[Q] So there are forgers who could… who can draw like Goya, say. They can produce… well, they can’t… you told me they can’t produce a Goya, but they can produce a Goya that would fool a lot of people. I mean, they can do…

There are, of course, forgers who fool a lot of people, but it’s a very complicated business, because there are a lot of people who want to be fooled. There are a lot of people who want to discover another Rembrandt drawing. He’s the man who found the Rembrandt drawing, you know. It’s a kind of… if you find a genuine Rembrandt drawing of enormous importance, you become associated with it, and it makes you important, because it is important. It’s the problem with the Dürer in the National Gallery. It’s not by Dürer and we’re all beginning to come round to the fact that it’s not by Dürer. It’s not a forgery, but it’s a mistaken attribution. But the little Madonna of the Pinks, supposedly by Raphael, again in the National Gallery. It’s so exciting to have identified an important early Raphael. All those involved in this discovery and identification are sort of preening themselves with the excitement of it. And then the sceptic comes along and says, 'But where does it fit? You say this is 1504, well, this is what he was doing in 1503'. This is what he was doing in 1505. How does it fit?' You know, they don’t want to know. And then gradually another person comes along and asks the same question. I simply cannot fit this in. And another and another. And ten years have passed, and there’s now a considerable degree of scepticism about that picture.

That’s when it takes time, because so many… if you have enough really eminent people going along with it, happy to be deluded, it’s much more difficult to knock it off its perch. But eventually, it will tumble from its perch, because people who are not involved in the discovery can be very much less… very much more dispassionate about it.