The very concept of forgery is a tricky one. Fine art auction house Christie’s defines forgery as “the making of something in fraudulent imitation of something else,” whether mimicry of another artist's style or outright copying of another artist's work. Christie’s defines a fake as “any work of art deliberately made or altered to pretend to be something older or better than it is,” while a copy is “an imitation of an original” that “does not pretend to be the original.” Replicas and facsimiles are also legitimate copies but typically differ in scale from the original piece; a facsimile is a close reproduction, while a replica is an exact reproduction. Yet many of the great masters employed teams of apprentices to finish their masterpieces, with much of the detail work carried out by relative novices. Who should properly receive credit for such a piece of work?
A number of the world’s greatest forgers earned their mendacious appellation unwittingly. The 19 th-century Italian sculptor Giovanni Bastianini is generally considered the original master forger. Bastianini worked in a style not of his own era; others took his work and successfully passed it off as the art of various Renaissance-era Old Masters. Bastianini made no inquiry into how his art was being marketed by the antique dealer Giovanni Freppa. By Christie’s definitions, he would likely be considered a faker rather than a forger, as he never sat down with a book of works by Donatello or Michelangelo and tried to create a copy of an existing piece for the purpose of passing it off as an original. Today, no one would attribute Bastianini’s work to the great 14 th and 15 th century masters. He sculpted an idealized interpretation of Renaissance Art, rather than a true imitation, a difference that became more obvious with the passage of time and the dissipation of contemporaneous opinions about what Renaissance Art should reflect. The question becomes how to classify Bastianini’s work in the history of sculpture.
In truth, there are few reasonable excuses, notwithstanding critical elitism and the nebulous cult of the artist, to reject good forgeries as good art; the classifications need not be mutually exclusive. It is indisputable that the forgery or fake exists as the tangible creation of some artist; whether it is of greater or lesser merit may be debated by critics and aficionados. All that remains to discuss is whether there is a valid reason to accept a given forgery or fake as good art. It is not inconceivable to imagine that some forgeries may garner sufficient acclaim as to alter the perception, the very classification, of the forger himself. At the Hermitage museum, one of Bastianini’s sculptures (properly attributed) rests not far from those of the masters whom he stands accused of imitating.

Q. Which of the following does the claim that some forgers “earned their mendacious appellation unwittingly” imply?
A. Forgers are wise to avoid asking questions about the sales of their works so that they can plead ignorance if accused of forgery.
B. Many forgers pretend not to be aware of the fact that they are producing forgeries.
C. Some forgers were oblivious to the fact that the art they created would be considered forgery.
D. A work of art is only a forgery if the maker intended to produce a forgery.
E. Many forgers were not adequately warned about the legal definition of forgery.