Authenticity: Overview

Conservation at Suceviţa Monastery. Cropped version of
image by CERECS ART S.R.L. Licence for this image

This guide lists resources for studying the following areas:

• concepts of authenticity
• authentication by provenance
• authentication by connoisseurship
• authentication by technical analysis
• forgery
• conservation and authenticity

Summon is usually the best starting point for finding articles, books and dissertations. 

• video intro to Summon (4 mins) 
• collection of guides if you need help with particular Summon searches

You may also want to run supplementary searches in two other databases:

• Art & Architecture Source
• Google Scholar: an alternative to Summon. See our info about using Scholar

Sales catalogues may contain much relevant material, as auction houses are eager to make the case for attributions as credibly as possible.  They may include provenance information, summaries of connoisseurs' conclusions, and reports of technical analyses: though of course they be selective with regard to the latter two. 

Oxford University Press offers several useful resources:

• introductory articles, for instance about  authenticity and connoisseurship
• Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms  for definitions. Note that running a search in the Dictionary also retrieves results from two other Oxford reference works.