Alceo Dossena Biography
Alceo Dossena (Cremona, 1878 – Rome, 1937) was an Italian sculptor and forger. Alceo Dossena represented one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures in the art world, in fact he created authentic masterpieces which were attributed by scholars and directors of museums and galleries from time to time to Giovanni and Nino Pisano, to Simone Martini, to Vecchietta , Amadeo, Donatello, Mino da Fiesole, Desiderio da Settignano, Andrea del Verrocchio, Antonio Rossellino and other famous masters of the past, all works that no one ever suspected could be created by a contemporary sculptor. These splendid sculptures possessed a quality that can rarely be found in the works of a forger: they had the strength of originality, in fact they were not copies of known examples, but original models created from scratch, simply made according to the stylistic dictates and executive techniques from classical antiquity, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries or the Renaissance. His works, created in the style of the great masters of the past, were of such extraordinarily high quality that they allowed some less than honest Italian dealers to place them abroad, particularly in the USA, where they are exhibited in some of the main museums and until era of the great scandal (1928), when the sculptures were recognized as fake, they were considered by scholars to be original works.
