What do you think of this fact?
Selling a national treasure to a Nazi makes you a traitor. Unless the treasure is a fake. That’s exactly the argument the painter Han van Meegeren used to save himself after World War II.
A Vermeer for Göring
Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter whose own pictures hardly anyone wanted. So he painted in the style of the famous 17th-century artist Johannes Vermeer and passed the works off as newly discovered originals.
It worked surprisingly well. According to History Hit, he sold the painting “Christ and the Adulteress” to Hermann Göring, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. Göring paid over 1.5 million guilders.
According to History Hit, van Meegeren sold another work, “The Supper at Emmaus”, for 520,000 guilders. Experts at the time celebrated it as one of the most important Vermeers ever.
Proof in front of witnesses
In 1945, after the war ended, Allied soldiers found Göring’s art collection in a salt mine. The supposed Vermeer was among it. The trail led to van Meegeren, and he was arrested. He was facing charges of collaboration for selling Dutch cultural property to the enemy.
Van Meegeren had only one way out: he confessed that he had painted the picture himself. At first, nobody wanted to believe him. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, he therefore painted a new “Vermeer” in custody, in front of witnesses, to prove it.
Bonus fact: In the end, van Meegeren wasn’t convicted as a traitor. According to History Hit, he got one year in prison for forgery. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, he never served it, because he died first.
For many people in the Netherlands, that made him a sort of folk hero. After all, he had fooled one of the most powerful Nazis.
Göring’s art collection ended up with a rather embarrassing showpiece. And van Meegeren became more famous for a fake than for any of the real paintings he ever made.