[CPProt.net] The shameful secret ofScotland's fake Botticelli

Wed May 18 08:16:33 CEST 2005

 The shameful secret of Scotland's fake Botticelli 

TIM CORNWELL 
ARTS CORRESPONDENT 

IT WAS the Scottish art world’s shameful secret: a "priceless" Botticelli
masterpiece which was exposed as a worthless fake, triggering a cold
war-style cover-up. 

Bought in 1933 with "every penny" the National Galleries of Scotland
possessed, Botticelli’s The Portrait of a Youth was hailed as a coup for the
national collection. 

But within two decades, the painting was quietly taken down and put away in
storage, never to be shown again. 

Now, using previously confidential documents, The Scotsman has managed to
piece together the true story of the fake and the careful attempts made to
conceal the truth from the public. 

The painting was bought in a blaze of publicity by the director of the
National Gallery of Scotland, Stanley Cursiter, who boasted in the pages of
The Scotsman that the gallery had acquired "a newly discovered portrait of a
youth by Botticelli". 

The galleries paid a staggering £12,000 for the painting - the equivalent of
£520,000 today. Privately, Cursiter admitted he had spent "every penny we
possessed". 

While the picture closely resembled a painting in the Louvre attributed to
the "school of Botticelli", Cursiter noted that the work he had acquired was
"clearly superior". 

It was not: by 1952, three years after Cursiter left the galleries, his
successor Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse had helped confirm that the Louvre had
the original painting. Scotland was the proud owner of a 20th century copy. 

Records show that a mysterious Mr Phillipot admitted painting it. Chemical
tests showed the paints used were not available until 300 years after
Botticelli’s death. 

But the public was not to be told. Instead, the painting quietly
"disappeared". 

When, in 1952, it was suggested the painting be included in an exhibition of
fakes, Lord Cooper, a member of the galleries’ board of trustees, slapped
down the proposal. 

"I do not think we should glory in our shame," he wrote. 

"Incidentally, it is going rather far to label it publicly as a ‘fake’,
which suggests not an error of judgment but a fraud, and I hesitate to
ascribe dishonesty either to the painter or to the sellers from whom we
bought. 

"The picture should be quietly buried, not flaunted in the eyes of the
public." 

The painting’s true history emerged decades later, but with only the
briefest of mentions in academic journals. 

Mysteriously, a crucial 1951 report on the picture from an expert in the
National Gallery in London, including the tell-tale chemical tests on the
paint, appears to have gone missing from the galleries’ file. 

Contacted yesterday, gallery staff and directors knew little of the
painting’s background, beyond that it was a fake that has never been shown
since. 

Cursiter published his memoirs in 1975. While he described in detail another
gallery’s purchase exposed as a forgery, he made no mention of the
"Botticelli". 

It was a far cry from his gushing enthusiasm four decades earlier in which
he compared his painting with the work in the Louvre. 

Cursiter wrote: "The Edinburgh picture is so clearly superior that there
seems not the slightest room for doubt that it is an original work by
Botticelli." 

He added: "The picture has been subjected to the most rigorous chemical
examination." 

There were early doubters, among them the Botticelli expert Albert Scharf. 

But Cursiter based the acquisition from Knoedler’s on an "excellent report"
from Martin de Wild, a Dutch restorer he had befriended after World War I. 

When congratulated by Kenneth Clark, at the Ashmolean Museum, Cursiter
admitted: "The Trustees had some hesitation but in the end gathered all
their courage and bang went every sixpence we possessed."

What The Scotsman said back in 1933... 

"THROUGH a combination of fortunate circumstances the National Gallery of
Scotland has been able to acquire from Messrs Knoedler, London, a newly
discovered portrait of a youth by Botticelli - or at least a picture which
apparently has not been recorded or described hitherto in the lists of works
by the artist. It is understood that the new picture has been for many years
in a private collection in France, and although closely related to the
"Portrait of a Man" in the Louvre, no detailed comparison of the two
pictures had ever been made ... 

"The Louvre Picture is attributed to the School of Botticelli. In it there
are slight infelicities of drawing and a lack of that perfection of
craftsmanship which is characteristic of the artist. The Edinburgh picture
is so clearly superior that there seems not the slightest room for doubt
that it is an original work by Botticelli. 

"The picture has been subjected to the most rigorous examination. Under
chemical analysis it has been found that the pigments used are white lead,
brown ochre, carbon black, and lapis lazuli, and a curious point in the
technique... which could only have been produced by the most careful
preparation."

This article: 

  http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=541332005 

Image
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=541332005