An Exhibition of Forgeries and Deceptive Copies: Held in the Department of Prints andDrawings from 9 February 1961Author(s): Edward Croft-MurraySource: The British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1/2 (Aug., 1961), pp. 29-30Published by: British MuseumStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4422696 .

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AN EXHIBITION OF FORGERIES AND DECEPTIVE COPIES

HELD IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS FROM 9 FEBRUARY 1961

HE present exhibition is designed to illustrate some aspects of forgery and deception in the fields of natural history, antiquity, coins and medals, the fine arts, literature, music, and postage stamps. Broadly speaking, the

reasons for deceiving the unwary in this fashion would appear to be as follows:

I. Monetary gain. 2. A desire, either malicious or humorous, to 'take in' the expert. 3. An attempt, through the manufacture of spurious antiquities, to add lustre

to the history of a country, district, or religion. 4. An attempt, by a disappointed artist or writer, who has failed to win re-

cognition by normal means, to bring before the public his work under the guise of its being by some well-known and already established master, or by some personality completely fictitious, but sufficiently colourful to draw attention to his products.

To these categories of deliberate falsification must be added one comprising those copies of works of art and antiquities which started life without any inten- tion to deceive, but which in the course of time have become accepted as originals.

There is a considerable literature dealing with forgeries; and at least three exhibitions have already been held to demonstrate the subject, the first in London, at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1924, the second at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in 1952, and the third in Paris, organized by the Comit6 des Salons Artistiques de la Police, at the Grand Palais in 1955. This is the first time that any such show has been mounted at the British Museum, and the material has been mainly assembled from its various Departments, supplemented by objects borrowed from outside sources, both public and private. It was a well-known Museum official who once said that 'every Director has a Flora bust waiting for him at the end of the corridor', referring, of course, to the famous wax bust acquired in i909, for ?8,ooo, by the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, as by Leonardo, and now acknowledged to be the work of the Victorian sculptor, Richard Cockle Lucas. (A section in the present exhibition is dedicated to Lucas and Flora.) Inevitably in a great institution, which has been built up over a long span of years, objects of this nature have found their way into the collections; but these have, from time to time, been detected and duly segregated, thanks to the increasingly high standards of specialized scholarship and improvements in scientific apparatus. Forgeries have also been acquired deliberately by the

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Museum for the purposes of study in their own right. And in the present ex- hibition, therefore, wherever appropriate or possible, false and genuine speci- mens are shown side by side for comparison.

It has not been found possible to illustrate fully all types of forgery, especially those which fall outside the specific interests of the Museum. One omission, in particular, will be noted, fake 'antique' furniture; but this subject was very fully dealt with recently in a lecture delivered at the Victoria and Albert Museum by Mr. H. D. Molesworth. Only a few paintings, too, are shown; but at least these include one 'genuine'Van Meegeren-the only one existing in England-belong- ing to the Courtauld Institute. Nevertheless it is hoped that-granting these limitations-the visitor will find in the main sections of the show enough for his study and entertainment. As a former distinguished member of the staff said, when given a preview of some of the exhibits: 'what fun it is when someone takes an enormous amount of trouble to be really naughty'.

EDWARD CROFT-MURRAY

ROMAN COIN ACQUISITIONS

HE gold medallion of Maxentius (P1. IX, I), the acquisition of which was made possible by generous assistance from the National Art-Collections Fund, is probably the most spectacular addition ever made to the Roman

series. Roman gold medallions are, as a class, extremely rare and no gold medallion of Maxentius had ever previously been heard of, though there was a gold medallion of his son, Romulus, in the Paris Cabinet prior to the theft in 1830o. This medallion of Maxentius formed part of a group which came on the market in early 1959 and comprised eighteen aurei and seven gold medallions, five of Maxentius and two of his father, Maximian Herculeus.' All of these medallions belong to the confused period which began with the disruption of the Third Tetrarchy and the declaration by Maxentius of himself as an Augustus together with his father Maximian, who in October 306 resumed active rule. Though late Roman gold medallions were struck as multiples of the gold unit, in this case the aureus, it is unlikely that they were ever used in commercial transactions.

The medallion now acquired is, by weight, a four-aureus piece and, as well as being completely new, is, like all the other medallions in the group from which it came, unique, in respect both of the obverse portrait of Maxentius and of the precise reverse representation. In a period in which portraits in the round which can be attributed with certainty to imperial personages are rare and, in the case of Maxentius, are completely lacking, the portrait clearly identified by its inscription here on the medallion is of enhanced value. There are, of

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