A marble bust that had been tentatively attributed to the renowned Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello has been definitively identified as a "poor-quality forgery" by Slovak authorities. The announcement on Wednesday marked the end of months of speculation about what could have been a major art historical discovery in Slovakia.
"I'm going to disappoint some people - it's a magnificent marble bust and I love it very much, but it's a deliberate forgery," declared Lukas Machala, Secretary General of Slovakia's Ministry of Culture, during a press conference. The bust had been discovered in the collection of the Spis Museum in Levoca, located in eastern Slovakia, where historian Marta Herucova had initially suggested it could "theoretically be attributed to Donatello" (1386-1466).
Although Herucova had remained cautious about the attribution and emphasized that authenticity would need to be confirmed, she had hoped that international collaboration would help corroborate her initial assessment. The potential discovery had generated significant excitement when it was made public in February, particularly because Slovakia possesses relatively little cultural heritage of such international significance.
The bust had previously belonged to a family that fled the country in 1945 as Soviet troops advanced through the region. Following the February announcement, the Slovak government took no chances and transferred the statue to a secure facility within the Ministry of Interior while they sought expert analysis. Authorities commissioned Francesco Caglioti, a specialist in Italian Renaissance sculpture, to examine the work during his visit to Slovakia in July.
Caglioti's comprehensive analysis led to definitive conclusions that shattered hopes of a genuine Donatello discovery. According to his findings, the artwork can "with certainty" be identified as a 19th-century copy created from a plaster cast of a sculpture attributed to another Florentine Renaissance artist, Desiderio da Settignano. The original work, known as the Bust of Saint Constance, is housed in the prestigious Louvre Museum in Paris.
The revelation highlights both the challenges of art authentication and the sophisticated nature of historical forgeries. While the Slovak bust may lack the artistic and monetary value of a genuine Donatello work, the case demonstrates the importance of rigorous scholarly examination in art historical attribution and the ongoing efforts to properly catalog and understand Renaissance artworks across Europe.
