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  False Gods: 'Ancient' Forgeries Fool Art Markets

False Gods 'Ancient' Forgeries Fool Art Markets

By Matthias Schulz

Part 2: Museums Sometimes Suppress Doubts

The museum executives, fascinated by the piece, quickly snapped it up. It was a mistake, but it took the museum 25 years to finally admit, in 2003, that it had been swindled.

Such disastrous decisions by government-appointed curators are attributable in part to the amount of pressure they face. They need sensational art -- Mayan torture devices or squatting mummies from the Andes -- to boost ticket sales, and they are sometimes too quick to suppress doubts as to the provenance of their finds.

This can lead to scandals like the one that recently unfolded at Hamburg's Museum of Ethnography. By mid-December, the museum's exhibition of Chinese terracotta warriors -- supposedly a world-class event -- had already attracted 10,000 visitors. But the warriors turned out to be fakes, freshly baked clay figures worth little more than flowerpots.

Visitors to the Bode Museum, which is part of the Berlin's Museum Island, are also being fooled -- deliberately, at that. A wax bust titled "Flora," about 75 centimeters (30 inches) tall, is on display at the museum. When the Bode, formerly the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, was reopened last year, "Flora" was prominently displayed in its lecture hall in room 220.

Museum guides describe the bust of a smiling, bare-breasted woman as a great mystery. Her origins are linked, in "mysterious" ways, to a genius of the Renaissance. "The thrilling question that remains unanswered to this day," they tell visitors, "is whether she can be attributed to Leonardo da Vinci."

But this is complete nonsense, because the "Flora" case was cleared up long ago. It was one of the most bizarre swindles ever to shake the art business.

In 1909, Wilhelm Bode, the museum's director at the time, traveled undercover to England to acquire the wax bust from a shady dealer for 185,000 gold marks. Enchanted with the piece, he returned to Berlin, where he touted it as a second Mona Lisa.

But for Bode's counterparts in London, his claims were nothing short of amusing. They promptly presented three sworn affidavits proving that Richard Lucas, a porcelain embosser, produced the bust in his studio in 1846. Tests showed that it was made of cetaceum, a wax obtained from the head of the sperm whale. In Leondardo's day, cetaceum was twice as costly as gold.

Bode had been deceived. And yet he chose to ignore the evidence. When the public eventually learned of the affair, the Kaiser chose to protect Bode, thereby smothering all doubts. Even in 1966, when the cracked work was exhibited at the newly opened sculpture collection in Berlin-Dahlem, it was described as an "original creation" by da Vinci, and one of "perfect, classical clarity and harmony" at that.

The real story was finally exposed in 1986, when chemical analyses revealed that the bust contained synthetic stearin, a substance that was produced in the 19th century. But even this news failed to topple "Flora." Today, the panel next to the bust describes it as being "both attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or one of his apprentices and viewed as a forgery of the 19th century."

There seems to be a general effort to cover up and even deny the problem of forgeries. Christoph Leon, the Basel art dealer, calls it a "dangerous development," and says that the forgery business is only growing and that more and more fake art is finding its way into government-run museums. "But they all deny the problem, especially when they have become victims of the forgery mafia themselves."

Is a dark shroud descending on the world of classical beauty? Are more and more fakes made to look old showing up in the company of the cold marble of real Laocoöns and Aphrodites, so that no one even notices the difference anymore?

When examining the authenticity of sculptures, art restorers nowadays use endoscopes to penetrate into the hollow metal figures, inspect soldered joints and X-ray base plates. But art forgers also read the professional journals. "The relationship between classical archeology and the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the forgery workshops, on the other, is not unlike the proverbial race between the tortoise and the hare," complains Lehmann. "Our scientific innovations are immediately made public and read by the forgers, who then apply them to their fraudulent activities."

In the case of stone sculptures, it has become nearly impossible to distinguish between originals and fakes. The forgers use the same types of toothed chisels and scrapers that were used 2,000 years ago, and they obtain marble from quarries that were already in use in antiquity. This has led to intense disputes.

An especially bitter controversy has erupted over the "Kouros," a supposedly 2,500-year-old statue of an archaic Greek boy owned by the Getty Museum in Malibu. According to a study commissioned by the museum, the stone sculpture exhibits weathering that could only be the result of thousands of years of exposure. However, the Getty does give some credence to the doubters, as it has included a wall panel next to the sculpture which reads "circa 530 B.C. or modern forgery."

But the issues get even more complicated. Given the high prices in the current art market, even well known experts are sometimes tempted by the sweet smell of cash. Art appraisers charge a fee of between 3 and 5 percent of a sculpture's appraised value. A few well-placed sentences can translate into a fee of half a million euros.

Some appraisers give in to the temptation and are quick to set aside possible doubts as to authenticity. Two Swiss university professors are currently being investigated on suspicions of having deliberately issued false certificates. But no one is willing to name any names.

The events that took place some time ago at the Winckelmann Museum in Stendal, a town in eastern Germany, are no less troubling. The museum caused a sensation when it exhibited a previously unknown bronze bust of Alexander the Great. Suddenly the entire professional art world was looking to Stendal with astonishment.

And with good reason. Hardly any reliable likenesses of the Greek military commander (who marched with his army all the way to India and died in Babylon in 323 B.C.) exist. Suddenly it seemed as if this military genius had been resurrected in metallic form. But, critics asked, why did this supposedly sensational find show up in a museum in a small city in eastern Germany, of all places? The bust would be worth at least $10 million on the market.

The exhibition was organized by Max Kunze, 63, who was the director of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin in the days of the former East Germany -- the most prestigious museum position in the country. After German reunification, Kunze resigned his position at the Pergamon.

Although the bust, which was on loan to the Winckelmann Museum, remained in Stendal for only seven weeks, an elaborate brochure was prepared in German and in English. In the brochure, Kunze praised the impressive, shimmering green bust and even suggested that it may have been the work of the renowned ancient Greek sculptor Lysippus.

But art experts find this assessment shocking. "The piece is absolutely not from antiquity," says Leon. Greek sculpture expert Floren also believes that the mysterious Alexander is "undoubtedly a forgery."

When contacted by SPIEGEL last week, Kunze admitted that he purchased the metal bust from Robin Symes, the shady dealer who, until his conviction in 2005, was at the helm of a global antiquities empire.

The former East German museum director and the British art dealer have known each other for a long time. Back in 1999, Kunze wrote brief appraisals of four supposedly Hellenistic bronze portraits, which Symes was trying to sell to a wealthy client in New York. Kunze, however, insists: "I did not receive a fee for the appraisals."

"Not one of those busts was real," says expert Leon. "They were all made in a Spanish workshop that produces pseudo-antiques with a surprising degree of skill."

Some experts suspect that the Stendal deal was fixed. "The exhibition and the positive appraisal provided the Alexander bust with a touch of authenticity. Something that has already been exhibited in Europe without causing offence is easy to sell in the United States," says one insider.

Expert Lehmann puts it this way: "Stendal served as a laundering operation."

Kunze rejects these kinds of accusations and insists that the Alexander bust is Roman after all. Two other "well known colleagues," according to Kunze, agree with his assessment. Unfortunately, he adds, the controversial bust has somehow "gone missing." What a shame.

Kunze does admit, however, that he has no further plans to stage any similar exhibitions of sculpture from antiquity. The issue is too controversial, he says. "Because a museum runs the risk of being abused by art dealers, such exhibitions will no longer take place in Stendal."

The Stendal experience is not uncommon, revealing, as it does, the malleability of truth in the art world. Whether an appraiser intentionally reaches incorrect conclusions (or, to put it indelicately, lies) or is simply a little off-base when it comes to appraising an artwork is a distinction that can hardly hold up in court. As a result, caution is advised.

Or, as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said: "Art is long, life short; judgment is difficult."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan