Portuguese Judiciary Police (2); Agence France-Presse (2)

At top left, the Chagall wedding scene fake, with a real Chagall painting below it. At top right, a fake reclining nude by Botero; at bottom right, a real Botero

What do experts look when deciphering fraudulent works from the true masterpieces? I’m currently reading a new non-fiction book about one of the greatest (and most recent) art frauds out of England. Provenance follows villain John Drewe and his accomplices as they exploit the archives of the British art world to illegally legitimize hundreds of forged (by their hands) artworks. It’s a page turner, and would make a wonderful holiday gift for any art lover.

Then, tonight, I notice a new headline in the art world– more fakes out of Portugal! Digging into this Mutual Art Article it appears to be a very strange case in the art forgery world. Typically, a forger specializes in one area of artwork: impressionism, cubism, etc. But the new “collection” is a jumble, an odd variety of styles. Police seized more than 130 paintings that were claimed to have been painted by Modigliani, Matisse and Monet among other noted artists. Other 20th-century masters in the hoard include Chagall and Kandinsky. Even a Leonardo da Vinci is among the fakes… now that’s confidence in your forgery abilities! A Norwegian couple is suspected of being involved with the forgery, discovered in a raid in Cascais, Portugal (near Lisbon).

The director of the Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries said, “It might be the work of more than one forger. I doubt if any would have fooled a specialist. They are potpourries of familiar elements in an artist’s work, not attempts to create an original, unknown conception… much more difficult.”

Also in the article,  John Myatt, a British artist who was sentenced to a year in prison in 1999 as a forger of Monet, Matisse and Giacometti, described a Portuguese Modigliani as “quite convincing”—”I’d have gone for that,” he said. He also thought the Botero looked “quite credible.” But he dismissed a Chagall as missing “the essence” of the artist—”he wasn’t that untidy,” he said—and a Leonardo as a “pastiche of an 18th century painting”. He observed that it was foolhardy to forge Leonardo: “There has been an accepted body of his work with provenance and exhibition history over 400 years. To come along with a new Leonardo is just stupid… A new Kandinsky at least makes some sense.”

Artworks by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other elite artists were seized this week in a crackdown on assets hidden by the founder of the now-collapsed dairy company Parmalat. There are an estimated 19 masterpieces hidden away in attics and basements, with a value totaling nearly $150 million. It seems Calisto Tanzi hid the masterpieces in attics and basements in an attempt to conceal them from his bankruptcy. Among the found works is a ballerina portrait by Degas, two Van Goghs, a Cezanne, and a Picasso.

Bankruptcy fraud aside, what a shame to hide away these artworks! The loot was discovered through a wire-tapping operation. Officials believe that at least one the paintings was about to be sold. The negotiation of that sale overheard, and a subsequent raid of three apartments uncovered the tip of this art-cache iceberg.

Calisto Tanzi was convicted by a Milan court, last year, of rigging the market and is now on trial for alleged fraudulent bankruptcy. For years, it has been rumored that he has a stashed treasure trove of fine artworks, a rumor that Tanzi repeatedly denied.

From the AP: “Parmalat, the dairy conglomerate known for its long shelf-life milk grew from a small dairy distributor in Parma, into a diversified, multinational food company by 1990, but collapsed in 2003 under euro14 billion in debt — eight times what it had previously acknowledged — in what remains Europe’s largest corporate bankruptcy. Many small investors who lost their life savings were among some 40,000 defrauded bondholders.”