ON THE COVER PAGES
  A forgery of a Greek bronze statuette (BACK COVER), and a genuine
  example (FRONT COVER). Such “type” forgeries are exceptionally
  difficult to detect. Probably made for the tourist trade.




Retail Price $1.00




                                FORGERS
                                 _and_
                               FORGERIES


                          _BY W. G. Constable_
                          CURATOR OF PAINTINGS
                      MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON


                      _ART TREASURES OF THE WORLD_
                          NEW YORK AND TORONTO

  _ART TREASURES OF THE WORLD_
      100 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 13, N. Y.
      IN CANADA: 1184 CASTLEFIELD AVENUE
      TORONTO 10, ONTARIO

      Printed in U. S. A.    AT14 W

_Copyright 1954 by Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated. Copyright in the
United States and foreign countries under International Copyright
Convention. All rights reserved under Pan-American Convention. No part
of the contents of this book may be reproduced without the written
permission of Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated. Printed in U.S.A._


The usual idea of a forgery is of something deliberately fabricated to
appear to be what it is not; something conceived in sin, and carrying
the taint of illegitimacy throughout its existence. In fact, however,
many things made for quite innocent and even laudable purposes have been
used to deceive and to defraud, by means of misrepresentation or
subsequent manipulation. So the essential element in forgery lies in the
way an object is presented, rather than in the purpose that inspired its
making.

Still, it is objects made to deceive which have always held the center
of the stage. Without doubt, the main motive for their manufacture is to
make money. But often there is an element of drama, even of romance, in
the way they come into existence. A famous example is a _Sleeping Cupid_
which the young Michelangelo is supposed have carved in imitation of the
work of classical antiquity and which, after being buried in the ground,
was bought by a dealer and sold as an antique, being rated as such until
its true origin was revealed. Though the element of deceit was present
from the beginning, the primary purpose of the work was a challenge to
the past; and it is significant that Michelangelo’s early biographers
counted the success of the imposition to his credit, since it proved
that he could successfully rival the sculptors of Greece and Rome.

Such challenges to the past have undoubtedly inspired men who were or
ultimately became professional forgers. This seems to have been the case
with Giovanni Bastianini (1830-1868), the Italian sculptor. His
admiration for early Renaissance Italian sculpture bred in him a spirit
of rivalry which issued in the production of remarkable imitations to be
exploited as originals through collaboration with a dealer. Alceo
Dossena (1878-1937) also seems to have wanted to prove himself the equal
of earlier sculptors, though later he knowingly embarked on the making
of forgeries of medieval and Renaissance Italian sculpture, skillful
enough to be purchased as originals by various museums. The case for
conscious rivalry with the past is clearer with Rouchomovski, the
nineteenth-century goldsmith, whose abilities, though sufficient to give
him a reputation in his own right, led him to make the famous tiara of
Saitaphernes, which was purchased by the Louvre as Greco-Scythian work
of the third century B.C.

With other forgers, however, desire to confound connoisseurs and the
learned world has been uppermost, generally bred by neglect or adverse
criticism. So it seems to have been with Thomas Chatterton and his
eighteenth-century imitations of medieval poems; perhaps it operated in
the case of T. J. Wise and his forgeries of nineteenth-century
pamphlets; and apparently I. F. Ioni, the Sienese painter and restorer,
well-known for his forgeries of Italian primitive paintings, derived at
least as much satisfaction from trying to take in eminent authorities as
from the money he made. Certainly such motives inspired H. A. Van
Meegeren, the most famous forger of our time. Van Meegeren, a dexterous
painter, skillful in imitating others, did not receive the recognition
to which he felt his gifts entitled him, and turned his talents to
forging the great Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. In 1937 he
achieved spectacular success with his sale to the Rotterdam museum for
$200,000 of his _Disciples at Emmaus_, as an early work by Jan Vermeer.
A vivid light is thrown on his motives by a remark he made in 1947 after
his arrest and trial: “The _Disciples_ represented the master-stroke in
my plan for vengeance.” Later, the desire to fill his pockets seems to
have become paramount. A similar case may be that of the Piltdown skull,
once thought to be the earliest surviving relic of prehistoric man.
Recent intensive examination has proved that though the cranium is of
respectable antiquity, the lower jaw is that of a chimpanzee doctored to
appear ancient; and there is some reason to think that it was made and
planted near where the cranium was found, by a disgruntled museum
technician who wished to prove that he could fool the learned world.

    [Illustration: LEFT: A forgery by Giovanni Bastianini, part copy and
    part style imitation. RIGHT: A fragment of an original relief by
    Desiderio da Settignano on which the forgery was based.]

But whatever mixture of motives may go into making a forgery, the
predominant one is almost always financial gain. It follows that what
the forger makes is mainly determined by the market for his goods, which
in turn depends on current activity among collectors and in the learned
world. In the Middle Ages, fantastic curiosities and saintly relics were
much in demand, and forgers saw to it that the supply was kept up.
Later, the growth of scientific knowledge and religious skepticism
spoiled this market; while recognition of the artist as an individual
and the development of art collections stimulated production of
forgeries imitating the work of particular artists or of particular
epochs. These have since been the staple of the forger’s trade,
reflecting the tastes of the day. The eighteenth-century collectors’
passion for classical antiquity helped to sustain in Rome a flourishing
industry for the supply of classical statues and gems, with Thomas
Jenkins, painter, art agent, and banker as one of its leading figures;
English Regency taste produced a fine crop of imitations of Sèvres and
Meissen porcelain, made both in England and elsewhere; the Gothic
revival, bringing in its train a new enthusiasm for Italian primitives,
created hitherto neglected opportunities for the forger, who maintained
an active sideline in keeping up the supply of Palissy ware and Italian
majolica, until the taste of the aesthetic period turned his attention
to Delft ware; and in our own time we have seen the forger swing from
fabricating Famille Rose and Famille Verte to meeting twentieth-century
demands for the art of the T’ang, Sung, and earlier Chinese dynasties.

    [Illustration: ABOVE: An example of a flourishing nineteenth-century
    industry: a forgery of a fourteenth-century Italian diptych, with
    (BELOW) a genuine example for comparison. The crackle and facial
    types indicate the forgery.]

    [Illustration: (genuine example)]

Just as he responds to changes in taste or in learned activity, so the
forger follows in the footsteps of the tourist, for whom he has provided
flint implements to be discovered in prehistoric sites; Greek and Roman
coins, gems, and statuettes at appropriate places in Italy, Greece, and
Asia Minor; scarabs and small sculpture in Egypt; and today, pottery and
figurines in Central and South America.

Nor does the forger confine his attentions to the art of the past, but
extends them to contemporary work. Constable and Corot were imitated
while they were still living; forgeries of Renoir, Degas, Picasso,
Matisse, and others are common today; while, among Americans, Winslow
Homer and Ryder fabrications circulate freely. Artists are apt to be
forgetful as to what they have produced, especially in the case of
sketches, and have been known to deny authorship of perfectly genuine
work; so that risks of confrontation are not too great. With a
contemporary artist recently dead, his work not yet fully known or
catalogued, a vogue for collecting him fanned by a skillful
entrepreneur, prices not so high as to provoke critical examination, and
with not too many genuine examples accessible for comparison, the forger
is in velvet.

The two main methods of making forgeries, manufacture and
misrepresentation, are in practice often combined; but it is convenient
to discuss them separately. The simplest type of manufactured forgery is
the straight copy, although this has considerable disadvantages. In
addition to the necessity of choosing the right materials, imitating the
right technique, and giving a proper appearance of age, the risks of
confrontation with the original are great in these days of systematic
combing of collections, aided by swift and easy travel, by photography
and widespread publication. Sometimes, the forger attempts to meet this
risk of confrontation by introducing variations into a design, so that
the forgery may pass as a version of the original. But even so,
comparison of the two is almost inevitable, with the almost equally
inevitable exposure of any defects in the copy. It is this risk that
makes forgers prefer to copy objects that are types rather than those
stamped with the individuality of some particular master. The strictly
controlled design and iconography of much Byzantine painting, and its
standardized technique, encourages modern repetition; and the putting of
one more copy on the market is not in itself likely to arouse suspicion.
Similarly, the fact that eighteenth-century Chinese potters paid homage
to those of earlier dynasties by making most admirable copies of their
work, confuses the situation in favor of the forger. Another advantage
(to the forger) of such objects is that many of them can be reproduced
by casting. With some knowledge of the materials used for the originals
and some skill in giving an appearance of age, such things as Chinese
grave figures, Greek or Near Eastern bronzes, and coins can be produced
in quantity. Sometimes, indeed, variation in the material of the cast is
an aid to deception; as in the case of Renaissance bas-reliefs, when a
cast in wax or stucco may, after some manipulation, be passed off as a
sketch for a marble original.

    [Illustration: ABOVE: A forgery of Vermeer by Van Meegeren,
    purporting to be an early work of the artist, purchased as an
    original, compared with (BELOW) the earliest known painting signed
    by Vermeer.]

    [Illustration: (genuine example)]

More common than straight copies of particular objects, however, are
imitations of the style of some period or master. This avoids the risk
of comparison with a more or less identical original, and helps in
passing off the forgery as an unknown example of the style it imitates.
It was on this basis that Bastianini, Rouchomovski, and Dossena worked,
as did the German painter Roerich in his imitations of Cranach and other
early German masters. Usually such imitations of a style do not embody a
new conception or an original idea; for the most part they consist of
borrowings from original works, pieced together to make a more or less
consistent whole. Often, these borrowings are secondhand, being taken
from photographs, engravings, or reproductions in books. A specific case
was the use of Weisser’s _Bilderatlas zur Weltgeschichte_ (1882) by
Rouchomovski for the reliefs on the tiara of Saitapharnes. The use of
such models is, however, the Achilles’ heel of the forger. Once their
source is tracked down, detection of the imposture is almost certain.

    [Illustration: A forgery of fourteenth-century Italian wood
    sculpture by Dossena.]

    [Illustration: An X-ray revealed modern nails in the interior.]

That, perhaps, is why forgers have on occasion virtually abandoned the
use of models, either wholly or in part, and produced objects different
from anything that is known, but which could fit into some particular
historical or cultural background. Here, they are exploiting not only
ignorant enthusiasm but the desire among the learned to extend knowledge
of little-known epochs of human history, or to find material that will
justify theories about them. Comparatively crude examples are the
so-called Baphomets, stone figures said to have been worshipped by the
Knights Templar; and the “medieval” pilgrim’s badges made in
nineteenth-century London by William Smith and Charles Eaton, now widely
known as “Billies and Charlies.” The appeal of the unknown was more
skillfully utilized by Rouchomovski and Van Meegeren. In the tiara of
Saitapharnes, existing models had been used, through reproductions, for
the reliefs and inscriptions; but as a whole, the tiara was something of
a kind unknown, yet eagerly sought for, and so was more readily accepted
when it came into the market. Similarly, unknown early works of Vermeer
had long been a matter of speculation among art historians, and in
certain quarters a hypothetical character for them had been built up; so
that when _The Disciples at Emmaus_ appeared and more or less fitted the
bill, it was all the more easy to believe in it.

    [Illustration: A forgery of Egyptian limestone sculpture (RIGHT)
    compared with a genuine example of the type (LEFT). The forgery was
    proved so by analyzing the binding material of the color.]

So far, the forgeries discussed have been substantially new
constructions. This is to be expected when the motives of challenge to
the past or self-vindication are at work; usually, however, the forger
prefers to use a genuine piece, wholly or in part, as a starting point
for his operations. This has none of the disadvantages of a copy; it
avoids some of the difficulties of finding suitable materials; and it
provides a pattern for such things as color, texture, and surface
condition, in any changes or additions that the forger may make.

One possibility is to construct a forgery with the aid of genuine
fragments, or on the basis of a damaged original. Joseph Nollekens, the
eighteenth-century English sculptor, who worked with Thomas Jenkins in
Rome, himself tells of making extensive additions to pieces of Roman
sculpture found as the result of excavation, which in due course went
into famous collections in England. Similarly, Dossena sometimes used
fragments of genuine _quattrocento_ work in his forgeries. This, too,
was the method favored by Ioni for making his early Italian paintings.
One great convenience of such procedures (for the forger) is that if
suspicion is aroused and investigation made, it can always be alleged
that the added work is merely honest restoration. Indeed, the line
between restoration and forgery sometimes becomes blurred. Occasionally
there appears in the art market a graft of a piece of one original onto
another; its sellers would be consumed with indignation were it
suggested that they had handled a forgery.

The exploitation of genuine work, however, often takes much simpler
forms than that described above. The signature of a master may be added
to a school piece, or to anything that bears some superficial
resemblances to his work; sometimes, indeed, the addition is to a work
by the master himself, to convince the doubting and to increase its sale
value. Not infrequently, however, there is present an inconvenient
signature of the real author, which has to be obliterated or manipulated
into something more attractive. A special form of manipulation is to put
on some anonymous portrait a name which more or less fits the dress and
character of the sitter, and so increases its sale value. Shakespeare
and Milton are often so honored; and many mediocre portraits picked up
in England have been adorned with the names of Colonial worthies, and
thus found a ready market in the United States.

All the examples of forgery so far mentioned are of the manufactured
type, however little work may have been expended on them. In this they
differ entirely from the forgeries which depend wholly on
misrepresentation, a genuine article of one kind being passed off as of
another, without any physical change. It is not usual to brand such
things as forgeries, and legally they are not so regarded; but morally,
in that something is made to appear what it is not, they seem to be
truly forgeries.

    [Illustration: ABOVE: A forgery (partly cleaned for examination) of
    a fifteenth-century Florentine portrait, compared with a genuine
    example (BELOW). The forgery is on an old panel, but was finally
    proved false by the presence of titanium white, a twentieth-century
    pigment.]

    [Illustration: (genuine example)]

A simple and widespread means of falsifying in this way is a certificate
of authorship and genuineness. Sometimes, the writers of these are of
the highest competence and probity. These two qualities are not always
combined, however; and the certificate then becomes either intentionally
or innocently misleading. Unfortunately, most certificates are written
for a fee, and there is always temptation for the writer to err on the
side of pleasing his employer; while there is no question that sometimes
certificates have been given deliberately to defraud. Moreover, forged
certificates bearing reputable names are not unknown, a special variety
being the stringing together of words from a genuine letter, with all
qualifying or negative phrases omitted. There is, however, a more
insidious method of giving a certificate, that of publication of an
object in a reliable journal. Editors are generally careful enough; but
they are defenseless in the face of a plausible case put forward by a
name of some reputation, especially when the passage relating to the
object is included in a more general context. This kind of certification
is particularly difficult to cope with, since such articles will
continue to be cited in later publications, perhaps mainly to controvert
them but nevertheless renewing their availability for dishonest
purposes.

Construction of false pedigrees is another means of misrepresentation,
much used in the case of copies or versions. Sometimes, a pedigree is
completely false, naming imaginary former owners whose existence cannot
be proved but equally cannot be disproved. Sometimes, such history as
the object may have is grafted onto that of another and accepted
version, so that the two may become confused. A special case of this is
the planting out of objects in houses whose owners are ready, for a
consideration, to describe them as having descended in the family, or
even as having been bought from the maker by an ancestor.

The skill, ingenuity, and knowledge of the forger and of those who
exploit his work, are opposed to the skill, ingenuity, and knowledge of
the collector and the learned world. The unaided human eye, if it has a
trained and well-informed mind behind it, can go a long way in detecting
forgeries. It is surprising how forgetful, careless, or ignorant a
forger can be. He may employ materials whose inconsistency with the
period to which his work claims to belong can be seen even by the
unaided eye. More common is the introduction of such things as types and
details of costume, or the use of coats of arms, that are later than the
alleged date of the work. All such evidence, however, needs scrutiny,
since it may simply be a case of later additions to a genuine object.
More useful, therefore, may be tracking down the source of a forger’s
borrowings. If, for example, these at first sight seem to come from an
original work, but follow much more closely the variations from that
original in a later copy or engraving, the conclusion is obvious. Again,
investigation of pedigrees, checking of literary references, searching
through exhibition records, may all reveal suspicious or occasionally
damning evidence of falsified history.

    [Illustration: ABOVE: A forgery of a portrait by Cranach, and
    (BELOW) a genuine example. A style forgery, skillful, but coarser
    than an original.]

    [Illustration: (genuine example)]

To tests based on observation and historical verification, we must add
those mainly dependent on feeling. For the sensitive and trained
observer, a number of indefinable characteristics will “add up” to a
definite conviction of genuine or false. Qualities of surface and
handling, subtleties in color and in the definition of form, the degree
of unity in conception and treatment, and the emotional character of the
work are among the things which influence such decisions. Thus, a copy,
however exact, may reveal itself as lacking the coherence and the
feeling which inspired the original; and the most skillful imitation of
some older work may be recognized as a creation of its own time. Nobody
can completely divorce himself from the prevailing thoughts, opinions,
assumptions, feelings, and standards of his own period; and inevitably
these will color whatever he produces, whether he be a forger or an
original artist.

Scorn is often poured on judgments of the type described, and the expert
who produces them in a court of law is the delight of the skillful
cross-examiner. True, the only merit of snap opinions based on defective
sensibility and inadequate experience is that they have a fifty-fifty
chance of being right; but with sensibility backed by knowledge, an
almost supra-rational instinct develops as to what is genuine or false.
The so-called impression or hunch is, in such circumstances, more
accurately described as a synthesis of many experiences. It is often
forgotten that such almost instinctive judgments are not confined to art
and archaeology. They play an important part in the sciences (where they
are called hypotheses), in politics, in war, in business, and many other
fields. Their value varies with the men who make them; but this does not
lessen their potential value, and their occasional indispensability. In
the detection of two particular types of forgery they are especially
useful. Imitations of contemporary work can be very baffling, since the
forger works with materials which were or might have been used in
genuine work, does not have to give an appearance of age, and works
against the same general background as does the artist he imitates.
Similarly, a school piece which is misrepresented as the work of an old
master, was produced in a similar physical and emotional environment. In
such cases, a final verdict often has to be based on nothing but
imponderable elements of style, realizable only through feeling based on
knowledge.

    [Illustration: ABOVE: An imitation of the work of John Constable,
    distinguished from an original (BELOW) by its coarse handling and
    mistakes in topography.]

    [Illustration: (genuine example)]

The methods so far described of detecting forgeries may well be as old
as the practice of forgery itself. Certainly, they form the basis of all
investigations of which we have records, as well as of those made today.
Their efficiency, however, has been immensely increased by the
development of scientific methods of investigation. The first great step
forward came with the use of photography, which permitted comparison of
suspicious objects with genuine examples in a way hitherto impossible.
Next came the application of various scientific techniques to the
analysis of the physical constitution of an object. So spectacular have
been the results in some cases as to create a blind faith in such
methods of investigation, almost as though a piece of scientific
apparatus were an oracle which when consulted would answer “Yes” or “No”
to the question of whether an object is genuine. The limits of
scientific investigation are, however, clearly marked. This method is
solely concerned with the physical make-up of an object, and is
completely indifferent as to who made it, when and where it was made,
and why it was made. All that it does is to make possible the discovery
of physical facts bearing upon these matters, which have to be observed
and interpreted by human minds and used as the basis for human
judgments.

    [Illustration: ABOVE: A forgery of a painting by Utrillo adapted
    from a genuine example, compared with another genuine picture
    (BELOW). Note the clumsy handling of paint and drawing in the
    forgery.]

    [Illustration: (genuine example)]

The scientific procedures with which we are concerned here fall into two
main groups. Of these, one includes various techniques for extending the
range of human vision. The simplest is examination by microscope, which
enables characteristics of a surface to be seen that would otherwise be
invisible, so that, for example, painted cracks or cracks artificially
induced can be distinguished from crackle due to age. With the
microscope, too, evidence of removals and additions can be obtained,
such as the manipulation of signatures and inscriptions, or the presence
of repaint or artificial patina; while the structure of pigments, stone,
etc., can be ascertained, as a step toward their identification. More
elaborate is examination under various rays of the spectrum, to which
the human eye is not sensitive but whose results can be recorded. The
best known of these is X-ray, which penetrates certain substances but is
held up in different degrees by others, especially metals, so that a
photographic film behind an object will record a map of such substances
in an object, thus revealing much that is below the surface. On the
other hand, ultra-violet rays falling on a surface cause fluorescence,
which varies according to substance and texture, so that additions to
the surface may be revealed. Infra-red rays, in contrast, penetrate the
surface, and are reflected back from the layers beneath, so that a
photograph taken by infra-red light may reveal something concealed from
the eye, which X-ray may not pick up.

The second group of investigatory methods includes various means of
analyzing the materials present in an object. The most familiar is
chemical analysis; but this is being supplemented and to some extent
displaced by spectrographic analysis, with its recent extension in the
use of X-ray diffraction. By these means, it is possible to detect even
minute traces of substances whose presence or absence may be decisive in
settling the date or provenance of a material. Some recent applications
of quantitative analysis have proved helpful in ascertaining the date of
objects. One of these techniques, determination of the extent of
fluorination, was used to prove that the jawbone of the Piltdown skull
was a modern forgery; while another, based on the amount of radio-active
carbon present, which is known to decay at a certain rate, is still in
course of development, but promises to be most useful.

Thus, a formidable group of weapons are available against the forger. To
be effective, however, the significance of the facts they bring to light
must be understood. Decisive proof that an object is not of the period
or by the hand to which it is attributed comes only through the
discovery of facts which are not only inconsistent with the attribution
but cannot be explained except by assuming that the attribution is
wrong. For instance, the body of a work may contain a substance unknown
at its ostensible date. Modern nails inside a piece of wood sculpture
said to be of the fourteenth century; cobalt, unknown as a pigment until
the early nineteenth century, in a painting attributed to Velázquez; and
titanium white, a twentieth-century invention, in a portrait labelled
fifteenth-century Florentine—these are all good evidence that the object
is not what it is held out to be.

Moreover, the facts discovered always have to be controlled by reference
to established standards. Structure revealed by microscopic examination
must be compared with that of known substances; chemical and
spectrographic analysis has to be checked by reference to a codified
series of earlier tests; crackle on a surface can only be labelled as
false if the nature of genuine crackle is known; and the reading of
whatever is discovered by X-ray, ultra-violet, or infra-red rays calls
for comparison with verified results of previous examinations. The facts
yielded by one method of investigation may by themselves not be
sufficient evidence of forgery; if, however, they can be joined with the
results of other methods, all pointing in the same direction, a strong
case can be built up. As in a court of law, this, rather than production
of a single dramatic and decisive piece of evidence, is what usually
happens.

It might be thought that the combination of expert and scientist would
leave the forger with his occupation gone. On the contrary, he continues
to flourish. In the face of the expert, he discards the clumsy copy and
the inept certificate, utilizing the improved methods of photography and
reproduction and the increasing flood of learned works, to help save him
from anachronisms and inherent contradictions in his work. The scientist
he meets either by concentrating in fields where scientific methods of
inquiry are relatively helpless, or by himself going to school with the
scientist. The results of recent scientific work have put at his
disposal much knowledge of what to do, what to avoid, and how to baffle
certain types of investigation. Moreover, he has even taken over certain
procedures worked out by scientists, such as those for hastening the
effect of time, and has applied them to his own problems; cases are
known of forgeries having been submitted, through innocent hands, for
scientific investigation, to find out whether they will survive the
ordeal, and if not, what are the mistakes to be avoided in the future.

                            * * * * * * * *

One question is often asked in connection with forgeries: Why should a
once-admired object be disregarded or condemned on being proved a
forgery, seeing that it is still the same object? One reason is human
snobbery; another, and more important, is that when an object is proved
to be a forgery, it is to us no longer the same object that it was.
After the discovery, human knowledge about the positive and negative
qualities of the object has increased, and a new judgment has to be made
upon it. Exactly the same thing happens with a genuine work. As
familiarity with it grows, it becomes another thing to the spectator’s
eyes and mind, and so it may rise or fall in his esteem. Conceivably,
the characteristics which proclaim something to be a forgery might, when
discovered, cause it to be more highly regarded; but that kind of
forgery is not yet known, though it may perhaps exist.


    [Illustration: _W. G. CONSTABLE_]

William George Constable was born in Derby, England, in 1887 and
educated at Cambridge University and the Slade School of the University
of London. He was formerly Assistant Director of the National Gallery,
London; Director of the Courtauld Institute (University of London); and
Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University. Since 1938, he has
been Curator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The author of numerous books and magazine articles, Mr. Constable has
devoted himself particularly to the study of English and Italian
paintings and drawings. This is reflected in his more recent
publications: _Venetian Painting_ (1950); a monograph on the English
artist Richard Wilson (1953); and _The Painter’s Workshop_ (1954).

    [Illustration: BACK COVER: A forgery of a Greek bronze statuette.]




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.