IT WAS SOBERING to be reminded by the Fake? exhibition at the British Museum this summer' how many art forgeries this century had first been published as authentic in THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE. Undoubtedly the most celebrated was Van Meegeren's Supper at Emmaus, hailed with more rapture than analysis by Abraham Bredius in November 1937 as 'the masterpiece ofJohannes Vermeer of Delft'; still more unfortunate was his observation that the painting was 'just as it left the painter's studio'. This work was only slightly less horrible than the Christ and the adultress, bought by Goering, which was lent to the exhibition: with its slimy facture and cardboard figures, it now resembles nothing so much as a poster for a Hollywood biblical epic. It is a tru- ism that the successful forger caters to the expert's weak- nesses and desires. Thus the less well-known but equally incredible Group porlrail of 'Federico da Montefeltro and his children', bought by the National Gallery in 1924, was ingeniously planted with antiquarian clues to whet the historian's appetite - an heraldic badge stamped in the gesso, an identifiable castle in the background. Sir Charles Holmes and W.G. Constable panted after this false trail with ever-increasing excitement in the 1924 issue (pp. 195- 96). The Group portrait may have the distinction of being the only picture to have been exposed as a forgery in the Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club (by Stella Mary Pearce, Vol.44 [1960], pp.23ff.).

In addition to publishing fakes, this Magazine has an equally long history of exposing or owning up to doubts about authenticity. Much of the documenrtation concern- ing the supposed wax by Leonardo da Vinci, the Berlin Flora, was published in the years 1909-11, including the affidavits of one Albert Diirer Lucas, who claimed to have helped his father, Richard Cockle Lucas, to cast and paint the piece in 1846. Although not exhibited in Fake?, the Flora was included as one of the unresolved puzzles, for which technical evidence has proved contradictory or in- conclusive, at the end of the exhibition (cat. pp.303-07).

One of the theses of the show was that 'by the 1930s, the great age of faking was over'. Certainly the Bastianini relief, the fake Francia and Botticelli, and the Reinhold Vasters goldsmith's work, are vastly more impressive than the daubs of Tom Keating or the Johnny Hawker whisky bottles. But it would be a delusion to suppose that scientific advances and 'growing expertise' are putting the faker out of business. In the case of stone and marble sculpture, for instance, where no reliable dating tests exist, new frauds are still successfully perpetrated, and many old ones are proudly displayed in major museums. An example of the former is the British Museum's fake porphyry head, prob- ably made in Rome c.1970 (Fig.6), which Brian Cook scrupulously exposed in these pages in 1984.

In January 1986 Marion True published in the Maga- zine as an archaic Greek work ofc.590-520 B.C. the kouros in the Getty Museum that has been the subject of contro- versy since its acquisition. This year a second, fragmentary sculpture apparently by the same hand has come to light, said to have been made in Rome less than ten years ago (Figs.9-12). The Museum has acquired the latter work for study purposes, to settle the status of the kouros, and the results of its researches will be fully published. Meanwhile Jeffrey Spier, who brought the new fragment to their attention, discusses it in the more general context of con- noisseurship and scientific evidence on p.623. As he points out, the 'scientific' conclusions drawn about the age of the kouros on the basis of tests for 'de-dolomitisation' of the surface are likely to be proved spurious, and he warns us against preferring scientific evidence to more traditional methods of connoisseurship.

Many will remember the delicious incident of the 'Modigliani' sculpture dredged from the canals of Livorno eight years ago. Scientific tests on certain green stains on the stone were said to establish that the pieces had been underwater for at least fifty years. Within a few weeks the forgers came forward to demonstrate on television how the sculptures had been carved that year from paving stones, with the use of pneumatic drills. The green stains were as fresh as the carving, caused by dragging the stones over grass.

Perhaps it is not too frivolous to make an analogy be- tween reliance on science to determine the authenticity of art works and the misuse of scientific evidence in legal cases. Recent appeals against judgments in the British terrorism cases of the 1970s have called into question the interpretation of scientific data used to back up confessions where other evidence was lacking. But, unlike human de- fendants, art objects without provenance should perhaps be considered guilty until they are proved innocent.

'We need fakes to shield us from too sharp a knowledge ... to cushion the erosion of sustaining myth', concludes David Lowenthal with fashionable ambivalence in his introductory essay to the Fake? catalogue. It would be unfortunate if 'we' were to be left with only a fog of French theory and some piquant examples of human folly after the objects at the British Museum exhibition have been dismounted and returned to their places. As Mark Jones observes more robustly, fakes 'loosen our hold on reality'. Long may museum directors and curators have the knowledge and courage to face up to and expose them, even at the cost of acknowledging earlier mistakes.