. Memories of an old collector . re duped by imitators of pottery have beenmore successful. N 2 l8o MEMORIES OF The Neapolitans, above all others,excel in this industry; and it is inancient Capua, now Sta. Maria diCapua Vetere, that the best ateliers forthe manufacture of painted vases aresituated. It is necessary to under-stand what is meant by forged paintedvases. Even the famous connoisseurin ceramics, Raimondi, who only dieda few years ago, and was consideredthe master of his art at Sta. Maria—even he could never invent altogetherthe decoration of a vase so as to makeit pass for a
. Memories of an old collector . re duped by imitators of pottery have beenmore successful. N 2 l8o MEMORIES OF The Neapolitans, above all others,excel in this industry; and it is inancient Capua, now Sta. Maria diCapua Vetere, that the best ateliers forthe manufacture of painted vases aresituated. It is necessary to under-stand what is meant by forged paintedvases. Even the famous connoisseurin ceramics, Raimondi, who only dieda few years ago, and was consideredthe master of his art at Sta. Maria—even he could never invent altogetherthe decoration of a vase so as to makeit pass for an antique. Only, if thistalented artist could get just a few frag-ments of a fine vase, he was cleverenough to be able, by the aid of illus-trations of vases in museums or inprivate collections, to reconstruct thewhole subject. He replaced the missingparts, and threw such an air of uni-formity over the vase that it wasalmost impossible to tell what wasmodern. But if you tried to wash avase, faked up in this manner, in pure r=5. GREEK VASE Tyskiewicz Collection : now in British slaying Centaur; painted by Polygnotos. AN OLD COLLECTOR l8l alcohol chemically rectified, you wouldfind that the modern portions wouldvanish, while the ancient paintingswould remain. Neither Raimondi noranyone else could ever manage to dis-cover the secret of the ancient potters,how to obtain the background of abrilliant black colour, improperly knownas the varnish of Nola. To disguisetheir failure in this respect, the forgersare obliged, when the vase is entirelyreconstructed and repainted, to coverit all over with a varnish of their owninvention ; but the surface of this var-nish, although brilliant, lacks the fresh-ness and brightness of that used by theancients. Relatively, this surface ap-pears dull, and vanishes the moment itis washed with alcohol. It is not long since the Greeksestablished at Athens itself laborato-ries for making vases and other an-tiquities. I know of three mys
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectcollectorsandcollect
