The Spanish Forger (French : Le Faussaire espagnol) is the name given to an unidentified individual who, in the late 19th to early 20th century, created a large number of forgeries of medieval miniatures.
The Spanish Forger (French : Le Faussaire espagnol) is the name given to an unidentified individual who, in the late 19th to early 20th century, created a large number of forgeries of medieval miniatures.
The Spanish Forger's works were painted on vellum or parchment leaves of genuine medieval books, using either blank margins or scraping off the original writing. He also "completed" unfinished miniatures or added missing miniatures in medieval choir books. His works fooled many experts and collectors at the time and appear today in the collections of many museums and libraries. More than 200 forgeries have been identified. [1] [2] [3]
As recently as 1930, the Forger was believed to be of Spanish origin. This is because one of his first identified forgeries was attributed as a genuine work by Jorge Inglés, a Spanish artist who was active during the 15th century. [4] However, when one considers the provenance of the Forger’s pieces along with many of the medieval collectible miniatures of the period, Paris was the center of purchasing, selling, and forging. [4] A number of his forged miniatures have been identified as copied, with modifications, from those published in several French books dating to the 1870s−1880s. [5]
The work of the Spanish Forger was first identified by Belle da Costa Greene who worked at the Pierpont Morgan Library. She was also the one who dubbed the artist the 'Spanish Forger'. [6]
His works were very deceptive when created, but over time it has been recognized that the faces of individuals in his pictures have "sugary expressions" inconsistent with genuine medieval illuminations. [7] Some of his miniatures have also been identified as forgeries because they are of secular scenes that would not have appeared in genuine medieval religious texts. [8] Additionally, many of the individuals in the Spanish Forger’s miniatures have a tilt to their heads that would not be present in authentic medieval works. In the "Knights of the Crusade" miniature, the bearded knight at the gate and the maiden in the bottom embellishment exhibit the classic head tilt. The facial expressions on most of the subjects in his miniatures are sweet and cloying, not pious and pensive as with true works. In legitimate medieval works, gold leaf was added first so that the paints would not be obscured by it. However, the Spanish Forger used gold leaf as a final touch, obscuring his paints and giving a lustrous appearance to his forgeries. [9]
Up to a certain point, most of the Spanish Forger’s miniatures had been identified by their unique stylistic characteristics. In 2009, Lucia Burgio, Robin Clark, and Richard Hark performed spectroscopic investigation, comprehensive analysis of pigments by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence, upon five of the Spanish Forger’s miniatures in order to determine with scientific certainty that the forgeries were exactly that. [10] Use of the pigments ultramarine blue (first synthesized after 1828) and Scheele’s green (synthesized after 1775) were discovered, providing solid evidence that the Forger’s imitations were fabricated in post-medieval period. [10]
The Spanish Forger’s works were the subject of an exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York City in 1978, for which an extensive catalog was published. [11] His works are now themselves collected as forgeries, selling for several thousand dollars each. [12] He created more than 194 imitations that have been identified, which were purchased by multiple collectors of medieval art around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. [4]
In January 2009, it was announced that the Victoria and Albert Museum purposely acquired five examples of the Spanish Forger's work for their collection "for what it tells us about late 19th-century perceptions". The museum took the works in lieu of £20,000 ($US 30,000) of inheritance tax, equivalent to a value per work of about $6,000. [13] Another of the artist's paintings appeared on an episode of the Antiques Roadshow in 2014, being valued at around $4,000. [14]
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories and deeds.
The Morgan Bible, also called the Morgan Picture Bible, Crusader Bible, Shah Abbas Bible or Maciejowski Bible, is a unique medieval illuminated manuscript. It is a picture book Bible consisting of 46 surviving folios. The book consists of miniature paintings of events from the Hebrew Bible, set in the scenery and costumes of thirteenth-century France, and depicted from a Christian perspective. It is not a complete Bible, as it consists largely of illustrations of stories of kings, especially King David. The illustrations are now surrounded by text in three scripts and five languages: Latin, Persian, Arabic, Judeo-Persian, and Hebrew. The level of detail in the images and the remarkable state of preservation of the work make it particularly valuable to scholars.
Art forgery is the creation and sale of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.
A miniature is a small illustration used to decorate an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple illustrations of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment. The generally small scale of such medieval pictures has led to etymological confusion with minuteness and to its application to small paintings, especially portrait miniatures, which did however grow from the same tradition and at least initially used similar techniques.
Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg, was a Welsh antiquarian, poet and collector. He was seen as an expert collector of Medieval Welsh literature, but it emerged after his death that he had forged several manuscripts, notably some of the Third Series of Welsh Triads. Even so, he had a lasting impact on Welsh culture, notably in founding the secret society known as the Gorsedd, through which Iolo Morganwg successfully co-opted the 18th-century Eisteddfod revival. The philosophy he spread in his forgeries has had an enormous impact upon neo-Druidism. His bardic name is Welsh for "Iolo of Glamorgan".
Belle da Costa Greene was an American librarian who managed and developed the personal library of J. P. Morgan. After Morgan's death in 1913, Greene continued as librarian for his son, Jack Morgan, and in 1924 was named the first director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Despite being born to Black parents, Greene spent her professional career passing for white.
The Morgan Beatus is an illuminated manuscript with miniatures by the artist Magius of the Commentary on the Book of the Apocalypse by the eighth-century Spanish monk Beatus, which described the end of days and the Last Judgment. The book is believed to have been constructed in and around the scriptorium of San Miguel de Escalada in Spain. Having been created at some time in the 10th century, the Morgan Beatus is one of the oldest examples of a revived Spanish apocalypse tradition. According to the style it was created by Mozarabs. As one of the earliest works of Mozarabic art, the Morgan Beatus exemplifies the interworking connections between the Christian citizens of Spain under the Muslim Moorish leaders, especially in newly Arabicized areas such as Léon and Córdoba. The Apocalypse and the commentary on this scripture by Saint Beatus of Liébana became one of the most important religious texts of the Middle Ages, and was often illustrated very fully.
Simon Marmion was a French and Burgundian Early Netherlandish painter of panels and illuminated manuscripts. Marmion lived and worked in what is now France but for most of his lifetime was part of the Duchy of Burgundy in the Southern Netherlands.
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves is an ornately illuminated manuscript in the Gothic art style, produced in about 1440 by the anonymous Dutch artist known as the Master of Catherine of Cleves. It is one of the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts to survive from the 15th century and has been described as one of the masterpieces of Northern European illumination. This book of hours contains the usual offices, prayers and litanies in Latin, along with supplemental texts, decorated with 157 colorful and gilded illuminations. Today, both parts of the manuscript that forms this book are housed at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
William de Brailes was an English Early Gothic manuscript illuminator, presumably born in Brailes, Warwickshire. He signed two manuscripts, and apparently worked in Oxford, where he is documented from 1238 to 1252, owning property in Catte Street near the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, roughly on the site now occupied by the chapel of All Souls College, where various members of the book trade lived. He was married, to Celena, but evidently also held minor orders, as at least three self-portraits show him with a clerical tonsure. This was not unusual: by this date, and with the exception of the St. Albans monk Matthew Paris, the only other English illuminator of the period about whom we have significant personal information, most English illumination seems to have been done in commercial workshops run by laymen.
The Winchester Bible is a Romanesque illuminated manuscript produced in Winchester between 1150 and 1175 for Winchester Cathedral. With folios measuring 583 x 396 mm., it is the largest surviving 12th-century English Bible. The Bible belongs to a group of large-sized Bibles that were made for religious houses all over England and the continent during the 12th century. The Winchester Bible is important to understanding the history of medieval art, because it was left only partially completed, giving insight into the creation and production of these kinds of Bibles. It can still be seen in the Winchester Cathedral Library, which has been its home for more than eight hundred years. Before it was returned to Winchester Cathedral, the Bible had many owners and suffered because of it. Pages have been removed and torn out; one of those pages is known as the Morgan Leaf and is now owned by the Morgan Library in New York.
Thomas James Wise was a bibliophile and thief who collected the Ashley Library, now housed by the British Library, and later became known for the literary forgeries he printed and sold.
The Black Hours, MS M.493 is an illuminated book of hours completed in Bruges between 1460 and 1475. It consists of 121 pages (leaves), with Latin text written in Gothic minuscule script. The words are arranged in rows of fourteen lines and follow the Roman version of the texts. The lettering is inscribed in silver and gold and placed within borders ornamented with flowers, foliage and grotesques, on pages dyed a deep blueish black. It contains fourteen full-page miniatures and opens with the months of the liturgical calendar, followed by the Hours of the Virgin, and ends with the Office of the Dead.
Jean Poyer, was a French miniature painter and manuscript illuminator of the late 15th century. As a multitalented artist - illuminator, painter, draftsman, and festival designer active from 1483 until his death - he was a painter of Renaissance France, working for the courts of three successive French kings: Louis XI, Charles VIII, and Louis XII.
The Westminster Psalter, British Library, MS Royal 2 A XXII, is an English illuminated psalter of about 1200, with some extra sheets with tinted drawings added around 1250. It is the oldest surviving psalter used at Westminster Abbey, and is presumed to have left Westminster after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It joined the Old Royal Library as part of the collection of John Theyer, bought by Charles II of England in 1678. Both campaigns of decoration, both the illuminations of the original and the interpolated full-page drawings, are important examples of English manuscript painting from their respective periods.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to forgery:
The Worksop Bestiary, also known as the Morgan Bestiary, most likely from Lincoln or York, England, is an illuminated manuscript created around 1185, containing a bestiary and other compiled medieval Latin texts on natural history. The manuscript has influenced many other bestiaries throughout the medieval world and is possibly part of the same group as the Aberdeen Bestiary, Alnwick Bestiary, St.Petersburg Bestiary, and other similar Bestiaries. Now residing in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the manuscript has had a long history of church, royal, government, and scholarly ownership.
Cristoforo Cortese was a 15th-century Venetian miniaturist, illuminator, and head of the Veneto school of illumination; he was the first major artist in Venice to paint in the late Gothic style. Cortese is widely regarded as the most notable and prolific Venetian illuminator of the first half of the fifteenth century.
The Zeytun Gospels of 1256 AD is an Armenian illuminated manuscript in the Armenian language by artist and ordained priest T'oros Roslin. The Zeytun Gospels consists of four tabernacles, four evangelists, four namesakes, ornaments and decorations. The manuscript's patron was Catholicos Constantine I of Bardzrberd (1221–1267) and was commissioned for his godson Levon. It was transcribed in a scriptorium at the fortress Hromklay, "the God protected castle", in Cilician Armenia. Hromklay was also known as The School of Miniature Painting at the Catholicosate. The Hromklan scriptorium was at its peak while Roslin worked there on the Zeytun Gospels. The manuscript was later reintroduced as the Zeytun Gospels named after the mountain village of Zeytun during the late Ottoman Empire.
The Master of the Brussels Initials, previously identified with Zebo da Firenze, was a manuscript illuminator active mainly in Paris. He brought Italian influences to French manuscript illumination and in that way played an important role in the development of the so-called International Gothic style. Decorations by the artist appear in several different works, illustrated by several different artists, and some attributions have been questioned. A corpus of works attributable to the Master of the Brussels Initials was initially identified by art historians Otto Pächt and Millard Meiss. The artist's style was inventive, bright and lively, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson has also pointed out the unusually realistic depictions of minute wildlife found in his work. At one point the bibliophile John, Duke of Berry employed the Master of the Brussels Initials.
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