Dutch painter Han van Meegeren is best-known not for his own work - but for his forgeries of the great 17th Century artist Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer specialised in domestic interior scenes of bourgeois life, and in the early-1900s many art historians were debating whether or not the Dutch maestro had painted several biblical scenes which had been lost. Fellow Dutchman Van Meegeren pounced on the opportunity to both showcase his own talent and to gain a quick bob by attempting to trick the art experts by creating "The Disciples at Emmaus" or "Supper at Emmaus" piece in 1937. With detail paid to creating fake cracks and aged hardness to make the painting look almost 300 years old, art experts rushed to confirm the work as genuine. Van Meegeren continued to try and deceive art critics as he created fake "lost paintings" by Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and others. But it was another painting he passed off as Vermeer's which proved his undoing - as he sold "Christ with the Adulteres" to Nazi art dealer Alois Miedl in 1942. This work was then sold on to Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring - and was confiscated by the Allies following World War II. With Van Meegeren arrested by the Dutch government for conspiring to sell a "national treasure" to the Nazis, the con-man was forced to out himself as a fraud and instead was sentenced to one year in jail. He died just two months into his prison term, however.
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.