Italian, 'Portrait Group', early 20th century

This picture looks like an Italian Renaissance portrait but is in fact a forgery made in the early twentieth century. It includes elements found in the originals, such as the stone window opening onto a view of the Italian countryside and the view of figures in profile.

It was purchased in 1923 as a fifteenth-century work, possibly by an artist close to Melozzo da Forli (1438–1494). The forger added a stamp with a coat of arms in the top corner intending to suggest the sitters were from the renowned Montefeltro family of Urbino (we have two paintings once owned by Federico da Montefeltro in our collection: Rhetoric and Music).

By 1951 the picture was recognised as a fake. Scientific investigation of the panel in 1996 revealed that some of the pigments used – including cobalt blue and cadmium yellow – were not available before the nineteenth century. The man’s cap, too, is more like a women’s hat fashionable in around 1913 than a Renaissance garment.