Art News

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen announces new findings on Van Meegeren’s forgeries

ROTTERDAM.- New facts have emerged about the greatest forgery of the twentieth century: the ‘Vermeers’ of master forger Han van Meegeren. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen owns possibly the most famous forgery in the Netherlands: The Supper at Emmaus. The latest in the series of publications, Boijmans Studies, deals with the history of this sensational forgery and reveals how Van Meegeren was able to mislead the entire art world. Until now it was believed that Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) used pigments that were common in the seventeenth century. But recent analysis of the forged painting shows that Van Meegeren’s paint also contained pigments that were not introduced until the nineteenth century. It has also emerged that there were indeed concerns about the authenticity of the ‘Vermeers’ at the time. The diary of Willy Auping (then curator at the Kröller-Müller