Real or Fake #16
Wednesday, 1 January 2025. Newsletter 16.
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has formed a key part of an artist’s education since the Renaissance and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
This month’s case concerns an artist whose work has already once graced this section of the newsletter. The victim of the forgery, Luca Cambiaso, a Genoese artist of the 16th century, was widely copied in his own lifetime and original compositions can often been found in secondary versions produced by workshop assistants and followers. Indeed, this drawing is known in at least three versions, two of which are deemed to be autograph. One of these drawings is indeed by Cambiaso; the other was produced by a ‘follower’ operating some 400 years later, but which is which?
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The original, of course, is the lower image.
Lower image: Luca Cambiaso (1527–1585), The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin OH
Cambiaso’s manner of simplifying the human form through a series of planes and blocks rendered his drawings ripe for imitation, but also susceptible to fraudulence. Here, Eric Hebborn, discussed in November 2023, directly copies from one of Cambiaso’s original compositions. Somewhat ironically, Hebborn’s version is a copied from a drawing at the Galleria Estense in Modena (inv. 688), which is now believed to be a workshop replica and not an original. Cambiaso’s original drawing, reproduced here, is at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin OH, while another autograph version is at the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa (inv. 4628).
In a posthumous publication, The Art Forger’s Handbook, Hebborn describes exactly how he made and aged his ‘Cambiaso’ drawing:
‘Although this drawing was not made on old paper, the ageing given to it has been particularly successful, and the sheet speaks of a long and arduous life. The drawing has been treated to a dramatic and exclusive process reserved only for successful work on modern paper - a kettle of boiling water has been poured over it.’
‘If you have been over-energetic in your stressing of an edge, you may have caused quite long tears, and these should be neatly mended. The repair will suggest to the viewer that some former owner held the drawing in sufficient esteem to take the trouble to mend it. The operation is very simple. One merely has to unite the torn edges and paste a narrow strip of fine Japanese rice-paper to hold them together at the back. I used this method when drawing The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria after Luca Cambiaso (1527-85).’
For further reading, see E. Hebborn, The Art Forger's Handbook, London, Overlook Press, 1997, p. 54; pl. 22.
