In the light of recent studies, it can no longer be considered rash to claim that phenomenon of ancient art forgery, which took place in Europe in the 19th and 20th century, often goes beyond the inadequate boundaries dictated by the history of style to become instead an important aspect of contemporary art history in its own right.
 

An exhibition which aims to give a satisfactory account of the complex phenomenology of art forgery in the 19th and 20th centuries cannot ignore the depth of the cultural roots underlying the genesis and development of a trend which zas to assume considerable importance in terms of both quantity and quality. At least in Siena, the artists employed in this kind of activity were not simply a bunch of swindlers in search of easy gains thanks to the indulgence of wealthy and rather naive art-lovers from abroad. The reasons for this return to the techniques of the old masters and the reproduction of "ancient paintings" were linked to the need for the revival of a solid and reassuring tradition, the recovverry of a strongly-felt identity with which to counter the standardising "mechanical squalor of modern times", as in the case of the English Art and Crafts Movement.
 

Siena was by far the leading Italian city in the production of "paintings", sculptures and antique abjets d'art. The work of the forgers should also perhaps be seen as being in tune with the urban redevelopment plans conceived for the Gothic and Renaissance city during the 1800s by singular, purist architects such as Giulio Rosi and Giuseppe Partini - local followers of Viollet-leDuc's theories - and implemented in full consciousness by their knowledgeable workers. The forgeries, carried out in large numbers and destined for a vast clientele of discerning foreign collectors, primarily Americans, were in fact sometimes of such high quality that they can now be considered authentic works of art in themselves, and be admired without preconceived reservations.
 

The phenomenon of the production of "antique paintings" clearly sprung from a rediscovery of early Italian painters of the 14th and 15th centuries and the consequent development of a considerable antiques market on an international scale, in which Florence, with its astute and hardened dealers, became one of the most important centres. Against this background Siena had its own genius loci, the new movement leader and absolute master of the "school of forgers", Icilio Federico Joni (Siena, 1866-1946).

An orphan from the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, Joni acquired supranational fame for his incredible Madonna paintings, reproductions of those of the ancient Sienese school. In his later years he had the impudence to write and publish his autobiography, Le memorie di un pittore di quadri antichi (1932). This was immediately translated into English under the title Affairs of a painter (1936), which naturally fed the growing suspicion that any panel painting with a gold background originating from Siena and circulating on the antiques market might actually be a work of the newly famed "artist".

It was during the period at the end of the 19th century that the ancient works of art still present in the city, in public places and the private collections of aristocratic families, attracted the attention of many British and American artists and scholars, some of whom were students of John Ruskin: Edward Burne-Jones, Charles Fairfax Murray (who did much to persuade London's National Gallery to purchase some important masterpieces of ancient Sienese painting), Robert Langton Douglas, Bernard Berenson and Frederick Mason Perkins. All these figures made a considerable contribution not only to the broadening of historical knowledge about Sienese art and its famous personalities, but also to the definition of a modern historical and artistic methodology. The case of Joni and his companions is connected, in particular, to that of the young Berenson who, at the end of the 19th century, despite having specialised in the teachings of Giovanni Morelli - the inventor of the attributive method - , and being gifted with a supposedly infallible eye, fell into the trap of purchasing, and sometimes even publishing, a number of Joni's "forgeries" believed to be original works.