# Harpsichord, called the "Ruckers-Taskin" > Anonymous French maker, c. 1695; fraudulent Ruckers rose attributed to the workshop of Antoine Vater, c. 1750; ravalement by Pascal Taskin, 1774 - c. 1695 (original construction); fraudulent Ruckers rose and signature added c. 1750; enlarged and rebuilt (ravalement) by Pascal Taskin, 1774 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/anonymous-french-maker-vater-taskin-ruckers-forgery/ruckers-taskin-forged-harpsichord-mim/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Anonymous French maker, c. 1695; fraudulent Ruckers rose attributed to the workshop of Antoine Vater, c. 1750; ravalement by Pascal Taskin, 1774 - **Date:** c. 1695 (original construction); fraudulent Ruckers rose and signature added c. 1750; enlarged and rebuilt (ravalement) by Pascal Taskin, 1774 - **Medium:** Wood case and soundboard, painted or grained decoration, gilt-paper or parchment rose (the added, fraudulent rose), iron and brass strings, quill (later possibly leather) plectra, double manual - **Dimensions:** Not published in the sources consulted - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** French, late seventeenth to late eighteenth century (original construction c. 1695; forged embellishment c. 1750; classical-period rebuild 1774) - **Current location:** Musical Instruments Museum (MIM), Brussels - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary For most of its documented life this double-manual harpsichord in Brussels was catalogued as a genuine instrument by the Ruckers workshop of Antwerp, later enlarged by the celebrated royal maker Pascal Taskin. Archaeometric research published in 2023 overturned that account. The case and soundboard are now attributed to an anonymous French workshop of about 1695; the Ruckers-style rose and signature that gave the instrument its name and its market prestige were added fraudulently around 1750, an act the research attributes to the workshop of the Paris maker Antoine Vater; and Taskin's 1774 rebuild, the one part of the old story that survives scrutiny, was performed on an instrument that was already a fake.The case belongs to a real and well-documented eighteenth-century French phenomenon: Flemish Ruckers harpsichords commanded prices no French maker's own name could reach, and forging or exaggerating a Ruckers attribution was a known way to profit from an old or ordinary instrument. This record sets out what the evidence actually shows, what it does not, and where the object's own history, before 1750 and again between 1774 and its entry into the Brussels collection, remains undocumented. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1695** Anonymous French workshop `[documented]` (origin) The case and soundboard are attributed by archaeometric and dendrochronological analysis, published by Pascale Vandervellen in 2023, to an anonymous French maker working around 1695. No maker's name is recorded for this original construction; the attribution to a French rather than Flemish origin is the technical finding that overturned the instrument's traditional identity. - **c. 1695-c. 1750** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer or location is documented for the instrument's first half-century. How and where it was used or kept before it was given a false Ruckers identity is not recorded in the sources consulted. - **c. 1750** Workshop of Antoine Vater (attributed) `[unknown]` (fraudulent alteration: a Ruckers-style rose and signature added to the soundboard) Vandervellen's 2023 case study attributes the addition of the fake Ruckers rose and signature to the workshop of Antoine Vater, keeper of the royal harpsichord collection at Versailles and an established Paris maker in his own right. This record treats the attribution as the argued conclusion of a named, citable study rather than as an eyewitness-documented act, since the mechanism by which the attribution to Vater specifically (rather than to another Paris dealer or maker of the period) was established has not been verified against the full published text. - **c. 1750-1774** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is documented between the forged attribution and the instrument's arrival in Pascal Taskin's workshop in 1774. Whether it changed hands once, several times, or not at all in this quarter-century is not recorded in the sources consulted. - **1774** Workshop of Pascal Taskin, Paris `[documented]` (ravalement: genuine enlargement and rebuild) Taskin became facteur de clavecins du roi (royal harpsichord maker) in 1774, the same year in which he is documented as having reworked this instrument. The ravalement itself is genuine Taskin work; what it was performed on was not a genuine Ruckers. - **1774** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer, sale or bequest is documented between Taskin's 1774 workshop and the instrument's presence in the Brussels collection. The Brussels Conservatory's instrument collection, out of which the MIM grew, was founded in 1877 under Victor-Charles Mahillon, who built it through purchases, donations and diplomatic channels; whether this instrument reached Brussels through Mahillon's own acquisitions, an earlier Conservatory holding, or a later donation has not been established in the sources consulted. - **-present** Brussels Conservatory collection, later the Musical Instruments Museum (MIM), Brussels `[documented]` (institutional holding, inv. 3848) The instrument's presence in the MIM collection under inventory number 3848 is documented by the museum's own research programme and publications. The specific date and mechanism of acquisition into the collection are not documented in the sources consulted and are recorded here as a gap, not bridged by inference. - **2013-2016** Musical Instruments Museum, Brussels `[documented]` (research and conservation project on all eighteen Ruckers-attributed instruments in the MIM collection; this instrument's true identity established) Led by Pascale Vandervellen with more than thirty specialists across organology, musicology, art history, conservation and acoustics, the project examined every Ruckers-attributed instrument in the collection by CT scan or X-ray, dendrochronological and dendrological analysis, documentation of rose composition, and pigment and paper sampling. The findings for this instrument were published as a dedicated case study in 2023 and as part of the project's 2017 edited volume. ## Exhibitions - Study and conservation of the MIM's Ruckers instruments (research and restoration project, not a public exhibition), Musical Instruments Museum, Brussels, 2013-2016 - Permanent collection, shown in rotation with the museum's other Ruckers-attributed instruments, Musical Instruments Museum, Brussels, ongoing since restoration ## Literature - Pascale Vandervellen, "Counterfeit Ruckers Instruments in the MIM Collection: A Case Study of the So-Called 'Ruckers-Taskin' Harpsichord," De musica disserenda, vol. 19, no. 1 (2023). - Pascale Vandervellen, ed., The Golden Age of Flemish Harpsichord Making: A Study of the MIM's Ruckers Instruments (Brussels: Musical Instruments Museum, 2017). ## Open questions - What are the specific dendrochronological date ranges, wood species identifications, and comparative rose-composition data reported in the full text of Vandervellen's 2023 case study? Only the study's published summary and abstract could be retrieved for this record. - How and when did the instrument pass from Pascal Taskin's Paris workshop in 1774 into the Brussels Conservatory or MIM collection? No intermediate owner, dealer, sale or donation is documented in the sources consulted. - Was the fraudulent Ruckers attribution, if correctly linked to Antoine Vater's workshop, an isolated act or part of a wider, repeated practice on his part? The general biographical literature on Vater documents his genuine output and his royal position but is silent on any pattern of forged attributions. - Of the MIM's eighteen Ruckers-attributed instruments studied between 2013 and 2016, how many are now considered genuine Ruckers-workshop construction, how many are later fakes comparable to this instrument, and how many are authentic cores under heavy later rework? No published collection-wide tally was located. - What are this instrument's exact dimensions, keyboard compass after the 1774 ravalement, and wood species? None are published in the sources consulted. - Did the MIM change its physical gallery label or printed catalogue text specifically for inventory 3848 after the 2016 findings, and if so, when and how was it worded? Only a general statement that restored instruments are displayed in rotation was located; no source confirms relabeling timing or content for this specific object. ## Sources - [1] Pascale Vandervellen, "Counterfeit Ruckers Instruments in the MIM Collection: A Case Study of the So-Called 'Ruckers-Taskin' Harpsichord," De musica disserenda, vol. 19, no. 1 (2023). Full text not retrieved beyond the published abstract and summary; findings cited here are limited to what that summary states. - [2] Pascale Vandervellen, ed., The Golden Age of Flemish Harpsichord Making: A Study of the MIM's Ruckers Instruments (Brussels: Musical Instruments Museum, 2017), 420 pp., ISBN 978-90-90-10838-4. - [3] Review of The Golden Age of Flemish Harpsichord Making, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, vol. 26, no. 1. - [4] Thomas Strange, review of The Golden Age of Flemish Harpsichord Making, Galpin Society Journal, vol. 72 (March 2019), pp. 242-245. - [5] Musical Instruments Museum, "Study and conservation of the Ruckers instruments of the MIM." - [6] Musical Instruments Museum, "History of the MIM" (founding in 1877, the Fetis and Tagore collections, Victor-Charles Mahillon as first curator). - [7] Musical Instruments Museum, collection page for "Harpsichord with virginal" (Joannes Ruckers, Antwerp, 1619, inv. 2935). - [8] Wikipedia, "Antoine Vater" (biography, Versailles royal position, Telemann connection, surviving instruments). Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with primary Vater biographical scholarship. - [9] Wikipedia, "Pascal Taskin" (biography, royal appointments, ravalement practice, technical innovations). Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with primary Taskin scholarship such as the catalogue underlying the Golden Age volume. - [10] Wikipedia, "Ruckers" (family workshop history, dates, reputation, general note on the existence of counterfeiting). Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with primary organological scholarship. - [11] Wikimedia Commons, File:Ruckers-Taskin, France?, end of 17th century - clavecin - IMG 3889.JPG, photograph by Daderot, 28 September 2010, public domain. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, File:Joannes Ruckers, Antwerp, 1619 - clavecin and virginal - IMG 3885.JPG, photograph by Daderot, 28 September 2010, public domain. - [13] Musee de la musique, Philharmonie de Paris, collection page for "Clavecin Ruckers/Taskin," inv. E.979.2.1 (Andreas II Ruckers, 1646, ravalement by Pascal Taskin, 1780). Cited specifically to distinguish this separate Paris instrument from the Brussels harpsichord that is the subject of this record. - [14] Bibliotheque nationale de France, Gallica, catalogue entry "Clavecin de 1646 et modifie en 1780 / Andreas II Ruckers ; [modifie par] Pascal Taskin," confirming the identity and date of the separate Paris instrument. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.