Forgers and Forgeries

The usual idea of a forgery is of something deliberately fabricated to appear to be what it is not; something conceived in sin, and carrying the taint of illegitimacy throughout its existence.

With other forgers, however, desire to confound connoisseurs and the learned world has been uppermost, generally bred by neglect or adverse criticism. So it seems to have been with Thomas Chatterton and his eighteenth-century imitations of medieval poems; perhaps it operated in the case of T. J. Wise and his forgeries of nineteenth-century pamphlets; and apparently I. F. Ioni, the Sienese painter and restorer, well-known for his forgeries of Italian primitive paintings, derived at least as much satisfaction from trying to take in eminent authorities as from the money he made.