The information, as is
usually the case with information of the kind, came too late to be of
service to the buyers, but not too late to give them serious annoyance.
The bust had been exhibited at the Louvre in a prominent place; it had
excited considerable notice; none of the savants presiding over that
establishment had conceived the smallest suspicion of its genuineness;
and it was excessively disagreeable to have to admit that they had all
been deceived by a work made the other day by an unknown Florentine
artist. It was so disagreeable that the gentlemen in question had not
the courage to face the truth. They pooh-poohed their informants,
professed to adhere without a doubt to their own first opinions, and the
bust, to the great amusement of all the Florentine art-world, remained
in its place of honor at the Louvre, exhibited as a cinque-cento
terra-cotta for a long time after all Florence was perfectly cognizant
of its real history, and after the young artist had produced three or
four other busts all equally marked by unmistakable cinque-cento
characteristics. One of these was a really remarkable bust of
Savonarola, which may be seen any day in the (now public) gallery of St.
Mark's at Florence. The original _teterrima causa belli_ has, I believe,
disappeared from the Louvre Gallery. Poor Bastianini died shortly
afterward, and it is due to his memory and undoubtedly great talent that
it should be distinctly understood that from first to last he was no
party to or profiter by the frauds to which his special talent had given
rise.
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