Ambiguità del falso. Il c.d. trono di Boston nel contesto del mercato di arte antoca tra Ottocento e Novecento

In this contribution I will try to reconstruct a rough outline of the market for fakes in ancient art from the second half of the nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth century. For convenience I will use the term “forgery,” even though the meaning of this word and the boundaries within which it can be defined are much more fluid and articulated than a superficial consideration allows. My point is that the false work is not only the concrete double of the original work but also its narcissistic reflection, blinding and therefore creating the conditions for the deception. Therefore where there is an art market with collec‐ tors and sellers, the conditions for the creation of forgeries are rife from the Roman time up to today. With these premises I will consider the case of the “Boston Throne”. Obviously I am not interested in offering yet another interpretation of its iconography, rather I will reconstruct again the circumstances of its discovery interpreting them as a typical case of forgery.