The Best Phonies

At the entrance to a Paris exhibition stood a blue-uniformed policeman. "En-trez, Messieurs--Mesdames," he called, "everything you see around you is false." The show, organized by the Surete Generale to increase vigilance against artistic forgeries, contained fake stamps, coins, "neolithic'' pottery, manuscripts and old masters, many of them so well done that they had fooled even the experts. Among the best forgeries: a Goya Crockery Seller on old canvas, with small, fanlike cracks to simulate age, a clever Pissarro landscape with false documentation of past owners, along with dazzling phonies labeled Da Vinci, Rubens, Corot. There was even a fake fake--a forged Titian which later turned out to hide, under layers of paint, another Titian adjudged genuine.

Most fantastic item: a collection of letters (among the correspondents: Plato, Socrates, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne) for which an incredibly gullible French scientist had paid 150,000 gold francs ($30,000) in the 18605 to a forger named Vrain-Lucas. One of the letters, written in French on old parchment, was from Lazarus to Jesus in thanks for having been raised from the dead. Barely discernible were the words: "See you in Rome, dear Lord."

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