Practice · Private capital and collections · Glossary
Certificate of authenticity
A certificate of authenticity is a written statement that a named work is by a named artist.
Published by ArtisDomus, written by Polina Surina.
No licence or registration stands behind it. It is a written opinion. It binds the person who signed it, under the ordinary law of the country where it was signed. It is worth exactly as much as that person.
One European law fixes the wording of an attribution word by word. It is French and applies to the seller, leaving the certifier outside. It is the closest thing the market has to a rule.
The French decree
In France the guarantee sits on the seller’s invoice.
The décret n° 81-255 du 3 mars 1981 applies to sales of works of art and collectors’ items in France. It has been in force since 20 March 1981.
The duty falls on the seller (art. 1). If the buyer asks, the seller must hand over an invoice, receipt, sale note or extract from the public sale record. The same duty applies to the seller’s agent and to the public or ministerial officer who runs a public auction. The document must state what they have claimed about the nature, composition, origin and age of the item sold.
Those words then become a guarantee (art. 3). Saying that a work bears an artist’s signature or stamp guarantees that the named artist is the author, unless an express reservation about authenticity goes with it. The words par or de before the artist’s name have the same effect. So does the artist’s name followed directly by the designation or title of the work.
The trade calls the decree the décret Marcus.
What each word costs
Each rung down the ladder gives the buyer less.
- attribué à
- Guarantees that the work was made while the named artist was working, and that there are serious grounds to see that artist as the probable author. It does not guarantee authorship (art. 4).
- atelier de
- Guarantees that the work was made in the named master’s workshop or under his direction. If a family workshop kept the same name across generations, the period must be stated as well (art. 5).
- école de
- Guarantees that the author was the named master’s pupil, was known to be under his influence or benefited from his technique. It can be used only for a work made in the artist’s lifetime or within fifty years of his death (art. 6).
- dans le goût de
- This phrase gives no specific guarantee about the artist, the date of the work or the school (art. 7). The same goes for style, manière de, genre de, d’après and façon de.
- Reproductions
- Any facsimile, cast, copy or other reproduction of a work of art or collectors’ item must be labelled as a reproduction (art. 8).
The ladder runs from a guarantee of authorship down to no guarantee at all, and the seller picks the rung. So read every catalogue entry and sale note with the decree at hand. The word chosen is the promise made.
Its limits
A certificate gives only a claim against the person who signed it.
In France a certifier who signs during a sale can be held liable by name. The Code de commerce makes three groups liable for their acts during or in connection with valuations and sales (art. L. 321-17). They are operators of voluntary auction sales of movables, the public and ministerial officers who may run judicial and voluntary sales, and the experts who help them describe, present and value goods.
Any clause that tries to exclude or limit this liability is banned and treated as never written. A civil claim against them is time-barred five years after the sale or the valuation.
A certificate cannot make a work authentic. It does not bind the next scholar, committee or court. It does not pass with the object as a property right. The holder gets a claim against its author, worth what that author can pay and lasting until the limitation period ends.
Related entries: catalogue raisonné and provenance. For what to do while the artist is alive, see checking a contemporary work is authentic.
Sources
- Décret n° 81-255 du 3 mars 1981 sur la répression des fraudes en matière de transactions d’œuvres d’art et d’objets de collection, arts. 1 and 3
- Décret n° 81-255, arts. 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8
- Code de commerce, art. L. 321-17