3-095-786 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London; photographer: Paul Highnam"/Heritage Images

‘Girolamo Benivieni’, (Giuseppe Bonaiuti), 1863. Plaster cast of a bust by Giovanni Bastianini (1830 -1868) who was contracted by antiquarian Giovanni Freppa to make sculptures in the manner of Renaissance masters, which Freppa unscrupulously sold as authentic Renaissance "discoveries". In 1867, the Paris Louvre purchased the "Benivieni" bust as the work of Lorenzo di Credi (c1456-1537) for a hugely inflated 13,600 francs. Following a rumour that the bust was not a Renaissance original, Freppa openly admitted that it was indeed a modern work. The model for the head of "Benivieni" was revealed to be an elderly Florentine tobacconist named Giuseppe Bonaiuti. Bastianini had aspired to become an independent sculptor in his own right. However the controversy around the faked terracotta bust caused him tremendous stress and brought him "bitterness, despair and death". (He died in 1868 aged 38). His bust of "Girolamo Benivieni" remains in the Louvre collection.