FAKE!: FOUR MINIATURES BY THE SPANISH FORGER

The "Spanish Forger" succeeded in deceiving collectors, dealers and connoisseurs for many years, from circa 1890 up until 1930, when Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950; see picture), one of the most influential librarians in American history, unmasked this talented forger. Belle da Costa Greene led the Morgan Library for four decades, first as the private librarian of John Pierpont Morgan and then as the institution's inaugural director after it became a public library in 1924. Her encounter with the forger took place when the Pierpont Morgan Library received an offer to purchase a painting that was then believed to be an authentic 15th-century Spanish painting by Jorge Inglés depicting the Betrothal of Saint Ursula, but which she recognized as a forgery. The nickname "Spanish Forger" therefore comes from this erroneous nationality assigned to his painting. The librarian recognized the forger's hand in an authentic antiphonary with added miniatures by the forger that she acquired for the Pierpont Morgan Library several years before, in 1909, and she then started cataloguing works by the so-called Spanish Forger.

In the mid-20th century, about 50 works (panel paintings and miniatures) by the Spanish Forger were recognized, and this still anonymous forger soon became one of the most talented, fascinating and prolific creators of pseudo-medieval imagery of all time. He has fascinated scholars so much that a monographic exhibition was held at the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1978; the exhibition catalogue published for this occasion lists about 60 panel paintings and about 150 miniatures. Nowadays, more than 100 paintings and almost 300 miniatures are attributed to this unmatched forger. Before his identity as a forger was revealed, many of his paintings and miniatures have joined the collections of public institutions and some are even acquired by museums nowadays: in 2009, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London bought a collection of five miniatures by the Spanish Forger "for what it tells us about late 19th-century perceptions of medieval art".

However, the artist has left us with clues and hints that allow us to uncover the deception. Stylistically, the sweet or "doll‑like" faces of his figures (especially visible in the figure of the Virgin in our miniature of The Flight Into Egypt) and a certain theatrical staging of bodies (gestures and postures that feel posed rather than lived) are very visibly traces of modernity. Moreover, the Spanish Forger's works feature motifs that sit awkwardly with genuine medieval art: conspicuously secular court scenes inserted onto leaves taken from religious manuscripts, or female figures rendered with low necklines and a modernized sensuality that jars against authentic devotional conventions. In some works, iconographic details are troubling or mistaken (objects assigned to the wrong figures, gestures borrowed from sacred art but used in odd contexts, or symbolic elements sprinkled in simply because they "look medieval" to the eye of an avid buyer looking for medieval art). In our miniature of The Deposition, you can see, behind Saint John, a man holding a perfume jar. This perfume jar actually belongs to Mary Magdalene! In our miniature depicting The Ascent to Calvary, the woman (wearing dark orange) behind Christ and next to the Virgin Mary is, very strangely, making the gesture of Christ pantocrator.