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After the Second World War the Dutch painter Han van Meegeren faced a possible death sentence for selling a Vermeer, a Dutch national treasure, to Hermann Göring. His defence was that the painting was not a Vermeer at all but his own forgery, and to prove it he painted another one under supervision.

Amsterdam, 1945

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Critics had dismissed van Meegeren's own paintings as derivative, and he set out to fool them. He mixed Bakelite, an early plastic, into his paints and baked the canvases so the paint hardened like centuries-old oil, then rolled them to make cracks and filled the cracks with ink. In 1937 the leading Vermeer expert Abraham Bredius hailed his Supper at Emmaus as a masterpiece. Göring gave 137 looted paintings for another fake, Christ with the Adulteress. Arrested in May 1945, van Meegeren painted Jesus among the Doctors in front of witnesses. In November 1947 he was convicted of forgery and fraud, not collaboration, and sentenced to a year in prison, but he died of a heart attack that December.

Türkçe oku
Hollandalı ressam Han van Meegeren, İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın ardından, ulusal hazine sayılan bir Vermeer tablosunu Hermann Göring'e sattığı için idam cezası tehlikesiyle karşılaştı. Savunması, tablonun hiç de Vermeer olmadığı, kendi yaptığı bir sahte olduğuydu. Bunu kanıtlamak için gözetim altında bir tane daha yaptı.
Amsterdam, 1945

Eleştirmenler van Meegeren'in kendi tablolarını özgün bulmamış, eski ustaların taklidi saymıştı; o da onları kandırmaya karar verdi. Boyalarına ilk plastiklerden biri olan bakalit kattı, tuvalleri fırınlayıp boyayı yüzyıllık yağlıboya gibi sertleştirdi, sonra üzerlerinden silindir geçirerek çatlaklar açtı ve çatlakları mürekkeple doldurdu. 1937'de dönemin önde gelen Vermeer uzmanı Abraham Bredius, onun yaptığı Emmaus'ta Akşam Yemeği'ni bir başyapıt ilan etti. Göring, Zina Eden Kadın ve İsa adlı başka bir sahte tablo için yağmalanmış 137 tablo verdi. Mayıs 1945'te tutuklanan van Meegeren, tanıkların önünde Doktorlar Arasında İsa'yı yaptı. Kasım 1947'de işbirlikçilikten değil, sahtecilik ve dolandırıcılıktan suçlu bulundu ve bir yıl hapse mahkûm edildi; ama aynı yılın aralık ayında kalp krizinden öldü.

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Background reading: Han van Meegeren
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