Alleged Cranach fake - verdict soon?
June 20 2016
Picture: TAN
The Art Newspaper carries an interview with the man at the centre of a series of new discoveries, some alleged to be fake, including a Cranach the Elder of Venus (detail above). We don't learn a great deal new from this latest piece on Giulano Ruffini, except that apparently a decision by the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France at the Musée du Louvre, who were tasked by a French judge with investigating the authenticity of the Cranach, is due 'soon'.
Should it be proved to be a fake, then I suspect we will hear a lot of this line of defence:
Ruffini said that he was also lucky enough to find paintings that could have been done by Jan or Pieter Brueghel, Van Dyck, Correggio, Bronzino, Parmigianino, Solario, Van Bassen, Grimmer, Coorte and others. They were all put on sale. Indeed, several were then authenticated as genuine works by these artists and some were even exhibited in museums around the world. But Ruffini insists he never presented a single painting as the real thing. “I am a collector, not an expert,” he says.
But then of course, the Louvre might not say it's a fake.
