The circumstances of Icilio Federico Joni’s birth were not promising. His father, a soldier stationed in Siena, chose to commit suicide before his son was born, not being in a position to acknowledge him. In January 1866, his young mother entrusted him to the hospital of Sta. Maria della Scala in Siena as a foundling. Not until after he was weaned was Joni reclaimed by his maternal grandmother, put in the care of an aunt, and finally placed with a family friend of very limited means. While still a child, Joni was put to work with a gilder, and this experience proved decisive. His natural talent and readiness to learn, together with irregular but extremely fruitful attendance at the Istituto di Belle Arti, were to make of him the amazing so-called “painter of Old Masters”.
Most of the information we have regarding Joni’s training and achievements is derived from his autobiography, Le memorie di un pittore di quadri antichi, published in 1932 (and reprinted by Sansoni in 1984). The work was translated into English as early as 1936, by Faber and Faber of London, with the title Affairs of a Painter. Attributed to great painters, from Duccio to Francesco di Giorgio, pride of private collections and museums, the re-creations of Old Masters for which Joni is famous have been the subject of careful critical analysis by the best qualified scholars of Italian Trecento and Quattrocento art. When news of Joni’s book got out, efforts were made in some quarters to postpone its publication, in the hope that certain pages might be cut or toned down. The author resisted pressures of this kind, however disguised. The English edition sold out very quickly, and rumour had it that interested parties had bought up large numbers of copies in order to minimise its impact. The man most concerned to limit the publicity given to the Memorie was said to be Bernard Berenson.
Joni’s first meetings with Berenson took place at the end of the last century and continued, with varying intensity, for several decades. Rarely, according to Joni, did they end without friction. Berenson appears many times in the book—thinly disguised as “Somberen”, when Joni has a particularly barbed comment to make about him. On one occasion, the critic is reported to have said: “Take care not to imitate any Old Master too closely; otherwise, on comparison, your work will be easily recognised”. At their first meeting, Berenson is described as “a gentleman with a reddish beard”; apologising for turning up at the artist’s studio unannounced, he offered the excuse that he was “the person who bought all your pictures from Torrini” (an antique dealer with whom Joni placed his first works for sale). This was the beginning of an interesting and complex relationship, which can now be evaluated in a better informed, more balanced way. Joni records that, at their first meeting, “after an endless stream of compliments on the execution of my work”, Berenson, who had purchased from Torrini an “Alberto Aringhieri in prayer” (fig.2) inspired by Pinturicchio’s celebrated fresco in Siena cathedral, “singled out the Aringhieri for special praise, saying that he found it more skilfully done even than the original, which he had been to see and examined just before coming to my studio”. The Berenson Foundation at I Tatti still has two works by Joni purchased in those early days. The “Alberto Aringhieri”, on the other hand, was later sold by Berenson at a Christie’s sale in London. Apart from anything else, there is no doubt that Joni’s meeting with Berenson gave him access to a circle of wealthy collectors, like Dan Fellows Platt, and scholars and researchers, such as Frederic Mason Perkins. These connections, combined with the intrinsic quality of the works, ensured that Joni’s paintings found their way into milieux where they were appreciated and sought after.
If we compare the copy of the Pinturicchio—excellent though it may be—with the paintings owned by American collector Philip Lehman, we have to admit that Joni’s abilities, over a period of ten years developed to a remarkable extent. Lehman’s fine collection of Sienese paintings is well documented by Ferderic Mason Perkins, the American whose own collection of primitives now belongs to the Franciscan friary at Assisi, who published articles on the subject in Art in America in 1920 and ’21. The magazine featured Lehman’s two panel paintings atributed to Neroccio di Bartolomeo Landi (including the “Madonna and Child with two angels” (fig.3) auctioned by Franco Semenzato in Rome on 17 March 1992 as “a rare work by one of the greatest Quattrocento Sienese masters”) and at least six other works owned by Lehman. As well as the famous “Saint Anthony tempted by a heap of gold”, now attributed to the Maestro dell’Osservanza, a diptych by Paolo di Giovanni Fei and an “Expulsion from Eden” by Giovanni di Paolo (now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York), Perkins mentions a “Madonna of humilty” in the style of Sassetta and two paintings ascribed to Matteo di Giovanni: a “Virgin martyr” and a “Madonna and Child”. It is worth examining certain aspects of Joni’s art, in order to understand this leap in skill.
The Neroccio recently sold in Rome has to be regarded as a forgery, if only because it bears a spurious signature and date. However, the “Madonna and Child with Saints Mary Magdalen and Sebastian” housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also painted in the second decade of the century, raises questions of a quite different kind. In this case, Joni’s identification with fifteenth-century Sienese painting is complete. Although certain details of the painting do coincide almost exactly with features of other works by Neroccio, the work as a whole cannot be regarded as a copy. Nor can it be classed as an imitation. It is true that Joni interprets and executes his subject in a style derived from Neroccio di Bartolomeo, but he has made his master’s teaching his own and developed it, as is the case with any independent work of art. The finished painting can stand alongside works by Neroccio or other artists of the period, because it is born of a whole-hearted adoption of the canons of the Sienese school. It is easy to understand how the Lehman “Madonna” continued to astonish even the restorers Mario Modestini and Pico Cellini, and the art historian Federico Zeri, who were the first to say it was modern, and correctly guessed its authorship.
Another of Joni’s masterpieces, the “Madonna and Child” (fig.4) in the style of Matteo di Giovanni, which Perkins also listed as belonging to Lehman, is a similar case. The composition of Joni’s painting derives mainly from Matteo’s “Madonna and Child”, n.283 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, but while keeping to the internal rhythms of Matteo’s composition, Joni incorporates his own variations. He has dispensed with Matteo’s landscape, and set the figure against a gold background, which with an exact copy of the gilded frame makes for an authoritative, splendid work. Joni has reversed the attitude of Matteo’s “Madonna”, making her face to the right, with the child on the right-hand side of the picture. But their faces are by no means the same as Matteo’s: features and expressions, though consonant with the half-tender, half-dreamy look of Matteo’s Madonnas, are not based on any particular model. Joni is also exceptional in his capacity to make an object look convincingly old. A painting until now attributed to Matteo di Giovanni (fig.5) is a good example. The work, in tempera on a convex wooden panel (51 x 35 cm), was sold in Milan in the 1930s by the writer Bruna Guarducci and brought to public attention by Peleo Bacci in 1944, when it was part of a private collection in Varese. Though dating from some fifteen years later, this “Madonna” bears a relationship to Lehman’s Matteo. The photo reproduced here shows how perfectly the painting was aged by the artist. In this picture, Joni has not just imitated or interpreted a style, but has been able to create an object with all the patina, or aura, of an ancient work of art. Once his paintings were finished, Joni applied a treatment designed to replicate the effects of the passage of time: loss of pigment, cracks, scratches. He was a genius as a craftsman: in his preparation and handling of materials—pigments, gold leaf, wood and stucco. He would “age” the wooden panels and painted surfaces on which he had lavished so much skill and care by exposing them to extremes of dryness and humidity, direct heat and cold; and he used controlled violence to inflict scratches and abrasions. Much of the impact of Joni’s major works lies in the delicate balance achieved between what appears worn with age and what has remained intact. This explains how badly his works react to cleaning or restoration. A painting ruined in this way was his “Madonna of humility”, now on display at the Allen Art Museum at Oberlin, Ohio. The exquisite workmanship is reminiscent of Sassetta or artists associated with him. The judgements of Bernard Berenson (“probably by Pellegrino di Mariano”), Giacomo De Nicola (“pupil of Sassetta”), Richard Offner (“Sassettesque”) and Raimund Van Marle (“Sassetta”) were confirmed in 1939 by John Pope-Hennessy in his study of Quattrocento Sienese painting. It should be said that, even at that time, the panel had been subjected to a mild cleaning operation, as shown by a still earlier photograph taken when the work was in pristine condition. Nevertheless, it was the subsequent interference and attempts to retouch it that damaged Joni’s work beyond repair.
Much medieval painting has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and often in a very poor state of conservation. An exception are altar-pieces which, because they played an important role in Catholic worship, were kept in their original settings. Yet, even venerable images, which today are recognised as outstanding masterpieces, were often broken up and dispersed as tastes and liturgies changed. In Joni’s time, ancient panels by great masters were rediscovered in the dwellings of common people or in country farm-houses, where traditional forms of devotion persisted. Counterfeiting fragments of old works was tempting because they were easier to sell, though they were by no means easy to produce. At a time when many authentic works were being rediscovered and marketed, Joni conceived and painted a large number of fragmentary works. Three of these, all very fine examples, have not been ascribed to him before.
The “Angel of Annunciation” and “Virgin Annunciate” (fig.6), which in 1926 were owned by Philip Lehman in New York, appear to be segments of the same panel of a broken-up predella. The simplicity of the bare interiors, the view of the landscape, the columns of the portico where the scene is set are reminiscent of Fra Angelico: tiny details in the hair-style, the hands and the folds of the angel’s garments are derived from some of his most famous creations, such as the Cortona “Annunciation”, the Montecarlo “Annunciation” and, for the Virgin’s face and attitude and the embroidery of her cloak, the “Adoration of the Magi”at the Museo di San Marco, Florence. Highly detailed works, like that of an illuminator, they have affinities with the “Miracle of St Nicolas” formerly attributed to the young Benozzo Gozzoli, and recently challenged by Federico Zeri, who considers it the work of “a faker who displays uncommon ability”. These two panels are in fact yet another achievement of Federico Joni’s.
Federico Joni’s output also included a large amount of far less brilliant work, done in the normal course of his activity as restorer and expert creator of artefacts in the Renaissance style, and designed to satisfy the demands of a wide market. But, over a period of more than thirty years in the early part of the century, he produced a significant number of works of the highest quality, possibly without equal in their field. Joni’s greatest achievements invite one to examine more closely the boundary—often too confidently defined—between forgery and original creation.
How to fake a Quattrocento painting —or detect the result
Joni would have been able to recreate the materials and technique of a fifteenth-century gold-ground painter by reading Cennino Cennini’s treatise on painting (known as The craftsman’s handbook in English). Although written around 1390, very little changed until the arrival of oil in the late 1400s: technical analysis of Sassetta’s paintings shows that he used methods very close to those described by Cennini. To give the appearance of aging Joni could have mixed extra glue with the pigments which, when exposed to heat (as in an oven) would crack in a convincing way. Poplar panels, gypsum for the ground and rabbit skin glue would all have been available to Joni.
Although the outward appearance of a Joni painting is convincing, and analysis of the materials is not an indicator of his authorship, on further examination there are numerous give-aways. The gold leaf used by Joni would have been slightly thinner than that used in the 1400s. Dirt found in the craquelure and in the wood beneath in genuine fifteenth-century paintings would be hard to reproduce in a recent version. X-ray analysis reveals the type of modelling used for the flesh tones and highlights, an area in which Joni diverges from fifteenth-century practice. Genuine gold-ground paintings have a warm brown or terracotta green for the half tones, applied very thinly in the half shadows and shadows with pronounced lead white highlighs on the cheeks, bridge of nose and upper lip. This creates a pronounced visual luminosity and shows up on the X-ray as strong white. Joni used much more solid underpainting on which the flesh tones would be laid—convincing proof of a recent attempt at fifteenth-century painting.
We are grateful to conservation experts Ashok Roy and David Bomford of the National Gallery, London, and to Alan Phenix at the Courtauld Institute for their opinions. Both institutions have a Joni in their collection. That of the National Gallery was acquired as a portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro (acc. no. 3831) and hangs in the Reserve Collection. The Courtauld Institute’s is a triptych titled “Virgin and Child enthroned with unidentified male saints” and was exhibited in Minneapolis in 1973 in the exhibition “Fakes and Forgeries”.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Joni, deliberate counterfeiter or creative artist?'