Han van Meegeren was able to supply the court with detailed descriptions of the process he had undergone to produce forged Vermeers. First, he would search through antique shops to find inexpensive old paintings that could be removed from their backing with sandpaper and pumice stone, leaving a genuine seventeenth-century canvas, frame, handmade nails and aged leather corner pieces. Next, he discussed how he had painstakingly prepared homemade paints and binding agents according to historic recipes. He applied these to the canvas using the same badger-hair brushes used by Vermeer. After extremely thorough studies of Vermeer’s paintings and working methods, he was able to duplicate the master’s techniques for priming, paint selection. application methods, composition, light distribution, perspective, figure work, color heightening, and varnish selection. By blending phenol and formaldehyde with his pigments, they hardened upon drying and baking in the oven, to imitate centuries of natural drying. Rolling the canvas around a metal tube created cracks and fissures to imitate the “crackalure” of an aged painting. Pigment was subtly placed into the cracks so they did not appear new.
Van Meegeren even painted a new “old masterpiece” in his jail cell in the presence of witnesses, to demonstrate that he had the skills necessary to produce a believable forgery. Evidence began to accumulate to support van Meegeren’s claim. For example, investigators found, upon searching the van Meegeren home, objects such as plates and glasses that appeared in some of the paintings in question.
Reports from earlier examinations of the paintings by art historians and paintings conservators who had “authenticated” them were used to try to counteract the evidence. The style and quality of the paintings had been considered authentic by leading art historians. In fact, one of the questioned paintings had been published in a major peer-reviewed art history journal as being a newly-discovered early work by Vermeer that was “a masterpiece, his crowning achievement.” Another journal, in describing an exhibition that included that painting, called it “the spiritual focus of the exhibition.” Yet another art historian published it as “a miracle of painting.”
The authenticators had tested the paintings’ surfaces with alcohol and other solvents using small cotton swabs. Newly-painted works are usually dissolvable, whereas aged paintings are usually hardened and resistant to solvent attack. The alleged forgeries had been found to be resistant to the solvents. In addition, microscopic and chemical analyses of the pigments done at the time of purchase had shown them to have a composition typical of Dutch seventeenth-century palettes. X-radiography had shown nothing unusual under the paint layers.
However, as the controversy continued and with van Meegeren’s claims beginning to appear valid, the court assembled an impressive array of scientists to conduct a fresh and in-depth technical study of the 14 paintings van Meegeren claimed to have forged.
List as many types of scientific data and avenues for scientific research that you can think of which might provide evidence for or against authenticity.
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