Ben Lewis

The Forger of Siena is the first modern biography of the celebrated Sienese forger-restorer Federico Joni and his circle. After three years, immersing myself in the literature and newspapers of the era, burying myself in archives in Italy, Britain and America, and studying the collections of early Sienese paintings in American and European museums, I finally submitted the first draft of my book to my publishers, University of Chicago Press in January 2025.

My literary agent, Philip Gwyn Jones at Greyhound Literary, wrote this description of it…

How does a painting hanging above a Tuscan farmer’s toilet end up in Yale’s Art Museum? How do you steal an entire Renaissance palazzo ceiling and spirit it across the Atlantic undiscovered so that it can end up on display in New York’s Met? And how, ultimately, is The Truth decided? Who gets to decree when restoration becomes subterfuge, which artwork is authentic, what price correct, which history true?

These are questions raised by The Forger of Siena, a rip-roaring piece of art-historical non-fiction set in one of the world’s most beautiful and beguiling cities, in the workshops where the artistic achievement of the Renaissance was preserved centuries later by repair and restoration and replication. At the turn of the twentieth century, a charismatic craftsman rises from the city orphanage to fame and fortune, fooling art historians, aristocrats and collectors as he goes, outwitting Fascists, and falling in and out of love, repeatedly, operatically. Forgery is his fuel.

His name is Federico Joni. And he might just be the most successful art forger of all time, and is undoubtedly the most charismatic. He certainly changed the history of art. Tricking the Italian authorities and the high priests of art history alike, courting three sisters simultaneously, selling confected masterpieces of the Sienese Renaissance to the Lehmans, the Gardners, the Kresses, going into black-market business with leading art-hunters like the Berensons, scouring Italy’s monasteries and chapels [and toilets] for the finest paintings to spirit across the Atlantic, navigating the storms of social unrest that unleash the forces of fascism, forging by candlelight to replicate and thus save the patrimony of Siena, and dying of overindulging at the Festival of the Pig: these are the currents that carried the irrepressible, incorrigible Federico Joni to notoriety, and his very cinematic story is ripe for, er, renaissance.

With a Dickensian cast of hearties, heiresses, opportunists, swindlers, artisans, charmers, idlers, innocents, cynics and frauds, The Forger of Siena retrieves from dusty vaults a shining story that dazzles with its contemporary relevance and reflections. What price authorship? What price value? What price expertise? Readers who devour Ben Macintyre’s tales of daring and deceit, or are entranced by the mesmerizing art-obsession writing of Laura Cumming, or relish Jon Ronson’s skilfully composed unveilings of hidden connections and challenging truths will all find much in The Forger of Siena to delight them.