by Jean-Louis De La Vaissiere
PARIS
(AFP)
.- A French journalist's investigation into the alleged forgery network around art collector Giuliano Ruffini has also criticised the "great negligence" of art world experts. The doubts first became public when French police seized a painting owned by the prince of Liechtenstein from an exhibition in Aix-en-Provence in 2016. The prince had paid seven million euros at auction for the portrait of the goddess Venus by 16th century Italian painter Lucas Cranach, yet tests would soon reveal that the pigments used in the painting dated from the 20th century. Ruffini was well-known in the art world. Since the 1990s, he had sold dozens -- even hundreds -- of paintings by such luminaries as Parmigianino and El Greco to some of the great museums of Europe, including the Louvre, often through intermediaries. Many, he said, had come from the collection of an ex-girlfriend's father, Andre Borie, a civil engineer who helped build the Mont Blanc tunnel. Vincent Noce, a journalist for The Art Newspape ... More