Renaissance painting of bright floral flowers in a round vase. The flowers are depicted in colors of red, white, and purples and blues. The background is dark black.

Make It ’Til You Fake It: The Virtues of Counterfeiting in the Renaissance

Sept. 14, 2022 | 5:30 p.m.
Forsyth Galleries | Memorial Student Center, MSC 2428

 
Renaissance artists were always looking for new and more convincing ways to counterfeit costly materials with cheaper ones. Sixteenth-century how-to texts, such as painters’ manuals and so-called “books of secrets,” abound with recipes to imitate gold with yellow glazes over silver foils, to imitate gemstones with colored glasses, or to imitate exotic corals with twigs covered with dyed resins.
 
Far from being shunned, these counterfeit materials were often acknowledged as fakes and were avidly collected and prized for their ingenuity.
 
This talk looks at the phenomenon of creating fakes and material doubles as a Renaissance version of materials science. It considers artists as proto-scientists in their quest to understand the properties of the natural world in order to harness them for their own ends.

 
 

Headshot of Dr. Tianna Helena Uchacz

Guest Speaker, Dr. Tianna Uchacz

 
Tianna Uchacz is a historian of early modern art and craft technology and an assistant professor in the School of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts at Texas A&M University.
 
Her research asks questions about the history of art media and materials, skilled making, the sensory experiences of artists and viewers, and ways of knowing in cultures across the globe.
 
She is co-editor of the award-winning digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France, and the forthcoming, Spaces of Early Modern Creative Labor. Uchacz is a 2022–2025 Arts and Humanities Fellow at Texas A&M.