Master Forger's 'Fake' now Deemed Real: A Dutch masterpiece emerges, possibly from Vermeer's home
- September 28, 2009 11:33
LONDON - He made his name as the world's most ingenious art forger. So when the Courtauld Institute of Art was presented with a copy of a Dutch Golden Age painting by the arch-counterfeiter Hans van Meegeren, the gallery's director accepted the work as a fake of the highest order. Now, 50 years after The Procuress was deemed a forgery – albeit a brilliant one – it has proved to be a genuine 17th-century painting of the Dutch Golden period and may even have hung in Vermeer's home...