Authenticity and quality are the first elements in the evaluation of a work of art.

Knowing the quality and value of the works we own is the first step in making conscious choices. Keeping and exhibiting a fake in your home, with unconscious pride, is not such a rare situation. Just as it is not rare to own, disorderly placed in the cellar, a canvas of great value.

Only last year I made the evaluations of two paintings, one by Sironi and the other by Boetti, which turned out to be fakes after careful analysis. In the same year I dealt with the sale of two large canvases of the Neapolitan 18th century, attributed to Luca Giordano, which were ruined due to poor conservation, in the damp basement of a country house, and an unprofessional restoration.

Understanding the works we own, being sure of their authenticity and value is part of that passion that drives great collectors every day to buy another work. Owning art means keeping for itself a direct testimony of that small aesthetic revolution that the artist wanted to realize with his work. Who would care to exhibit the banal copy of a fraud?

The evaluation of the value of a work is obtained thanks to the analysis of numerous qualitative elements. The first is certainly the greatness of its author, measurable in the role he has or has had in the history of art and in the enthusiasm with which the market seeks and collects it. The second is the quality of the specific work compared to others made by the artist himself. In this second phase of evaluation numerous elements come into play, such as beauty, representativeness, size, technique used, year of production and state of conservation.

But for what they may be worth, sometimes the works we own, perhaps because they have been handed down for generations, do not reflect our taste. Knowing their economic value can help us to evaluate the choice of selling them to buy works closer to our aesthetic sensibility or to be able to realize other projects.

Not everyone can boast the fortune of owning a work of art, if you are among those few, devote yourself to the refined passion of understanding the beauty and value of the things that surround you.