For more than three decades, a handful of brilliant forgers, all of them at the same time renowned painters, worked so hard and so well that today no one can put their hand in the fire and say, without batting an eyelid, that they possess the original of this or that painting, of any famous painter, of this or no matter what other era. The scientific experts, skilled in the most modern techniques of dating and attribution, the most prestigious gallery owners, art historians, auctioneers, and other intervenors in the field, have all let slip fakes that have consequently been catalogued as authentic and sold as such.

The existence of two and even three or more apocrypha of many of them was later discovered. A strict censorship has been imposed on the media; a real veto has fallen from the highest levels that has turned the subject into a sacred taboo.

For if it were to spread, panic would spread, as distrust spreads regarding what the system has turned into the supreme currency of exchange, which not only never devalues itself, but has, in recent years, increased in value according to a geometrical progression. The safe-haven value that has more than replaced gold.

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