In 1945, Dutch artist Han van Meegeren fooled the Nazis by selling them forged Vermeer paintings, then proved his deception in court and became a national hero. He duped Hermann Göring into buying a fake "Vermeer" during World War II, trading it for about 137 paintings looted from the Netherlands. When the war ended, van Meegeren was arrested for treason, accused of selling Dutch cultural treasures to the enemy, but his trial revealed a stunning twist: he had painted the works himself, mocking the art world that had rejected him. The forger who once faced execution walked free, celebrated for outsmarting the Third Reich.
The short version
Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter who created forgeries of Johannes Vermeer's works, including "The Supper at Emmaus," and sold them to Nazi officials during World War II. After the war, he was charged with treason for collaborating with the enemy but proved his innocence by demonstrating his forgery technique in court, becoming a folk hero in the Netherlands.
- Han van Meegeren was arrested in 1945 in Amsterdam for selling a forged Vermeer painting to Nazi leader Hermann Göring in 1943.
- The forged painting, "Christ with the Adulteress," was traded for about 137 Dutch paintings that had been looted by the Nazis.
- Van Meegeren's most famous forgery, "The Supper at Emmaus," was created in 1936 and later purchased by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in 1937 as a genuine Vermeer.
- To prove his innocence during his 1947 trial, van Meegeren painted a new "Vermeer" forgery in front of witnesses and court officials.
- He was sentenced to one year in prison for fraud and forgery, and died of a heart attack in 1947 while serving his sentence.
The Man Who Painted His Way Into History
Han van Meegeren was born in 1889 in the Netherlands, in a small city east of Amsterdam. His father was a strict schoolteacher who wanted his son to become an architect, firmly believing that "art doesn't put bread on the table." Young Han dutifully enrolled at a technical university to study architecture, but his heart was never in the blueprints and building plans. He even designed a boathouse for the university's rowing club, showing a creative spark that architecture couldn't contain.
In 1913, van Meegeren made the decisive break: he abandoned architecture entirely and transferred to the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. There he taught for a time, painting portraits and landscapes that earned him some local fame. But the critics were harsh. They dismissed his work as derivative, saying he merely imitated the old masters and produced nothing original. That dismissal, that public judgment that he was just a copycat, lit a fire in him. Van Meegeren fumed at how art dealers and critics assigned value to paintings, and he resolved to show them what a real imitation looked like.
How Han van Meegeren Built a Perfect Forgery Machine
By the 1930s, Han van Meegeren had transformed a small workshop in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a sun-drenched village on the French Riviera, into a laboratory of deception. He spent six years perfecting every detail, not painting pictures, but engineering time itself. He lived lavishly there, hosting parties in rented villas, but the real work happened behind closed doors, where he solved problems that would have stumped any chemist, art historian, or physicist.
The first trick was the canvas. He scoured auctions for cheap 17th-century paintings, mediocre landscapes or forgotten portraits on linen. He carefully scraped the original image off, preserving the old fabric underneath. If anyone ran a carbon-14 test, the flax fibers would date to the 1600s. A modern canvas would betray him instantly. He then ground his own pigments exactly as Vermeer would have: lapis lazuli stones crushed into powder for that deep, expensive blue, and toxic lead white, banned by the 20th century, to create the warm yellows. He never touched a modern paint tube.
The acetone test was his next hurdle. Fresh oil paint, even years old, still dissolves when rubbed with acetone-soaked cotton. A 300-year-old painting, fully polymerized, gives nothing. Van Meegeren solved this by mixing Bakelite, an early plastic invented in 1907, into his oils. He baked the finished paintings in a large oven at just the right temperature. The heat hardened the Bakelite and created craquelure, those fine cracks that naturally appear over centuries. The canvas's original cracks merged with the new ones, producing a surface that looked authentically ancient. He then brushed on a thin layer of varnish and, while it was still tacky, sprinkled household dust and dirt over it. When the varnish dried, the grime was sealed in, mimicking the accumulated filth of generations.
He studied brushstrokes under magnifying glasses and X-rayed canvases to match the weave patterns. He even used lilac oil to achieve exactly the color tones he wanted. By the time he finished, his forgeries smelled old, felt old, and fooled everyone, including the experts who had dismissed his own original work years earlier.
The Supper at Emmaus: The Forgery That Fooled the Experts
In 1937, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam paid 520,000 guilders for what they believed was a newly discovered Johannes Vermeer masterpiece, "The Supper at Emmaus", a painting actually forged by Han van Meegeren in 1936–1937. Renowned art historian Abraham Bredius, then in his eighties, examined the canvas and declared it "a masterpiece!" without hesitation. Van Meegeren had spent six years perfecting a technique that would fool even the most discerning eyes: he scraped down actual 17th-century canvases, mixed his own pigments from lapis lazuli and lead white, and baked his paintings in a makeshift oven to create the crackled finish of age.
Van Meegeren's real genius lay in his subject selection. He studied Vermeer's known works and painted variations, same models, same lighting, same color palettes, but with different poses and compositions. A figure reading a book in one Vermeer became, in van Meegeren's version, the same model reading a letter while seated. This made each forgery feel like a rediscovered variant rather than a direct copy. He produced 14 known forgeries in total, though his grandson believes there were more. The Supper at Emmaus, his first major success, remained undetected for years, hanging proudly in a Dutch museum while van Meegeren collected his fortune.
The Nazi Deal That Almost Got Him Killed
In 1943, Han van Meegeren sold a forged Vermeer painting to Hermann Göring, the second-highest-ranking Nazi official, and that transaction nearly cost him his life when the war ended. The painting, titled Christ and the Adulteress, was a fake, but Göring didn't know that. He traded roughly 137 looted paintings from his personal collection for the forgery, believing he was acquiring a genuine Dutch masterpiece. The invoice van Meegeren signed would later become the smoking gun that landed him in a Dutch prison cell.
The war ended in May 1945. Allied forces began recovering stolen art from Nazi hideouts. They found van Meegeren's painting in Göring's stash, complete with the invoice bearing van Meegeren's name. Dutch authorities arrested him immediately. The charge was treason: "selling Dutch cultural heritage to the Nazis." In the post-war chaos, that was a death sentence waiting to happen.
Dutch citizens were in a fury. Women who had slept with German soldiers had their heads shaved in public squares. Grocers who sold cheese to Nazis were shot on the sidewalk. When van Meegeren was transported to court, crowds gathered and pelted him with tomatoes. They wanted blood. The man who sold Dutch art to the enemy was a traitor, and the public was ready to tear him apart.
Van Meegeren insisted the paintings were his own forgeries, not real Vermeers. But the court didn't believe him. The expert witnesses called to testify were the same art dealers who had sold van Meegeren's forgeries to museums and collectors. If they admitted the paintings were fake, they would be ruined, financially and professionally. They had every reason to keep quiet.
So van Meegeren made a desperate gamble. He told the court: bring me my materials, and I will paint you a fake Vermeer right here in the courtroom. He asked for morphine too, he said he worked better with a clear, relaxed mind. The court agreed. Under supervision, van Meegeren painted Jesus Among the Doctors, a forgery so convincing that the court finally accepted the truth. He was acquitted of treason in 1947. The public flipped overnight: he was no longer a traitor but a folk hero who had outsmarted the Nazis.
The Trial: Proving a Forgery by Forging Again
Han van Meegeren escaped the death penalty for treason by offering to paint a brand-new forgery right there in the courtroom under the judges' watchful eyes. In 1945, facing execution for selling Dutch cultural treasures to Nazi Hermann Göring, the artist made a desperate gamble. He told the court he could prove every painting he sold was a fake by creating a new one on the spot. The judges agreed to the bizarre test.
Van Meegeren reportedly requested morphine during the process, as he was apparently high while creating his earlier forgeries. Under court supervision, he painted "Jesus Among the Doctors," a scene showing the young Christ debating in the temple. The work took several weeks to complete. When finished, the court's experts examined it and had no choice but to accept his claim. The judges acquitted him of treason in October 1947.
He was convicted of art forgery instead and sentenced to one year in prison. During the trial, he reportedly told the court: "If you execute me, all my forged Vermeers will forever belong to Vermeer." The statement captured the impossible bind the art world now faced. Van Meegeren died of a heart attack on December 30, 1947, while serving his sentence at the Valeriusplein prison in Amsterdam.
FAQ: The Forger Who Became a Folk Hero
Why was Van Meegeren considered a hero?
Han van Meegeren became a folk hero because he fooled Nazi leader Hermann Göring by selling him a fake Vermeer painting in 1943, which the Dutch public viewed as a clever wartime trick rather than collaboration with the enemy. After World War II ended, van Meegeren was originally arrested for treason, accused of selling Dutch cultural treasures to the Nazis. To prove his innocence, he confessed the painting was a forgery, and in doing so, revealed he had swindled one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich. The Dutch, who had suffered under Nazi occupation, celebrated him as a trickster who outwitted the enemy. He went from being pelted with tomatoes by an angry crowd outside the courthouse to being hailed as a national hero practically overnight.
Did his forgeries end up in museums?
Yes. Van Meegeren's most famous forgery, "The Supper at Emmaus," hung in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam for decades after the museum purchased it in 1937 for 520,000 guilders. It was displayed as a genuine Johannes Vermeer until experts finally exposed the fraud in the 1940s. According to the original account, van Meegeren's grandson has suggested that some of his forgeries may still be displayed as genuine works in museums today, though this remains unconfirmed. The lingering uncertainty has made art historians and curators across Europe reexamine their Vermeer collections with new scrutiny.
How did his technique hold up?
Van Meegeren's technique fooled contemporary experts through a remarkable combination of period-correct pigments and a modern invention called Bakelite. He ground his own paints from lapis lazuli for blue and lead white for yellow, matching 17th-century recipes exactly. The Bakelite, a precursor to plastic, was mixed into his paints and then hardened in a large oven, creating the crackle patterns and surface hardness of a 300-year-old painting. Modern forensic science, however, would easily detect his forgeries today. Techniques like X-ray fluorescence and pigment analysis can identify the Bakelite and other anachronistic materials that were invisible to experts in the 1930s and 1940s. His forgeries passed the acetone test of his era, where a cotton swab dipped in acetone would not pick up paint from an old, fully dried surface, but modern chemistry would expose them instantly.
What happened to the Göring trade?
After the war, the about 137 real paintings that Göring traded for van Meegeren's fake Vermeer were recovered by the Allied forces. These were genuine artworks that Göring had looted or purchased across occupied Europe, and they were returned to their original owners or their heirs. The trade itself was a staggering deal: a single forged painting in exchange for a collection of authentic masterpieces. The invoice that van Meegeren had issued for the sale was discovered among Göring's possessions, which is what originally led investigators to arrest van Meegeren on treason charges. The recovered paintings represent one of the stranger footnotes to the vast art restitution efforts that followed World War II.
Editor's note: Facts presented in this article are based on confirmed historical records; any unverified details are noted as such.
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