Author Jonathan Lopez tells of the story of one of the world's greatest forgers (that we know of....) Han van Meegeren. Van Meegeren produced a seemingly endless stream of faked paintings (many supposedly by Vermeer) during the period leading up to, and into, World War II.

Looking at his forgeries now, one can't help but ask how anyone could have been fooled by his ghastly imitations of Vermeers' extraordinary work. Lopez provides an intriguing answer. The key to a great forgery is giving what people what they want to see. That changes over the years, so a forger must be unerringly attuned to his time and place.

Han van Meegeren was able to create "lost" Vermeers that gave the art world (and the Nazis) just what they wanted -- a phase of the great artist's career when he focused on religious subjects. Religious subjects that "just happened" to reinforce the Nazi's belief in a pure and superior European stock.

Forgeries don't have to stand for centuries (and usually they don't), they only need to fool people during the course of the forger's lifetime. Thanks to some nifty and determined detective work at the end of war, van Meegeren's ruse didn't last as long as that.

Lopez covers much other ground in this wonderful book, but I'll close here and refer you to bruchu's excellent LibraryThing review if you'd like to learn more. ( )

Great portrait of an artist turned forger who gave people what they wanted to believe in -- a missing period of Vermeer. Dutch speaking author, Lopez, uses original sources, tells a well-paced story of Han van Meegeren among the art dealers in Netherlands and doing what ever it might take, evencynically using a childhood friend, to make his millions, one fake at a time. Also an interesting story of wartime and post-war Netherlands; HvM convicted of minor crimes, died before serving a single day.

A Real Talented Mr. Ripley

This is the story of Han van Meegeren, a Dutch artist who made a living producing art as forgeries in the name of Vermeer during the interwar and World War II period. Writing this popular history is Jonathan Lopez, an art historian and writer by trade.

I never heard of van Meegeren before I picked up this book. The story seems so fantastical, about an obscure Dutch painter passing off his forgeries as Vermeer and fooling everyone doing it. Though mostly a biographical recount, the book is revisionist. Lopez dispels the myth that van Meegeren was a simple man who forged Vermeer as a way to avenge the critics who looked down on his own work and that he was not a Nazi collaborator because he tried to swindle one. Lopez argues rather that van Meegeren was a mastermind who made an elaborate career out of forgery and his Nazi connections went beyond simple collaboration including painting Nazi literature.

A couple of other interesting points that Lopez makes is that forgeries succeed not merely on their technical merits but on the "basis of its power to sway the contemporary mind" (p. 6). And van Meegeren's evil genius to pull off the greatest deceptions was not technical prowess as a visual artist but rather his "use and misuse of history" (p. 10).

Overall, the book is well-written and extremely well-researched including 50-plus pages worth of endnotes. Lopez's narrative is very fluid, easy to read and simply a joy to read. No prior art history knowledge is required to thoroughly enjoy this great text. ( )