The Gentle Art of Faking: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Gentle Art of Faking, credited to Riccardo Nobili, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Gentle Art of Faking by Riccardo Nobili. Read in English by Jordan Watts IIn analysing the Faker one must dissociate him from the common forger; his semi-artistic vocation places him quite apart from the ordinary counterfeiter; he must be studied amid his proper surroundings, and with the correct local colouring, so to speak, and his critic may perchance find some slight modicum of excuse for him. Beside him stand the Imitator, from whom the faker often originates, the tempter who turns the clever imitator into a faker, and the middleman who lures on the unwary collector with plausible tales. It is not the object of this volume to study the Faker by himself, but to trace his career through the ages in his appropriate surroundings, and compare the methods adopted by him at various periods of history, so far as they may be obtained. (from the Preface)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Gentle Art of Faking
• Author credits: Riccardo Nobili
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 26
• Listed recording duration: 10:49:51

Catalogue topics

• forgery
• art forgery

Opening tracks: first 24 of 26

1. 00 - Preface — 3:20
2. 01 - Part I: The Birth and Development of Faking – Greeks and Romans as Art Collectors — 15:49
3. 02 - Collectomania in Rome — 30:56
4. 03 - Rapacious Roman Collectors — 19:34
5. 04 - Rome as an Art Emporium — 32:18
6. 05 - Increase of Faking in Rome — 13:29
7. 06 - Decadence of Art and Consequent Changes — 11:22
8. 07 - The Renaissance Period — 38:21
9. 08 - Imitation, Plagiarism, and Faking — 40:37
10. 09 - Collectors of the Sixteenth Century — 14:11
11. 10 - Collecting in France and England — 13:25
12. 11 - Mazarin as a Collector — 34:13
13. 12 - Some Notable French Collectors — 9:44
14. 13 - Part II: The Collector and the Faker – Collectors and Collections — 28:48
15. 14 - The Collector's Friends and Enemies — 31:54
16. 15 - Imitators and Fakers — 33:08
17. 16 - The Artistic Qualities of Imitators — 29:09
18. 17 - Fakers, Forgers and the Law — 28:27
19. 18 - The Faked Atmosphere and Public Sales — 38:52
20. 19 - Part III: The Faked Article – The Make-up of Faked Antiques — 18:25
21. 20 - Faked Sculpture, Bas-reliefs and Bronzes — 24:04
22. 21 - Faked Pottery — 37:34
23. 22 - Metal Fakes — 33:23
24. 23 - Wood Work and Musical Instruments — 16:15

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.