If you want to sell a work of art through a major auction house or gallery, one of the first questions you will be asked is about the item’s
provenance. On its own, well-documented provenance can confirm the authenticity of an artwork. This is not the case for
comparative analysis
and
scientific analysis.
However, over the course of time, many records can be lost and information forgotten as a work of art passes from one
generation to the next. Undocumented gaps in an artwork’s history provide opportunity for forgery and falsification of records, so it is necessary
to fill in those gaps if you want to prove that your work of art is authentic.