Alceo Dossena

Alceo Dossena ( born October 9, 1878 in Cremona, † October 11, 1937 in Rome ) was an Italian sculptor.

Dossena, a stonemason from Rome, created 1918-1928 numerous sculptures of marble, wood or terracotta in the style of Roman and Greek antiquity, the Gothic and the Renaissance, which were of such high quality that they considered masterpieces of European sculpture and as originals of the greatest sculptors were considered. Numerous works of art experts Dossena were provided with certificates of authenticity and sold to museums, so a Niccolò Pisano attributed Madonna and Child with an Athena figure at the Cleveland Museum of Art as well as a Greek Goddess at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As a special rarity was a plastic Simone Martini, until then was known to no sculpture.

The particular market situation of the post-war years and inflation encouraged a flight into real values ​​, and thus the willingness to buy works of art. The sudden appearance of previously unknown masterpieces aroused among other things, so little suspicion, because in these years numerous princely houses, public collections and private art collectors were forced for economic reasons to sell parts of their collections. Since the works of exceptional quality and yet were unknown, it was assumed that they had come from the collections of the Vatican in the trade.

In 1928, when a tomb of marble, which had created Dossena and sold for 25,000 lire from the dealer Romano Palazzi as factory Mino da Fiesole was sold for nearly six million lire to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the dealer Dossena but financial aid after the refused his wife's death, this strained against buildings and the mediator Alfredo Fasoli a sensational trial for fraud to which silted ultimately, but an art scandal. Dossena was not indicted, as he had worked only in the style of past eras and even never spent his works as originals of other masters, so in the true sense was not an art forger. He had made ​​no copies, but recreations in the spirit of the particular art periods from the Archaic to the Renaissance.

Had before the scandal several art experts praised the sculptures as original masterpieces of high rank and issued certificates of authenticity, so now they stressed their allegedly low level, gross errors or obviousness plumper fakes - their reputation as experts, they could not recover by it. 1930 Hans turned Cürlis, director of the Berlin Institute for Cultural Research, as part of the film series ' creators hands the film The sculptor Alceo Dossena. Dossena died in 1937 in a Rome hospital for the poor.