The United States similarly requires all cash transactions of $10,000 or more to be reported. Still, laundering involving art tends to be handled case by case. Federal prosecutors, who usually discover art-related laundering through suspicious banking activity or illegal transport across borders, have worked closely with other countries and aggressively used their powers under civil law to confiscate art that they can establish is linked to a crime, even in the absence of a criminal conviction.
Art scammers have one objective and that is to separate the artist from their art or from their money, or both. When approached by a stranger on the Internet, always be aware of and skeptical of phony emails and solicitations. The old adage that says “when it sounds too good to be true…” still stands true today. All artists should be aware of and comfortable with whom they are dealing with when they are selling their art on the Internet.
Stylistic analysis is subjective: it rests on the astute eye of the art historian. Each artist has a style, a flair, a verve unique to himself, and this can be recognized. His style will undergo change throughout his career, and this, too, can be stylistically analyzed and documented from his known works. When an unknown work purporting to be by a certain artist is discovered, the art historian attempts to fit it into the overall body of works by this artist. The subject matter, the brushwork, the choice of colours, and the type of composition are all consistent elements in a given artist’s production. Any variation immediately arouses suspicion. When the idiosyncrasies of an artist’s brushwork are studied, a fraud can sometimes be detected in much the same way a handwriting forgery is proven. In ancient works, particularly in antiquities, the scholar must examine the iconography of a piece. Forgers rarely have the scholarly background to combine iconographic elements correctly, and their errors often betray them.
The scandal kicked off with the high drama of French authorities seizing Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder—owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein—from the Caumont Centre d’Art in Aix, and spread through the art world like wildfire, taking Orazio Gentileschi’s David with the Head of Goliath, and Velázquez’s Portrait of Cardinal Borgia with it, calling the authenticity of the Old Master works into question.
Art scammers have one objective and that is to separate the artist from their art or from their money, or both. When approached by a stranger on the Internet, always be aware of and skeptical of phony emails and solicitations. The old adage that says “when it sounds too good to be true…” still stands true today. All artists should be aware of and comfortable with whom they are dealing with when they are selling their art on the Internet.
Claire Roth is an artist that has been involved in an art work scandal and has found herself blackballed in the artistic world. She is forced into reproducing famous paintings to make a living.This career choice gives her an opportunity to salvage her reputation when she is offered the chance to copy a stolen Degas painting. The story also intertwines the story of the founding of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the place ...more
