It seems that this issue still persists even with today's technology. The Puskin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow is currently featuring an exhibition, "“Paris School: 1905-32," in which a work of art's authenticity is being questioned. "Portrait of Maverna" is attributed to Modigliani, but recently there have been conflicting debates as to its authenticity.
Courtest of The Art Newspaper
On the one hand, the president of the Modigliani Institute, Christian Parisot, has authenticated the work. In addition to his legal right to declare the work as genuine, he also provided documentation as proof. This included a statement by Maverna stating that she had posed for Modigliani.
On the other hand, the Swiss Institute for Art Research analyzed the pigments and stated that several of the components were not manufactured until after the 1940s (and certainly after the artist's death in the 1920s). This analysis was done at the request of a Russian collector when it was available for purchase in 2006. The results disuaded the collector from the $3 million purchase.
It seems like these issues of genuine artwork always have competing sides, each with reasonable arguments for authenticity. Do you trust the experts, who know in their gut that something is/is not genuine? Do you trust scientific tests on the materials? Or do you rely on the provenance of a work to determine its place in history?
After everything is said and done, though, does it matter who the artist is? If this work is considered the same "quality" as a Modigliani, and has the similar if not the same alluring compositional, aesthetic, or subject aspects, does it matter if it is in fact the work of an unknown artist? This is of course assuming that the artwork is being unintentionally attributed to the wrong artist.
It seems like the artist, more often than not, defines the "quality". In fact, artists are in many cases the "brand" that museums and collectors covet. It is these same "brands" that define blockbuster exhibitions -- Picasso, Degas, Monet, etc. Are we concerned with the brand more than the product?
I do think it's important to honor the original and to consign copies (or forgeries) to a different category. Not to do so destroys the integrity of the artist's corpus, not to mention the market. DeChirico most notably wreaked havoc with his own corpus, backdating works, making copies of works he had produced decades earlier, and basically making the job of authenticators and curators very difficult. The three issues you define for authenticating work together. The sleuth work, the expert's eye, and the scientist's analysis. Still, mysteries in the art world defy all the experts.
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