Beltracchi forgery case (2010-2011)

In 2006, the Lempertz auction house in Cologne sold a 'Red Picture with Horses' attributed to Heinrich Campendonk for about 2.9 million euros. The buyer had the canvas analyzed: it contained a titanium white the painter could not have had in 1914. The picture was by Wolfgang Beltracchi, who did not copy: he painted the works an artist might have made, often titles listed in old catalogs and thought lost, then built them a history. On the back, labels imitating those of the collection of the dealer Alfred Flechtheim, ruined and dispersed in the 1930s, which accounted for a century of silence. Staged period photographs, opinions from recognized specialists and a few catalog entries did the rest. Arrested in 2010, he was sentenced in Cologne in October 2011 to six years in prison, on fourteen fakes kept in the indictment; he himself claimed far more. The underwriter takes from it that provenance can be manufactured as well as the canvas. A collection label, a photograph or an expert's note proves nothing alone: what counts is cross-checking them against independent archives, plus analysis of the materials. For the buyer, recovery runs through the auction house's authenticity guarantee, limited in time and often to the price paid, then through a claim against the seller or the expert. The fine art policy stays silent: the work suffered no damage. Not to be confused with the Knoedler affair, where an established gallery resold the fakes of a single supplier, nor with title risk, where the work is genuine but its ownership is disputed.