paint over it".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32560536

That's the current link - did you mean to post a different one?

I tried to link to a four-day old posting of this same article but I guess HN just bumped it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com