The Forger Who Fooled the Nazis

What actually happened

Van Meegeren had spent years perfecting the technical forgery: seventeenth-century canvases scraped bare, pigments ground to period recipes, bakelite hardened in ovens to fake three centuries of aging. His 'Vermeers' fooled the era's leading connoisseurs partly because he painted what they had predicted a missing period of Vermeer would look like.

Treason carried a death sentence; forgery carried one year. He was convicted of forgery in 1947 and died weeks later. Some of his fakes hung in museums for years afterward, and the episode flags which attributions remain argued about.

The play to remember

Experts authenticate what they expect to find. The strongest forgery isn't a copy. It's a confirmation of the expert's own theory.