# Van Meegeren and the Invented Vermeer > Han van Meegeren did not copy a Vermeer. He painted the missing evidence for a published scholarly hypothesis, and the certificate that followed did all the selling. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/van-meegeren-and-the-invented-vermeer/ ## Key points - The Supper at Emmaus succeeded because it supplied evidence for an existing scholarly hypothesis about a lost Italianate phase in Vermeer, not because it resembled a known Vermeer. - The phenol formaldehyde medium was chosen to defeat the two authentication tests in general use in the 1930s, the solvent swab and the needle, which is a narrower problem than looking old. - Abraham Bredius published his endorsement in The Burlington Magazine in 1937, and the later religious pictures inherited the credibility the first one had established. - Van Meegeren was convicted in November 1947 of forgery and deception, not of the collaboration charge that caused his arrest, and he died before serving the sentence. ## He forged the Vermeer the literature had already predicted ## The medium was engineered against the tests, not against the eye ## The certificate, not the canvas, moved the money ## The trial ran backwards: he had to prove his own criminality ## What the affair actually established about expert consensus The Bakelite is the detail everyone remembers and the least important part of the case. Van Meegeren's real invention was procedural: he identified a gap that a named authority had publicly wished to fill, produced an object that filled it, and let a single certificate carry the picture into a museum where nobody would examine it again. The tests have improved beyond recognition since 1937. The procedure that defeated them has not changed at all. ## Questions **Is the Supper at Emmaus still in the Boijmans collection?** Yes. The museum retains it under van Meegeren's own name, dated 1937, inventory number St 1, and its collection record lists it as held in the depot. It is kept as a document of the forgery rather than shown as a Vermeer. **Would the Bakelite have been detectable in 1937?** Not by the tests then in routine use. The solvent swab and the needle probe measured hardness and solubility, both of which the baked phenol formaldehyde film satisfied. Identifying the resin required the laboratory analysis that Paul Coremans's commission carried out after 1945. **Why did the Goering transaction lead to a forgery conviction rather than a collaboration conviction?** Because van Meegeren's admission that he had painted the picture removed the factual basis of the collaboration charge: no Dutch national treasure had passed to the enemy. He was tried instead for forgery and obtaining money by deception, and sentenced to one year in November 1947. **How reliable are the reported purchase prices?** They should be treated as unverified. The most cited figure is 520,000 guilders, with higher figures up to 550,000 also in circulation, while the museum's own published collection record gives no price and dates the acquisition to 1939. Any conversion into modern currency is derived and date-dependent. ## Sources - [1] Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, collection record for The Supper at Emmaus, Han van Meegeren, 1937, inv. St 1. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Han van Meegeren'. Tertiary source, used here for the technique, the Bredius endorsement, the Goering transaction, the trial dates and the Keisch lead-210 work; each should be replaced with the primary record. - [3] Intent to Deceive: Fakes and Forgeries in the Art World, forger profile, Han van Meegeren. - [4] Stanford University Libraries, SearchWorks catalogue record for P. B. Coremans, 'Van Meegeren's faked Vermeers and De Hooghs: a scientific examination', trans. A. Hardy and C. Hutt, Amsterdam: J. M. Meulenhoff, 1949.