Screening, authenticity, value of artworks

Judgments, not opinions

Before the verification. Some collections arrive at verification after years of acquisitions, certifications considered reliable, publications, inheritances, coherent insurance valuations. The validation system appears complete. As long as it remains in the private sphere, this body of evidence is sufficient to sustain the perceived value of the works. The need arises when decisions must be grounded on that heritage, or when there is simply the desire to know what one possesses. In these cases what is in question is not the aesthetic quality or historical interest of the works, but the very possibility of understanding their real value. It is at this stage that inconsistencies emerge: vague provenances, works published but untraceable in the cited books, attributions sustained by unverifiable documents, authoritative-sounding appraisals without actual authority. The problem does not concern a single work: it concerns the possibility of considering the collection a real and usable heritage. An unverified collection can be possessed, but cannot be negotiated without risk of dispute. As long as no one verifies, everything appears coherent.

The verification. A conclusive judgment requires a rare combination of competences. In these cases an opinion is not what is needed. What is needed is someone capable of reaching a conclusion that holds before third parties. Romano Ravasio began as a restorer of ancient works for the Italian Soprintendenza and for museums, then specialised in the restoration of contemporary art, among the very first in Italy to do so, with degree theses dedicated to his work, at the time experimental. From this foundation develops a capacity for reading works that traverses the ancient and the contemporary, one that no theoretical training produces. During the 1994 Piedmont flood he restored paintings severely damaged by mud using lipolytic enzymes for the extraction of oils and fats: the first intervention of this type on works of art. With a mobile laboratory he travelled Europe for years: galleries, institutions, major private collections. He has been called by tribunals in the most complex cases: in Venice in 2004 he contributed to the identification of more than four thousand works seized from an art teleshopping television channel, all found to be forgeries, tracing back to the production centres supplying the world market with forgeries of the major twentieth-century artists. In a case concerning a Tintoretto conserved in a Swiss vault, the work was published in the reference catalogue of the foremost scholar of the artist. Technical analysis revealed characteristics incompatible with autography. On consulting the original edition in a library, the cited page did not exist: it had been inserted into a reprint produced specifically to sustain the attribution. It was not only the painting that was false; the entire system of evidence constructed around it was false. In several verifications conducted on major private collections in the Gulf, works attributed to Picasso, Botero, Van Gogh and other major artists were found to lack authenticity. Collections with a declared value of tens of millions consisted primarily of forgeries. The context is always the same: purchases made years earlier, during a phase in which Gulf markets were growing rapidly and financial availability had replaced all technical control. Among recurring cases: works attributed to Modigliani originating from the Parisot case, an authentication matter that gave rise to international disputes; some of these acquisitions dated from the years preceding the disputes, others had been made even subsequently. In other cases, concerning bronze sculptures by Degas, dimensional and material analysis revealed castings made from other castings rather than from the original model: the natural shrinkage of the metal rendered the works smaller and technically incompatible with authentic examples. Romano Ravasio does not search for the forgery: he establishes what is real. Operationally, verification concerns works and documentation together. Direct analysis considers executive technique, materials, conservation condition and historical compatibility with the declared author and period. In parallel, provenances, certificates of authenticity, publications and prior appraisals are examined. Publications are not assumed as automatic proof and certificates of authenticity are not considered valid in themselves: both are verified as any other documentary element. The intervention does not add a further opinion to existing appraisals: it concludes the verification when opinions, certifications and publications are no longer sufficient to sustain a decision. This distinction is the difference between an opinion and a conclusion. This is why he is called when opinions already exist but still do not permit a decision.

After the verification. The outcome modifies the composition of the heritage. Some works sustained by certifications are excluded because the attribution is not sustainable; others change author or period with direct consequences on value; others, though authentic, prove to be compromised by invasive restorations or conservation conditions incompatible with the attributed value; still others, previously marginal or misclassified, emerge as authentic and significant. Only after this redefinition do operational decisions become possible: insuring correctly, selling without risk of dispute, establishing a succession. Before the verification there exists a collection of objects with a declared value. Afterwards there exists a usable heritage. Verification does not immobilise a collection: it is the beginning of possible decisions.

These themes were the subject of a conference on the risks of collecting, delivered by Marina Pizziolo at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo in 2023.