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.

Technique and materials

The Spanish Forger's works were painted on

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins o ...

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.

Nationality

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. 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. 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.

Identification

The work of the Spanish Forger was first identified by

Belle da Costa Greene Belle da Costa Greene (November 26, 1879 – May 10, 1950) was an American librarian best known for managing and developing the personal library of J. P. Morgan. After Morgan's death in 1913, Greene continued as librarian for his son, Jack ...

who worked at the Pierpont Morgan Library. She was also the one who dubbed the artist the 'Spanish Forger'. 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. 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. 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. 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. Use of the pigments

ultramarine blue Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. The name comes from the Latin ''ultramarinus'', literally 'beyond the sea', because the pigment was imported into Europe from mines in Afg ...

(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.

Exhibitions and collections

The Spanish Forger’s works were the subject of an exhibition at the

Morgan Library The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...

in New York City in 1978, for which an extensive catalog was published. His works are now themselves collected as forgeries, selling for several thousand dollars each. 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. In January 2009, it was announced that the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

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. Another of the artist's paintings appeared on an episode of the ''

Antiques Roadshow ''Antiques Roadshow'' is a British television programme broadcast by the BBC in which antiques appraisers travel to various regions of the United Kingdom (and occasionally in other countries) to appraise antiques brought in by local people ( ...

'' in 2014, being valued at around $4,000.

References

External links

UCLA copy.Two images
on Maggs Bros Ltd website, with high resolution magnification feature
Copy
at Dartmouth College
Image with high resolution magnification feature
{{Authority control Art forgers Manuscript illuminators Anonymous artists