Tommaso Toscani wasn’t always corrupted by art. Somehow he just let it happen.
As the senior curator for many years at the Museo dell'Arte Forgiata (The Museum of Forged Art), his job was to identify, collect and exhibit counterfeit paintings and sculptures — all Forgeries, Frauds and Fakes — and exhibit them in this unique museum. Most of the collection’s pieces were very obviously copies. Take for example the Balzac by Rodin, which incredulously was signed and dated on the base by the forger. Or consider Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, which here looks more like Girl with a Golf Ball in Her Ear.
Conversely, some forgeries in the Museo are nearly perfect copies of the originals. A fake Botticelli in the collection had previously been sold at auction for $84 million to an oligarch in Kazakhstan for the benefit of a politician in Uzbekistan. Up until the day he faced the firing squad, the oligarch maintained that the painting was the original Botticelli.
The stated mission of the Museo dell'Arte Forgiata was to openly and unabashedly exhibit forged art, a concept that was so outlandish in its time that it subjected the museum, and Tommaso, to a wellspring of harsh criticism from the legitimate art community.
The art critic Angelo D’Amico wrote in his column in Courrier della Sera, “This museum is but a festering wound upon the landscape of all that is good and pure in humanity’s endeavor to create art. It is this paper’s considered opinion that Mr. Toscani and his so-called Museo dell'Arte Forgiata must be banished, not only from Italy, not only from Europe, but from the Earth for all eternity.”
The editorial board of La Repubblica went even further. “Should Tommaso Toscani ever venture into this paper’s editorial offices, he should be prepared to be tarred, feathered and kicked around like a football.”
La Stampa, on the other hand, actually praised the museum for “its audacity in poking a long overdue finger in the myopic eye of the pretentious art community.”
But to Tommaso the important thing was that he continue to curate fake art. With the encouragement and support of the museum and its benefactors, he traveled the world in search of art forgeries, the likes of which could be bought for a tiny fraction of the price of the original.
Recently he arranged the purchase of the forged painting “Due Cavalli e il Maniscalco” (“Two Horses and the Horseshoer”), by the Sicilian artist Carloggio Lucci. It had become the subject of one of the art world’s more notorious scandals when the Prado Museum featured it in its exhibition 18th Century Sicilian Masterpieces. An amateur art sleuth named Ignazio Villarosa supplied proof “beyond a doubt” that the painting was a fake. So it was immediately removed, leaving an embarrassingly naked space on the most prominent wall of the gallery. Newspapers were quick to report on the painting’s provenance, which showed that the previous owner had paid millions before donating it to the Prado. The Spanish government had to delicately finesse the international fallout from having hosted dignitaries from all over Europe at the exhibition’s gala opening.
The Prado eventually replaced that empty space with a lesser known work by Lucci that had been discovered only a year earlier — “La Moglie del Mugnaio” (“The Miller’s Wife”). But of course this was done only after exhausting all avenues of authentication, including consulting Ignazio Villarosa for his expertise.
For reasons that would become clear later, Tommaso knew that the painting was not a forgery. He was all too happy to keep that information to himself, to hide it from the vultures in the art world and to buy the artwork for the low cost of shipping it out of Madrid quickly and quietly under the cover of night.
Though it was beyond the budget of the Museo dell'Arte Forgiata, Tommaso commissioned an X-ray analyzer to reveal what was under the layers of paint. And this is what proved the authenticity of the painting. For behind “Due Cavalli…”, there was the artist’s first attempt at “La Moglie…”. Lucci had evidently abandoned La Moglie in frustration and painted Due Cavalli over it. A professional forger could never have anticipated this, as the existence of La Moglie had been unknown until recently.
Tommaso now had the proof he needed. In grand style, he announced to the critics, collectors and museums of the world that he had outsmarted the experts, and that The Museo dell'Arte Forgiata was the rightful and proud owner of the very real and very valuable Carloggio Lucci painting. And perhaps to add insult to injury, he added that it had been purchased for what amounted to pocket change.
Poor Tommaso… he was unaware of the serious problem that was looming like a storm cloud, for by having purchased the painting under a false pretext, he was subject to be prosecuted under Madrid’s penal code regarding felony art fraud. It was that same law that sent the fraudster Andreas LaMarca to prison for fifteen years for his part in the Velázquez affair.
One day soon after, the Policía Nacional arrived from Madrid with a warrant…
“…for the arrest and detention of Tommaso Toscani, curator of the Museo dell'Arte Forgiata, for the crimes of :
1. theft and fraud against the Prado Museum of Madrid, as it is alleged that the accused impersonated an art expert, using the alias Ignazio Villarosa, to make false claims to the Prado that its property, “Due Cavalli e il Maniscalco”, was in fact a forgery, for the purpose of…
2. persuading the Prado Museum to transfer ownership to the accused of said painting at an artificially deflated price.”
It was later revealed that the X-ray technician had alerted his brother-in-law at the Prado to the painting’s hidden layer.
Never had he expected to be led out of the Museo in handcuffs and shackles, but now Tommaso Toscani knew well that he would live with the effects of his actions for the rest of his days, fifteen years of which would be spent behind bars. The Museo dell'Arte Forgiata closed its doors for good, and Tommaso was forced to admit to himself that he had come to occupy the same low moral ground as the art he once exhibited in the Museo — for in his position as curator, he too had become a forgery, a fraud and a fake.