The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [74]
32
THE CARAVAGGIO CONNECTION
The story of Christ at Emmaus comes from the Gospel according to Luke. Three days after the crucifixion, Jesus’s tomb has been found empty. Two downcast disciples who have not yet heard that Christ is risen trudge their way along the road from Jerusalem. Jesus joins them but does not reveal his identity. In the town of Emmaus the three travelers sit down to supper. “And it came to pass,” Luke tells us, “as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.”
What artist could resist a scene that so dramatically combined joy and astonishment? Not Rembrandt or Dürer or Velasquez or Rubens, nor a host of lesser names. Caravaggio painted two different versions. Van Meegeren chose the second of these two Caravaggios, painted in 1606, and stuck close to it.
Why Caravaggio?
Van Meegeren needed to take someone as a model, that much was clear, for he was simply not good enough to leap to Vermeer’s height from ground level. Caravaggio was a brilliant, mischievous choice because there had long been speculation in art circles that Vermeer had studied Caravaggio’s work and been much influenced by it. Some historians even argued, though without proof, that Vermeer had traveled to Italy and studied Caravaggio on his home ground. But even if Vermeer never left Holland, which may well be the case, he knew Italian painting well—recall that he had been called as an expert in a legal case that turned on the authenticity of a collection of Italian paintings. Moreover, the city of Utrecht, only a short distance from Delft, had been home to a group of painters so indebted to Caravaggio that they were called Caravaggisti, followers of Caravaggio. Vermeer indisputably knew their work.
When Hannema put together his Vermeer exhibition in 1935, he had titled the show “Vermeer: Sources and Influences,” and he went out of his way to link Vermeer and Caravaggio. “In the exhibit’s first room,” Hannema wrote in his catalog, “a number of works by Utrecht masters like Honthorst, Baburen, and Terbruggen will be found.” Lest anyone miss his meaning, Hannema spelled out the reason he had included works by the Caravaggisti in a show dedicated to Vermeer. “They are related to early works by Vermeer.”
Every forgery is a game of “I think that you think that…” The forger needs to anticipate the connoisseur’s expectations and build in precisely those touches that will move the expert to say, “Just as I figured.” Van Meegeren could be sure that any connoisseur would murmur appreciative words about a painting based on a work by Caravaggio but incorporating allusions to Vermeer.
The Hannema show had called enormous attention to Vermeer. But experts on Dutch art wanted to do more than argue in favor of a Caravaggio-Vermeer link. They yearned to prove, once and for all, that the link was a solid, tangible fact. Two months after the Hannema exhibition closed, the Dutch critic Pieter Koomen suggested that one day a new Vermeer might be discovered that would establish the Caravaggio-Vermeer tie beyond any question. Caravaggio had influenced Vermeer, Koomen wrote in the highly regarded Maandblad voor Beeldende Kunsten, but that influence had been subtle and elusive. Then Koomen went on to write one of the astonishing sentences in the entire Van Meegeren saga: “Perhaps tomorrow we will discover a thus far unknown painting, and next year another one, which will convincingly show this influence.”
Such a discovery would be almost too much to hope for. But if by some fluke such a Vermeer did appear—a painting that precisely vindicated Hannema’s view of Vermeer—one thing was sure: Hannema would move heaven and earth to acquire it.
Hannema and Koomen had not quite fallen into the trap of the Piltdown paleontologists—they had not predicted the existence of a missing link. But they had done Van Meegeren almost as