The Italian sculptor-falsifier Alceo Dossena, whose name is associated with the most notorious scandal in the world of art of the first half of the twentieth century, was a genius of his work.
One May day in 1927, a grief-stricken elderly man sat in a small, shabby room, and beside him on the bed lay a woman who had just died. They were Alceo Dossena and his much-loved wife Maria. He had struggled in vain for her frail life - the unfortunate one had been ill for a long time, and in the end death had proved stronger. And now the inconsolable husband had not even money to bury her. Those to whom he had appealed for help had ruthlessly refused him.
Evening came, then night. Alceo continued to sit in the darkness next to the body of his beloved. The room was dark and he could no longer see her, but he remained close to her, not even thinking of going to bed. One can only guess what he experienced during those long hours in total darkness, what a revolution was taking place in his soul. But in the morning, when the sky outside the window began to lighten again, the man who had come into the room the day before was no longer the same. The uncomplaining and submissive executor of another man's will had died with his wife, and a man was born, determined to act, ready for revenge. It was a night he would not forget for the rest of his life.
Dossena went into debt, but still managed to bury his wife. And soon after, the biggest scandal of the time erupted in Europe.
Alceo Dossena did not have a real talent as an artist, the gift that allows a person to create new works of art, unlike others, bearing a piece of his soul. He had some of his own works, but they were not successful - they all seemed to lack something. But in the field of forgeries Dossena turned out to be a real genius, a virtuoso, unrivaled. He had some subtle innate flair, helping him to understand how the ancient sculptors thought, and replicate their manner of creating statues. Moreover, he was inventive enough to make original sculptures in this manner, not copying known works of art, but only similar to them. At the same time, his technique of creating sculptures from stone was flawless, and once he started making fake works, it turned out that he perfectly managed to give them an ancient look.
Alceo's workshop, to which he never let anyone in, was more like a medieval alchemist's laboratory than a creative studio. Everything in it was filled with flasks, retorts, spirits of all sizes and shapes, in which bubbled various chemicals that allow you to artificially age marble, ceramics, wood and other materials, to give them that patina of antiquity, which distinguishes ancient things from modern. Having finished the next statue, Dossena beat off her some part, and then treated its entire surface with different chemicals, making it indistinguishable from sculptures created hundreds of years ago. In this case, he reached such heights that even the most experienced antique dealers and connoisseurs of art did not have any doubts about the authenticity of his sculptures. And the more this forger of the highest class worked on "ancient" sculptures, the stronger developed this particular talent.
The statues of Athena, allegedly belonging to the Archaic era, magnificent sculptures, the authorship of which he attributed to Italian masters of the XV century, Gothic statues in the spirit of Giovanni Pisano, marble sarcophagi, close in manner of execution to the works of Mino da Fiesole or Desiderio da Settignano, and even reliefs and statuettes that looked as if they had been in the ground for thousands of years, since the time of the ancient Etruscans. In short, for Fasoli and Palesi, who were not particularly scrupulous, Alceo was a real find. They supplied his works with false certificates and opinions of authoritative experts and traded them for huge profits.
Soon Dossena's work, which had passed through the hands of his two "employers", could be found throughout Europe and America in museums and private collections of antiques. For example, in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was a statue of Cora, which was believed to be the work of an unknown Greek master of the VI century BC, in St. Louis Art Museum in Missouri - "Etruscan" Diana, in Cleveland - "archaic" Athena, and in Vienna - gable group from Velia, "reconstructed" by the famous expert on ancient art Franz Studnicka. In private collections around the world kept dozens of statues and sculptural portraits, whose owners were sure that these are the works of Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, Mino da Fiesole, Bernardo Rossellino and other masters of Renaissance plastics. Not only that - Alceo Dossena "turned" into a sculptor Italian painter of the XIV century Simone Martini! Taking as a basis the painting of this painter "Annunciation", Dossena made the same as depicted on it, wooden Madonna and angel, and Fasoli sold this sculptural group under the guise of the work of Martini. Art historians have long since written articles about "a new fact in the biography of the great artist".
All these works by Alceo brought the greedy Fasoli and Palesi huge sums of money. Alceo Dossena began to expose antique dealers left and right, giving interviews about his work for them to various publications. He himself had nothing to fear - after all, he personally never passed off his sculptures for the works of other authors. These were Fasole and Palesi, so from the point of view of the law falsifiers were they. Alceo told journalists about this.
It was the biggest sensation of 1927 and was picked up by all European newspapers and magazines. In each of them now constantly flashed photos of an elderly man with deep wrinkles and sad eyes - the face of the main figure in this case Alceo Dossena, who art critics and reporters dubbed "the genius of fakes. And next to these pictures were photos of his fakes, looking at which the largest collectors and employees of a number of museums were horrified. It turned out that, giving huge sums for allegedly antique or medieval works of art, they let the money go to waste! Not only that, but now they also became the objects of scathing jokes, anecdotes and caricatures, which were also published in almost every publication.
Many collectors simply refused to believe in such a grandiose deception. One of them, the American antique dealer Jacob Hirsch, who bought from Alfredo Fasoli for a very large sum of money "ancient" statue of Athena with a broken arm, specially came to Rome from New York to personally talk to Dossena. The sculptor provided him with irrefutable proof that Athena was a fake - he brought the antique dealer in his workshop and demonstrated all this time stored there was a beaten hand of the goddess. Hirsch, hitherto confident that he could not have been misled, was forced to admit that it had happened after all, and returned home in utter dejection.
For others who doubted what Dossena was telling, a movie was made in his workshop about how he created the forgeries. The author of the movie, Hans Kürlich, captured on camera the sculptor sculpting his last and only legal fake: Alceo carved another ancient goddess out of stone in front of the lens and artificially aged the surface of the stone with various chemicals.
sculptor Alceo Dossena became very popular: he was interviewed, films were made about him, and articles were devoted to his works in thick art magazines. In 1929, the Coroni Gallery in Naples organized an exhibition of his forgeries, and a year later the same exhibitions were held in Berlin, Munich and Cologne. The public admired him and called him great and brilliant, but at the same time, true connoisseurs of art noted that Dossena still did not have a real talent and was not a creator, but only an imitator.
When most of his forgeries were gathered in one room, it became obvious that there was a certain monotony in the techniques of their author - all of them were something elusive similar to each other. Previously, there was no one to notice it: Fazoli and Palesi were very prudent and never sold in one hand more than one work Alceo, now any expert in sculpture with certainty could say that all these statues created by one person. In addition, the nature of their damage also gave away the forger: it was done too carefully and deliberately, so that the sculpture as a whole remains beautiful and not damaged very much. Genuine ancient sculptures are often found without arms, without a nose or chin, or even without a head - time and chance do not sort out what is important and what is not important for a work of art. Dossena, however, valued his creations, and besides, too badly damaged statue would fall in value, so he most often beat off the finished work only some minor details.
In short, the difference between genuine ancient sculptures and Dossena's fakes was now obvious, and their owners could only wonder that they had not suspected anything earlier.
The ingenious forger lived a few more years, he died in 1936. Italian newspapers posted a message on their pages that the sculptor Alceo Dossena died in his sixtieth year, but many readers this name no longer said anything. Dossena's high-profile scandal had by then been forgotten.
Could this man still become a true master of sculpture, if he did not agree to create fakes? Even if he didn't have much talent, the similarity of his fakes suggests that he still had his own style. Perhaps if he had continued to develop his abilities, if he had put all his creative energy into it, he would have found his way in art and achieved fame as a sculptor with his own special way of looking at the world. In addition, he could well have been a mentor to aspiring sculptors, and if among his pupils there was someone truly talented, this too would have glorified Dossena as the teacher through whom the pupil's talent developed. Finally, Alceo could legally create copies of the masterpieces of the great masters, for those who would like to have such works of art in their collection to admire, but who cannot afford the originals.
