Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: paul.fr on 23/07/2007 23:44:26
-
Any idea's?
-
Many very possibly are not.
There are two types of forgeries, and they present very different problems. There are forgeries that were recently made, and the main issue is determining the true age of the work (e.g. proving the materials used are inappropriate for the era, or using carbon 14 to test the materials - all of which can be fooled if needed); and secondly where a forgery was made in the past, possibly contemporaneously with the life of the artist (these are the most difficult to show, and is made much worse as some of the work we attribute to an artist might possibly have been made by an apprentice in the same artists workshops, and sell under the brand of the workshop with the authority of the artist himself).
There is a midway position, where a work of art might have been faked in historical times, but far more recently than the time the artist lived (e.g. a 19th century fake of a 16th century artist). This is probably the easiest type of fake to detect, since the guy working in the 19th century only had to fool 19th century art experts, and never planned to fool 21st century art experts (they would not have known to use old canvas to fool the carbon dating, since carbon dating had not been invented in the 19th century).