The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [73]
Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague
Museum Boymans–van Beuningen, Rotterdam
In 1937, Bredius announced that he had discovered the greatest Vermeer of all, Christ at Emmaus. Amid frantic excitement and at Bredius’s desperate urging, the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam purchased the picture. Here the museum director, Dirk Hannema, and the museum’s chief restorer, H. G. Luitwieler, study the masterpiece.
Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, the two most powerful men in Nazi Germany, pose at a hunting lodge. Goering adored hunting, Hitler detested it, but art was a shared preoccupation. Each man fancied himself an expert. With the aid of dealers and scouts, they looted museums and private collections throughout Europe and gathered trophies by the thousands. Goering, always ready to grovel to stay on Hitler’s good side, knew better than to compete openly. When Hitler grabbed a Vermeer that Goering had coveted, Goering could only look on miserably. In time Van Meegeren would provide Goering a “Vermeer” of his own.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Goering had a taste for every indulgence. “After all, I am a Renaissance man,” he boasted. He liked to pile up diamonds and rubies and emeralds in great heaps, and run his hands through them. Here he shops for jewelry.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
A man of boundless vanity, Goering posed at his dressing table with an array of perfumes and oils. He changed uniforms several times a day and once appeared at a tea, a fellow Nazi reported, “in a sort of Roman toga and sandals studded with jewels, his fingers bedecked with innumerable jeweled rings and generally covered with ornaments, his face painted and his lips rouged.”
Goering had been handsome as a young man but grew immensely fat, “at least a yard across as the crow flies,” according to one American official in Berlin. As this New Yorker cartoon from 1943 shows, he never lost his taste for pomp.
Saul Steinberg, Hermann Goering. Ink on paper, Originally published in The New Yorker, March 6, 1943, © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
National Archives
In the spring of 1945, with Germany in ruins, the Nazis worked desperately to hide away their stolen art. Deep inside a salt mine the Nazis had converted into a colossal art ware house, an American soldier inspected a looted painting. Thousands more paintings filled endless racks.
National Archives
Goering tried to hide his looted art near Berchtesgaden, in the Bavarian Alps. The Allies found it, and the men of the 101st Airborne arranged an impromptu art show in a local hotel. The paintings alone filled forty rooms.
AP Images
Walter Hofer, Goering’s personal art curator, spent the war years helping Goering choose paintings to “purchase.” Here he poses amid the looted pictures on display at the 101st Airborne art show, as proud as any legitimate collector.
Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst, The Hague
On October 29, 1947, Han van Meegeren was tried for forgery. His “Vermeers” lined the courtroom, the first time they had ever been displayed together. Isaac Blessing Jacob, a “Vermeer” that sold for the equivalent of $6.1 million today, can be seen on the right. Van Meegeren is at the center of the photo, head in hands.
Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst, The Hague
To prove the truth of his claim that he had painted the Vermeers that all Europe had admired, Van Meegeren painted one more while in police custody. He chose yet another biblical “Vermeer,” this one called Jesus Teaching in the Temple. Jesus rests his hands on an open Bible, a small joke on Van Meegeren’s part.
Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst, The Hague
Van Meegeren was fifty-eight at the time of his trial, though he looked older. In many ways the trial—and the opportunity to tell the world how he had fooled it—marked a highlight