05-Dossena1

ALCEO DOSSENA (Italian, 1878-1937)

ANGEL OF THE ANNUNCIATION AND THE VIRGIN MARY

These two statues were part of a fraud that baffled experts on both sides of the Atlantic Miss Helen Clay Frisk purchased this Annunciation group, probably in the early 1920's, with the assurance that it was an authentic work of the fourteenth century Sienese artist Simone Martini. By 1923, these and numerous other "antique" sculptures had been revealed to be the work of a living sculptor, Alceo Dossena of Rome.

Dossena was a marble mason who, as he traveled through Italy, studied the works of art that he saw in churches and museums. Attempting sculpture, he found he could create works in the manner of old masters that would even fool experts. He never directly copied, but worked in the styles of the originals. He worked in marble, bronze, terra cotta, and wood, and the range of his subjects was enormous, extending from ancient Greek and Egyptian to 17th-century European sculpture. He also developed techniques of aging his works

In 1416, two Italian art dealers, Fasoli and Palesi, saw the value of his skill, and began to commission from him works that they passed off as originals, selling them to collectors and to other dealers at enormous prig. By 1927, Dossena became aware of their deceit and realized that while he was still poor, Fasoli and Palest had made a fortune from his work. A scandal erupted when he brought suit against them in 1929, telling the world of the misrepresentations and revealing that he had only received $35,000 over a ten-year period, most of which had gone for materials. Dossena himself was cleared of any charges, when he insisted that he was innocent of the dealers' practices and had not benefited monetarily from the sales

It is a difficult question to determine if Lochoff or Dossena was the more notable artist. Lochoff made expert duplications of works which were sold as such. Dossena created sculptures that tried to use the original artist's conventions. His Annunciation here can be compared to Simone Martini's painted Annunciation across the Cloister.