earlier, the art world flatly refused to believernit. In the first place, the boysrnclaimed to have produced the stonernheads with a standard hammer and arnscrewdriver, hardly appropriate sculptor’srnequipment. How, moreover, could they,rnin the late 1980’s, have the aesthetic insightrnto emulate the style of early modernismrnwith such rich sensitivity? For,rnlooming insurmountably, there was thernmatter of the works’ indisputable artisticrnquality, authenticated manv times overrnby expert professional opinion.rnIn the end, the boys proved their authorshiprnby an odd combination of thernmedieval trial-by-ordeal and the all-rnAmerican People’s Court. Asked to producerna new Modigliani on national television,rnusing their same nonstandardrnequipment, they vvere promised the giftrnof credibility if they succeeded. In 11rnminutes flat, they made their Modiglianirnand, in so doing, caused several art criticsrnto lose their jobs.rnTriumphant as forgers, however, thernfour boys from Livorno now became arnnice juridical problem. In a certainrnsense, of course, they had falsifiedrnModigliani sculptures, at least until theyrnclamored for recognition in their ownrnright. In an even more real sense, andrnthis, indeed, is the charm of the tale,rnthey were highly successful social critics.rnThroughout the whole incident, theyrnnever pretended to be anything but fourrnboys from Livorno. It was the criticsrnwho had made the screwdriver-carvedrnheads into Great Art, and it was up tornthe critics to decide, knowing how thesernheads had originated, whether the boys,rnby virtue of having produced Great Art,rnwere or were not Great Artists. The critics,rnseveral of them suddenly jobless andrnall of them publiclv exposed as chumpsrnin the homeland of bella figure, werernunwilling to go that far. They hadrnplayed all too clearly into the widespreadrnpopular suspicion that an average wagrnwith a couple of household tools couldrnindeed produce passable modern art sornlong as a critic were present to perform arnrite of consecration. It was not a goodrnmoment for the reputation of modernrnart or of modern art criticism.rnIn this country, in a different language,rnand endowed with a set of egosrnstructured somewhat differently, thernfour boys from Livorno might havernstyled themselves “performance artistsrnwho deal with issues of authenticity.”rnAnd by this simple expedient they mightrnhave gained legitimate inclusion amongrnthe company of artists to whichrnModigliani himself belonged. As it happened,rnthe boys had more modest aims;rntheir flicker of televised fame assured,rnthey took up their tools and went homernto their bemused mammas.rnThe storv of the four boys fromrnLivorno shows vividly how shifty a borderrndivides forgery from practical jokes. Anrneven finer line may need to be drawnrnbetween forgery as imitation and forgeryrnas parody. The Piltdown man, discoveredrnin 1908, was an early hominidrnwhose remains emerged from a Sussexrngravel bed just when the science of physicalrnanthropology had entered a period ofrnfervid activity. He was finally exposed asrnfake in 1950. The salient elements ofrnthe Piltdow n hoax were a human skull, arnmonkey jaw, and a large artifact shapedrnlike a cricket bat, each designed with diabolicalrnwit to further a particular theoryrnof human evolution. The apelike jawrntaken in conjunction with the humanoidrnhead suggested to scientists that developmentrnof the brain must have been therncrucial element in making humanity fullyrnhuman. (We have since determinedrnthat the course of our ontogeny proceededrnthe other way around.) Therncricket bat, its identification contingentrnupon the Piltdown Man’s full exposure,rnposes a more ambiguous question. Wasrnit intended to prove that the first impulsesrntoward civilization necessarilyrnemerged from English man, or onlv thatrnEnglish man was the proverbial missingrnlink? In any case, it was a deliciouslyrnnasty touch.rnForged texts have long been the stuffrnof political maneuvering. The faked donationsrnof Gonstantine to the papacyrnserved as the precedent for the Pope’srntemporal powers throughout the MiddlernAges, until their unmasking by LorenzornValla in 1424. Earlier in the present century,rnNazi anti-Semitism was whippedrnup by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,rna vicious pseudo-Jewish tract that stillrncirculates in parts of Europe. Forged artrnhas also played a role in politics, especiallyrnfalse archaeology, a science alreadyrnat work, as we now know, in ancientrnRome. Archaeology has routinely servedrnthe cause of nationalism; so, too, has archaeologicalrnfakery. In 20th-centuryrnRome, Benito Mussolini’s excavations ofrnancient ruins beneath the city streetsrnhave been routinely “enhanced” by thernaddition of columns and marble blocksrnimported from the Roman site of Ostia,rnnot distant, to be sure, but not Rome either.rnIn like fashion, the Hephaestion inrnthe Agora of Athens has been reconstructedrnin part with column drums borrowedrnfrom the nearby, and ruinous,rntemple of Ares. These reconstructionsrndiffer in intent and meaning from thernconcrete additions to the Minoan palacernat Knossos on Grete because they havernknowingly used archaeological materialrnthat originated elsewhere with the intentrnto pass it off as something else.rnKnossos, on the other hand, has usedrnmodern materials to imitate ancientrnstructures, a procedure problematic inrnitself, but not one that introduces consciousrnduplicity.rnAlceo Dossena was a quite competentrnancient artist whose fate it was to live inrnthe modern world (a man of exceptionalrnversatility, he also dabbled in pseudo-rnRenaissance sculpture). Industrial societyrnhas dealt brutally with traditionalrnartists by offering them a Pandora’s boxrnof manufactured consumer treats and arnprofessional philosophy of obsessive innovation,rnall the while gradually robbingrnthem of the social milieu that nurturedrntheir art in the first place. The two commonrnexpressive alternatives affordedrnsuch folk by the modern global villagernare sentimental kitsch or self-consciousrneclecticism: tourist art or theory-ladenrnrevivals. Dossena’s original intention asrnan artist was modest in the extreme: tornwork without fuss in styles congenial tornhim. Eventually, however, he recognizedrnthat if he passed his creations off as thosernof long-dead artists from archaic Greece,rnancient Etruria, or Renaissance Florence,rnhe would see his work praised asrnpure genius rather than lirnp eclecticism.rnWhen Donatello and Michelangelorneach pulled this same stunt at oppositernends of the 15th centurv, passing offrntheir own works as works of the ancients,rntheir reputations for artistry survivedrntheir exposure as living—and their creations’rnconcomitant exposure as contemporary.rnDossena’s craftsmanship hasrnbegun to receive similarly sympatheticrntreatment.rnThe career of Alceo Dossena illustratesrnwhy it is that forged art lurks as arncontinuing specter in our museums andrnour auction houses, in private collectionsrnand public monuments, leading us tornmistrust the eyes that delight in its perfidiousrnbeauty and the mind that spinsrnreveries about its meretricious core.rnForgeries link a bygone world with a currentrnsense of aesthetics, just as the miniaturernstatues of the Venus de Milo sold inrn44/CHRONICLESrnrnrn