IF IT WERE A PAINTING it might be called Déformation Professionelle in Three Studies. A trio of recent cases has highlighted that sharp practice in the world of dealers and galleries has never gone away. Historically, anywhere where connoisseurship — the expertise of the eye — plays a part is open to manipulation, and so it continues to prove.
Perhaps the most striking of the cases is that of Jean-Luc Martinez, the director of the Louvre, no less, from 2013 to 2021. In late May, he was detained by the OCBC, the French
