I was looking for the source of the following picture (see below), to find out more about it. The picture seems, to the casual observer, to be an early modern engraving, perhaps from Germany or the Low Countries. It shows a man who looks out of the confines of his world (the edge of the firmament), to look beyond, a nice illustration of the work of the metaphysician, theologian or scientist. However, a bit of poking around on the internet reveals that the engraving is probably a forgery – i.e., a late 19th century wood engraving that is deliberately made to resemble an early modern drawing. It appears first in Camille Flammarion’s L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire. The engraving was probably made on commission or by Flammarion himself to accompany the following text “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch…” This text appears in the first edition of L’atmosphère but the engraving only appeared in the second edition.
Now that I look at it again, I wonder how I could ever have believed this to be an authentic early modern illustration. The borders, for instance, do not look authentic. The anatomy and pose of the man are unusual for 16th century iconography. It seems that artistic forgeries, when they are believed to be genuine, look genuine. Once we know, however, that they are forgeries, the many inauthentic elements seem pretty obvious: how could past art critics have been fooled?
Han van Meegeren presents a well-known illustration of this phenomenon (see below for one of his most famous pieces). While he carefully prepared and researched his forgeries of early Dutch masters (notably Vermeer), it now seems almost incomprehensible why earlier critics ever believed they were by Vermeer. The importance of background information is crucial when we evaluate an artwork, and it seems that not knowing that something is a forgery can make us oblivious to (what later turn out to be) pretty blatant cues that the work is not authentic.
It is in that respect interesting to think about works of which we are not sure whether they are forgeries, but suspect they might be. How does this suspicion color our judgment? To give an example, I play the Renaissance lute and I have recently begun to study an untitled piece (a fantasia-like composition) from the Codice Lautenbuch. Here is an interpretation of the piece by Valéry Sauvage on Youtube.
This collection of dances, fantasias and in tabulations of vocal music is known to us only through a transcription by a 19th century music theoretician, composer and collector named Oscar Chilesotti. The original book seems to have vanished without a trace (under mysterious circumstances), but was in his collection. Chilesotti was very well versed in historical harmony. So it is not impossible that the Codice Lautenbuch, with its spontaneous, inventive melodies, was heavily redacted or indeed completely made up by Chilesotti (i.e., a forgery).
When my former lute teacher told me that this suspicion is sometimes voiced in the lute community, I looked at the piece in a totally different light. Most lutenists do not doubt the authenticity of the volume, but in the absence of the original and precedents of accomplished musicians who tried their hand at writing in an earlier style, they cannot be sure (see here for an animated discussion on someone who allegedly found the original manuscript).
I am not an expert in 16th century harmony, so I cannot analyze it in detail, but I find I sometimes find the piece beautiful (when I believe it is authentic), and sometimes a bit trite (when I suspect it’s a forgery). This strange sort of duck-rabbit perception is how I approach the piece: it is difficult for me to hear it as simultaneously a spontaneous, beautifully written fantasia and a rather shallow imitation of the much superior pseudo-polyphony by an author like da Milano. Perhaps the obvious artistic qualities of this work will only come to light once we have the definite manuscript. Or, if it turns out to be a fake, lutenists will be wondering how they could ever have believed this to be an authentic piece.
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