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Notes -
For certain variants of 'successful.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoedler#Art_fraud_scandal_and_closure
https://www.insider.com/cases-of-faked-and-forged-artwork-2019-1
It seems entirely plausible that a single work, if faked convincingly enough, could probably be passed along for an indefinite amount of time without being noticed.
Interestingly, this starts to dovetail with the AI art debate. Do we care more about art that is actually the result of a human mind guiding human hands? Is that art more valuable?
I do think we can find more value in a work that has a traceable connection to our distant history, and that a version of the Mona Lisa that has, e.g. flecks of Leonardo Da Vinci's skin flakes in the ink from the painting process is more 'authentic' than a mostly-identical copy done by some other guy who is still alive.
On the other hand, I think that there are examples where fakery has even more drastic consequences, epistemic and otherwise, than merely replacing human artifacts that we are at least certain did exist at one point:
https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease
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