The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [141]
“My flyers are no projectionists”…Ibid.
“I felt,” Wagener wrote…Henry A. Turner, Jr., ed., Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, pp. 117–19.
Of his eight houses…Nicholas, p. 36.
“carved French cupids”…Flanner, p. 245.
Every design decision…David Irving, p. 136.
Under a soaring dome…Kenneth Alford, Great treasure Stories of World War II, p. 26 (Mason City, Iowa: Savas, 2000).
model railroad…David Irving, p. 217.
“After all, I am a Renaissance man”…Fest, p. 71, and David Irving, p. 324.
“Goering is by no means”…Mosley, p. 390.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ADOLF HITLER
Whenever someone on Hitler’s staff…Fest, p. 75.
“Adolf Hitler is my conscience”…Ibid.
“How shall I say, my Fuehrer”…G. M. Gilbert, “Hermann Goering: Amiable Psychopath,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 43, no. 2 (April 1948), p. 221.
“the picture war”…Speer, p. 213.
“a man of many parts”…Goldensohn, p. 106.
Hitler, on the other hand…Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Esthetics, pp. 7–8.
Twice he applied…Ibid. pp. 123–25.
In Vienna shortly before…Ibid., pp. 127–28.
“After being appointed chancellor”…Ibid., p. xi.
The day after…Ibid., p. 385.
Long after his world…. Ibid., p. xi. This anecdote, with a photograph of Hitler raptly contemplating his model, serves as the opening of Spotts’s compelling book.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CHASING VERMEER
“an opportunity never before offered”…Spotts, p. 191.
“only the best”…Ibid., p. 187.
“not up to the level”…Feliciano, p. 22.
He died without a penny…Albert Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 163, and Anthony Bailey,
Vermeer: A View of Delft, p. 134.
Vermeer “may have given himself”…Kenneth Clark, Looking at Pictures, p. 104.
The art historian Willem van de Watering…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 163.
“the heavy oak table”…Norbert Schneider, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, p. 82.
“doubt or disbelief”…Ivan Gaskell, Vermeer’s Wager, p. 40.
Vermeer’s own wife…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 163.
“No other work so flawlessly”…Ibid., p. 49.
At that time and for Decades…Ibid., p. 163.
Duveen and the American tycoon Andrew Mellon…Nicholas, p. 47.
Reemtsa contributed hundreds of thousands…Ibid., p. 37.
In today’s dollars, the final price…Reemtsa had offered 1.8 million marks; Hitler’s price was 1.625 million marks. See Spotts, p. 198.
Count Jaromir Czernin wrote…Nicholas, p. 40.
One color illustration after another…Spotts, pp. 193–94.
Hendrickje Stoffels has since been…Ibid., p. 199.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GOERING’S ART COLLECTION
“Rommel has completely lost”…David Irving, p. 372.
Rommel returned to Africa furious…Mosely, p. 355.
He visited twenty times…Feliciano, p. 36.
“The following items were loaded”…David Irving, p. 371.
“the armistice with the French”…Feliciano, p. 40.
When war broke out…Ibid., pp. 45–46.
“As far as the confiscated”…David Irving, p. 302.
With art as with mass…Flanner, p. 229.
One admiring biographer…Ibid., p. 300.
In all, the Germans confiscated…Feliciano, pp. 44–45.
Those crates marked H 1…Ibid., p. 47.
The astronomer may actually be…Schneider, p. 77.
The Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock…“The Geographer,” Wheelock, ed., Johannes Vermeer, p. 172.
Unusually, The Astronomer…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 13.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: INSIGHTS FROM A FORGER
“There are only three”…Author interview, Nov. 4, 2005. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Myatt in this chapter are from this interview.
But as ancient as forgery…See the fascinating two-part article by Robert Hughes, “Art and Money,” New Art Examiner, October 1984, and November 1984.
“inch for inch”…Flanner, p. xxi.
Thomas Hoving is fond…Hoving chose Horace’s remark as the epigraph for False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-time Art Fakes. Joseph Alsop cited Phaedrus’s warning in his essay “The Faker’s Art,” in New York Review of Books, Oct. 23, 1986.
The challenge for a forger…E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, p. 309. Gombrich made the Van Gogh–Millet comparison and illustrated it with Van Gogh’s Cornfield and Millet’s Cornfield.
While Myatt did his best…The information in this paragraph