Giovanni Bastianini, Art Forgery, and the Market in Nineteenth‐Century Italy

Helstosky examines the practice of forgery and the state of the art market in nineteenth-century Italy, considered by art consumers as both a warehouse of valued antiquities and a workshop for adulterations, forgeries, copies, and imitations. Given that Italy was the site of both intense demand for and a suspicious increase in the supply of valuable objects, the nation is particularly significant for the interrelatedness of market and forgery. Helstosky focuses on the Italian sculptor Giovanni Bastianini (1830-68), who worked in Florence. Bastianini was an artist who made convincing imitations of Renaissance sculptures. His work was eventually displayed as authentic Renaissance sculpture in the collections and museums of France and Britain. After Bastianini was discovered to be the contemporary author of these works, his reputation, or notoriety, became international within communities of collectors, connoisseurs, and museum officials.