Doing Crime to Prove You're Innocent: the Han Van Meegeren Story

He was trained to be a fine art painter. Early on, he was considered “gifted.” But times change, tastes change, and the art world moves on...Han Van Meegeren wanted his revenge for being left behind. His plan: art forgery of the great masters of the past. But then came World War II, and a huge complication, one that meant he had to do crime to prove his innocence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey Elizabeth, Hey Zaren over here?

Speaker 3 (00:05):
Hey? Oh wait where?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Oh over there? How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I got a question for you.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
These sunglasses are really dark.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
They're cool looking, though, they're super cool. What are the stars?
You look like Bootsy Collins?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
You like the sunset printed in a hologram on the lens.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's really dope. Those like those AI, That's what that is.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
It's I am on Aiah.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
I am.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thank you, me too.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Take it till you can make it right.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
An's sister.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
So, I got a question for you. Do you know
what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Do I do know it's ridiculous? First, I gotta just
ask you a quick question.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh you're gonna do a reverse too, card you know
what's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Do you own cowboy boots?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah? The ones that I really like and one that
like I should give away.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Okay. Do you wear them all the time?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Not often enough? I don't have cause you're not gonna
wear them around the house only not gonna wear them
like the safe way. Yeah. I just wear them at
the beach. Yeah, it's a good look.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Are you in the market for like a new pair
coup with it.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
I actually am I'm looking forward to.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah, how do you feel about cowboy boots made in Texas?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Problem with that?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
I think it's great. I mean that's like where they're from, right,
are invented shoes were invented in Texas. Yes. Now there's
this company, to Covas tech of Us, toko Us.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm supporting you.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
T e c o v A s in which I
thought would be like to Kova's, but it's not. It's
toke of Us. It is AnyWho. They it's a cowboy
boot company and their boots run like three four hundred dollars,
which I think is like a good solid They're not
cheap o' yet You're not going to run and have
like your little toe come out of a split in

(01:41):
the side of it, which would be so embarrassing and
probably painful. Anyway, So they have these new boots that
they're introducing, and they're rooted in Texas with a flair
for the bold, their hands around with all the quality
you expect from a tokouse dress boot. It's the material
that's a little bit different.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
What is a material? Are we like past ostrich skin
and alligator.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
And human skin.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
No, it's green gators.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
No, it's it's the material that they used to make
booths at Chili's, the fast casual restaurant.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Like baby Back, Baby Back Baby, I got rip.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, those the red booth they have it Chilis.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Never don't like vinyl.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
I guess I don't know. I've not been in the Chili's.
I think maybe once. I don't really recall it. No,
what I'm looking at photos here and there, so it's
like a deep red anyway, they've teamed up. They're making
booth boots, boots, boot and scooty booty AnyWho. So there's
a men's version, in a women's version, it's a chili

(02:45):
pepper inlay, the custom Chili's toe bug. I don't know
what that.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
By the way, this is a mash up and I'm disappointed.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
And a bold chaft pattern, which is what you know,
anyone wants to hear it. And then Goodyear welded leather,
sold and built to stand out like a Texas sunset.
So you didn't know you needed those, but you do.
And so they dropped on July twenty ninth. I don't
know if there's still some available there only you can

(03:15):
only get them online, so you can't go like test
drive them and see how fast you can run in them.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
When you're in the store, you're a little kid.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
The men's and women's boots run three hundred and forty
five a pair. There's also a belt if you're not
like fully committed, that's.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Seventy five dollars fully committed.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, but that was inspired by vintage Chili's uniforms and
crafted from booth material.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
These things you find, these things I find anybody like.
I've never seen them in the wild, not a single
thing you've ever mentioned to me. Have I ever seen anyone?
And I go to airports, I see like across country
as a airport country.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
I can tell you something. I look around, I watch
the news. I got my finger on the pulse, I
bet you do. I look at these things on the internet,
and I say to myself over and over again, end
of the Empire.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
I thought you said yourself screws Zaren.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Well there's also that, But like when you see these things,
and these are all just the sign posts the end
of the empire, you better believe it.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
We're way past bread and circuses.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Oh yeah, no, we weren't Chile's.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Booth boots, I mean running out of a crime may. Yeah,
well I got one for you, yes, and it's a
good one. Okay. This one actually is a question, well
not really, it's a statement, but it's kind of a question.
When you go to court to prove your innocence and
the judge makes you do a crime to prove that
you didn't do a different crime, that's that's ridiculous, right, because.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Confusing and ridiculous. And I love it.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free. And
what's that one hundred percent ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (05:12):
One hundred percent?

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yo, Elizabeth Yo, MTV raps. Have I got a wild
bit of jurisprudence for you today?

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Love this?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I love this one because of how rare it is
that a judge asks you to do a crime to
prove your innocence for a.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Different crime, or just to do a crime in general.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, like in court, do the crime. Let me see
you do the crime.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
That guy.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
So this one is about a famous art forger, or
rather I should say infamous. Now before we start, I
have a quick question, just for some table setting. What
do you know about the painter at Johannes.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Vermiir Ummm, he's dead, very.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Good, ding ding ding silver star for her. Now many
know the name of Vermir right, and in the last
two decades, his most famous work has been the subject
of a book by the author Tracy Chevalier called The
Girl with a Pearl Ring. Okay, the book is not
about Vermire as much as it's about the subject of
his most famous painting, The Girl. Yeah. The story focus
is on the sixteen year old Dutch girl named Grie.

(06:03):
She's hired to be a maid for the Vermire household.
And then it's a tale as old as time. Elizabeth,
middle aged artist, becomes entranced by her. He's enchanted by
her demeanor. She's quiet, intelligent, eyed, working class girl. In
the painter he does what should surprise no one. He
nearly loses his happy home as he falls for her
and brings her into his studio and eventually asked her
to pose for his most famous work of art.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
He got to love and imbalance of power right now.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
That same story also became a movie with the title.
It starred Scarlett Johansson right right, right, scarleto yeah, exactly,
everybody in the all.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Of her friends call her that.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
And also I'm not one of her friends.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Colin Firth, mister Darcy vermiir cofir. Now, did you see
that movie A Girl with a earlier?

Speaker 4 (06:48):
You know?

Speaker 3 (06:48):
I may have, I may have not. I'm gonna guess no,
I don't think you did. It's like, have you been
in a Chili's? I don't think so. Have you seen
that movie? I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Now I did not see it back in two thousand
and three when it came out.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Was that when he came out?

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, because the question of willy sixteen year old girl
remained the muse or become the lover of a middle
aged painter held no charm for me. Yeah. In Anthony
Lane's review for The New Yorker, he compared this film
to the work of stuffing dead animals. As Lane writes
in his review of the rather beautifully shot film, I
have to admit is that quote. The danger with such
beautifying efforts is that it risks turning cinema into a

(07:21):
branch of taxidermy. Oh interesting, Yeah, which I'm fairly certain
it's not. Meant as a compliment now. In her review
for the Atlanta Weekly, Creative Loafing, film critic Felicia Feaster
wrote that quote Johansson floats through the film as a beautiful,
pale question mark, the perfect projection for the fantasies of
the men around her again two thousand and three, so

(07:42):
kind of par for the course.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
I love that we're just like it was a different time.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
It wasn't that long, Yeah it was, Nick. There are
children who were born then, or people in college. We
were born then, now children who were born people in
college are children whatever.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Twenty year old little bit, which.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
This kind of gets at Vermier's whole deal, right, you
know this the seventeenth century Dutch painter. He's mostly known
for his portraits of women, usually alone, set typically in
a domestic setting, and they're captured in ethereal light and
rendered in primary colors red, yellow, blue, Which is also
why I don't go Vermere. It's just not my bag.
Why don't I like vermir great question, Elizabeth. It's because

(08:17):
I like women as people, you know, like I guess,
human beings, not as like subjects frozen in time to
be gawkeed at, like The most they can offer us
is how they beautified the world of men. Now, seeing
young women doing domestic chores as light renders them luminous
and exquisite just doesn't do anything for me. Now. The
dude's catalog, though, of masterpieces, it counts a thirty six
paintings that's in his life's work. Now, twenty one of

(08:40):
them feature young women doing mundane task like cooking, cleaning, sewing.
And look how the light falls on some Dutch milk
maid's porcelain beauty as she stares rather vacantly, almost sensuously.
You see my points?

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, the women, they show no signs of real interiority,
not like on the mona Lisa does, or inner life
of their own. Basically, it's really just that skin deep.
The art blog I found this art blog museum Hack.
They sarcastically put it, quote a male artist sexualizing women
who are just doing their damn jobs. Groundbreaking, But I digress.
So the important point is that Johannes Vermir painted his

(09:15):
master works way back in the sixteen hundreds, right, So
since he's painted his masterpieces some three and a half
centuries ago, not much is known about the artist, and
we do know, in his lifetime he painted forty five paintings,
and thirty six of them still, you know, continue to
exist now in the twenty first century in this size
Are they all.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Like thirty six bangers or are they like for.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
The most part, Yeah, people all think they'd pretty dope
for the most part. Now in the sizeable gap between
thirty six and forty five, you know that nine paintings,
and also what is known about him and what is unknown?
What was created, what was lost? This is where our
story takes place. Yes, now enter the subject of today's story,
another Dutch painter whose name is Han van meergern Okay. Now.

(09:58):
He was born in the Netherlands way back in eighteen
eighty nine. His father was a Frenchman and a teacher
of history who taught his son to enjoy, you know,
taking looks back in time and realizing that there's more
than just this moment. We were informed by the choices
of the past. Right. He also taught school. He taught
actually teachers history at a training college for teachers. So yeah,

(10:18):
he was something of a task master. Like for instance,
as a punishment, he used to make his son write
the same sentence over and over again. I'm talking like
hundreds of times, and the sentence was this, I know nothing,
I am nothing, I am capable of nothing.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Oh yeah, okay, task masters, you're a different kind of parenting.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Sure you know, I'm pretty sure you can trace this
whole story back to that punishment and that one sentence.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah. God, the like psychic damage of that, right.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah. So it's wild to me how often criminals we
cover are basically formed by their parents, you know, or,
if not, the conditions of their life. Sure, now that
basically ps parents. Please be kind and supportive of your kids,
unless you want to risk being embarrassed by them later
in life. You know, there's a choice. But again I digress.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Do everything right and their kids still wind up being criminals.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
That's what I'm sayinghere. The conditions of life come in. Yeah, anyway.
Hans van Miergern's father, he particularly despised the idea that
his son wanted to be a painter an artist. In fact,
he forbid him, or forbade him rather from pursuing art. Now,
as a historian, you might think, but wouldn't he respect
art and culture and all that informed the times that
he studies.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Did he want him to study coding.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
No, I think I was a small minded male. I
just put it that way. And he wanted to some
to do something sensible with his talent. So he's like,
you should become a draftsman or an.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Architect equivalent of learned to code.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Basically.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
See, you know, I hear this from so many people
who are distressed when their kids want to study, you know,
a liberal arts. And it's like there're more and more
companies are saying they wish that their new employees had
studied liberal arts. They learned to think, They could think,
they could express themselves.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
You could write, yeah, they can understand what's being disgusted me.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
They could fix all the problems that AI creates.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, bring fresh perspectives.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, rewrite everything that AI right.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
And now all those coders are being replaced by AI. Anyway,
so that a whole by learned to code thing didn't
really help the kids. Well anyway, back to his father,
who wanted him to be a draftsman or architect, none
of this held sway with his son. He was just
a natural born artist. He knew it. And he's like, look,
I gotta be about the paints now. His father, like
I said, he wanted to be an architect, not an artist,
so he sends him to this technical school so he

(12:19):
can learn to draft and draw. Eventually, though, he finds
teachers who recognize this boy's got talents, I mean, like
real talents, so they help him to study art do.
They teach him to learn to like mix his own
paints and prepare his own canvases and Van Mergern. He
gets trained on the works of his fellow countrymen, like
which are basically the classics of that would be the
what's called the Dutch Golden Age of painting, the old

(12:40):
Dutch masters, right, so Vermire exactly Vermir So that era
was known for its studies of light and vibrant use
of color. So he's studying all of this. He's looking
at their brushstrokes, you know, they're balancing of subject matter
and how to render it so it looks like it's
coming alive with light. And he ends up never becoming
an architect. He goes to school all the way, but
he doesn't take his finals hence right before he would

(13:01):
have been qualified. So at this point that we're in
like nineteen thirteen, right, and he's now at the age
of twenty four and decided, you know what, I'm going
to become an artist. I'm doing it. He rolls himself
at a school at the Hague and he studies art there.
He soon meets a fellow artist, a young woman named
Anna de Volt, and together they make a go of
it as starving young artists nice to make money. Van Miergren.

(13:22):
He enters the commercial art world, and by that I
mean he's like painting posters for businesses. He's in festivals,
he's doing vanity portraits of the wealthy. He's just trying
to make a go of it. His young wife and he,
though eventually they grow apart, mostly because of the money
pressures of being young artists, and by nineteen twenty three,
at the age of thirty four, they get divorced. Now
he's alone, and he keeps working, keeps banging away at

(13:43):
his hopes of becoming an artist, like a real celebrated artist,
not just that he's getting paid to do it. But
he enters the cannon. So at this point, yeah, he
does begin to find some success amongst the art critics
of the day in the Netherlands. His work is considered inspired.
Some people call un quote a gift artist, and he
starts to taste success, and then nineteen twenty eight, he

(14:04):
remarries his second wife. She's also in the arts. She
supports what he does. She's an actress named Johanna, Teresa
Orlaman's name doesn't matter, but there it is. Yeah, and
this is the same year when Van Meergern would make
another fateful decision in his life. Much like his new wife,
he decides to wear a mask in his work. Only
when a painter wears a mask, we have another term

(14:25):
for that. We call them art forgers. Oh now, I
remember his father made him write hundreds of time, over
and over again. I know nothing, I am nothing. I
am capable of nothing.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Well, it seems that he took that mantra to heart
and he made it his motive to become an art forger.
I can be anything because I am nothing.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
I am nothing.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, there's another motive, though a more personal one. The
art critics of the day began to turn against him.
They accused him of being nothing. Essentially, this once gifted
artist was left behind by the changing seasons of the
culture and the art world. Yeah, he's By nineteen twenty eight,
the art critics have moved on. They're no longer smitten
with what he he was doing. Now they're into these
new art movements of the day, Surrealism, Cubism, that's.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Very common in that era. That Tony get trained in
the classics, but you know the.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Master a great Baroque painter and wants that.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, now everyone wants avant garde, and you know it's
also then you kind of do see the difference between
an artist and a drafts person, so that if you knew,
if you were just taught how to do something in
a certain vein, you're not creating out a whole cloth
for yourself.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
You're not following the zeitgeist totally on. So Van Merrigan's
formally once inspired works are now derided right as talented
imitations of the Dutch Golden era, and he was merely
a talented copy machine of old forms. Of course, Van
Mirgan he's hurt by all this, and like I'm thinking,
it probably brought him back to the words of his father,

(15:47):
which further insenses him. So in nineteen twenty eight he
decides if the art world thought he knew nothing, that
he lacked originality, that he was a imitator of past genius,
well he'd show all of them, like all of them,
like y'all are wrong, And so that's what he does.
He goes and becomes an art forger. He'll fool the
art world and all those arrogant critics, and he'd hit back.
He uses this so called imitative talent for painting in

(16:09):
the style of the Dutch Golden Age, which they still like,
the like the sixteen hundreds people, they're all about that,
just not the most recent and he'll make them all
look like fools when they fall victim to.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
His innovative then, yes, exactly, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
At that point, so he takes himself back to school,
only was a school of his own devising. This time,
he begins to study the great works of the old
Dutch masters, and for a few years he labors to
become a master in his own right, to stand shoulder
to shoulder with them. He reads their biographies, He studies
their paintings, their brushstrokes, their use of color, how they
rendered light. But not only that, he also studied how
they mix their paints, how they stretch their canvases. He

(16:44):
figured out from their biographies how they sourced materials and
where he'd need to pull off his planned hoax. So
he's also starts beginning to purchase old canvases dating back
to the sixteen hundreds. He finds the same materials that
they use, which is not easy, and he gets to
work creating his elaborate forgeries. And he starts, you know,
basically painting the old master's works until they're indistinguishable from

(17:05):
the originals nobody would know. Then he focuses on one
artist in particular, a mystery man because of how little
was known about him, old mister girl with the pearleering himself,
Johannes Vermire. At that time, in the beginning of the
twentieth century, Vermier was enjoying this retrospective or respect in
the art world, especially in Europe, and Van meeger And
decides he'd fool the art world with their new fancy fave. Okay,

(17:26):
remember when it was known that Vermier had painted forty
five paintings, then there were the thirty six that survived. Yeah,
this historic gap is what he'll exploit. Suddenly there's going
to be all these discovered lost Vermire.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
So in nineteen thirty two, he releases one of his
forgeries into the art world. A Lost Vermiir is discovered.
It's well timed because at this point there was another
rediscovered lost Vermiir that had also resurfaced at the same time.
So these two loss Vermiirs were written about by this
notable art critic, doctor Abraham Bridius. Right, he publishes an
article talking about these lost vermiers, and he savages one

(18:00):
of the paintings as an obvious forgery. But to his
well trained eye, you know, it's basically this is clearly
a fraud. But the other one, this so called loss vermire.
You know, it's reportedly from his early period when he
was doing like historic paintings and biblical paintings. Okay, so
he says this is a true find with the full
weight of his authority as an art critic. He calls
it an authentic vermire, and he adds that quote it
is one of the finest gems of the master's uvra.

(18:22):
Oh yeah, this second painting was a fraud. It was
actually a forgery by Van Meergren. And he'd done it.
He'd fooled the art world.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, his years of study payoff. His talents as a
forger are confirmed. This is his first taste of revenge,
and now he wants to go back to the buffet
for more.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
I wonder who forged the first one.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
I do too. I mean I didn't actually look it up,
but it was just another forge. Okay, so now that
we got this ball, they'll roll in. Let's take a
little break. We'll dive into the healthy diet of ads,
and then when we're back, we'll see how long Van
Miergren can keep this new Cohn going. Elizabeth, yes we are.

(19:15):
You're ready to keep this crazy train of cons a rolling.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Now, remember how I said Van Mierger and studied the
old Dutch masters and how he bottled canvases to pass
off his forgeries. I want to return to that for
a moment because as a science lover, I found this
fascinating how he conned the art world with his use
of like chemistry. Remember how he learned in art school
to mix his own paint, Right, he becomes a master
of paint mixing, like from his study of their biographies.

(19:39):
He you know, as I said, he goes and he
finds all these sources materials, and then in the sixteen hundreds,
this was like you're basically buying materials from like itinerant
men who bounce around in the world. I'm talking like
men who are sailors who've been to the so called
New World or the deepest corners of Asia.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Right, Africa, buying things off the silk road.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Exactly, Exactly. They're buying also materials from other people who
are in Europe who are essentially snake oil salesmen of
the medieval period. Yeah, and so he's they're sourcing like
ingredients from apothecaries and alchemists, the materials that also could
be used as medicines, right, and those cooks went searching
for ways to you know, turn lead into gold. They
got all sorts of chemistry. So Van Miergren does the same.

(20:18):
He sources these same ancient materials to further his con
in the art world, which I love. No, you know,
I say, if you're gonna do it, commit to the bits.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
He committed, right. He like a guy who believes he's Napoleon.
He was committed. He finds an art dealer who trafficks
in paintings like lesser paintings of the sixteen hundreds. He
buys a bunch of canvases from that guy to get
him started. He then goes and spends his gilders on
medicines that modern apothecaries are still selling. So I'm talking
like old lead tin yellow pigments, lead white pigments, ultramarine pigments.

(20:50):
Also he was getting things like lilac oil. Yeah, really
cool stuff. And also Venetian turpentine. Oh wow, all right,
So the ultramarine pigments, they had to be imported from
Afghanistan and then sold through Venice commodities traders. So it's
obscuring where the stuff's coming from, so nobody can catch them.
Nobody's gonna be like, oh, I sold that guy this stuff.
So Van Mirgern he starts using these ancient pigments. He's

(21:12):
rare materials to grind out his own yellows and whites
and blues, and that way he can paint these same
colors and these same effects of light that the old
Dutch masters did. The effect becomes indistinguishable from the originals. Now,
if you plan to trick the masters, you gotta go
harden the paint. Pardon the pun and boy does he.
I mean it wasn't just the materials he uses. He
also masters their brushstrokes like down so you could not

(21:34):
tell it gets it's identical the guy. He's a really
good artist, so his hand could reproduce the exact same
touch as Vermiir.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
The amount of time he must have spent sitting before yep, paintings.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Oh yeah, just staring at the most intimate detail, how
the ridge of paint rises where it falls. So finally,
to seal the deal, he also goes back to chemistry
and he starts playing around the things like a phenol formaldehyde.
He uses that on his finished works to age the
paintings because they need to look like they're three hundred,
three hundred and fifty years old. Yeah, and then he
comes up with a secret. He starts baking his paintings.

(22:05):
So he figured out that somewhere in the range between
two hundred and twelve degrees fahrenheit and two hundred and
forty eight degrees fahrenheit, or for those who in the
celsius one hundred degrees celsius to one hundred and twenty
degrees celsius A quick digression, Elizabeth, Yeah, you know I
always ask you to convert celsius to fahrenheit for me,
since you lived in Scotland and I've never been out
of America. Well, good news, I found a method that

(22:26):
I can now remember. You want up to do it,
you take a Celsius reading, you multiply it by one
point and add thirty two degrees. I can remember that. Yeah,
I've never come across. So that's good news for you.
I thought, no more dumb questions forming whenever I see
weather from anywhere in the world. Now, normally, by the way,
I think the metric system is superior. I want that
on the record. But in one instance, can we all
agree that fahrenheit is the superior temperature system? Because you

(22:49):
say one hundred degrees that sounds hot.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
You say thirty seven degrees, I'm.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Like, oh, that's cold.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
What is that? Okay? For instance, the other day I
saw it was fifty point five degrees in parts of Turkey,
and I was like, that seems hot. That's one hundred
and twenty three degrees fahrenheit. That's like Arizona melt your
car hot. Anyway, back to Van Meergren and his art forgeries,
that's just my little digression on Celsius. So to age
is painting. He sets the oven somewhere between two hundred
and twelve degrees and two hundred and forty eight degrees

(23:14):
fahrenheit or hundred celsius hundred and twenty celsius, and that's
how he creates the crackle surface of the old painting. Crazy, yeah, exactly.
They also the craculaire I think it is. Maybe I'm
saying that wrong, but that's the final touch to fool
all the learned art critics. They're like, oh, look at it,
it's so aged. Now fool them. He did.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's very clever.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Completely after his initial success, he goes to work to
create more lost vermires because he's earning big money, because
that's like the artist of the moment, right, So he
creates one forgery entitled quote the Head of Christ. Then
he creates another one called the Blessings of Jacob, and
then there is the Adulteress, and then the Supper at Emos.
And my favorite though of his Lost Vermire forgeries is

(23:53):
the one called the Last Supper Two. Sounds like a
fast and furious sequel, but set in Galilee Peter's revenge. Exactly. No,
if you're keeping track, that's five lost Vermires plus the
original one that he sold off, so that's six in total.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Do you happen to know? Is he working off of
speculation of what the missing pea exactly.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
People knew these best. Why he had to pick these
titles wasn't just exactly, He's got to match titles with
with works, and so he's gone, this should be the
subject matter. And he's studying the old and I had
older era of painters like Caravaggio to kind of like
figure out this would have been how we rendered this
biblical scene. So at this point, remember there's nine lost
Vermires in total, and now he's found six of them.

(24:32):
Just a lucky guy, amazing.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
But where he's finding him like in a cave.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
He starts acting like you know, he's an art collector
and he's digging around and this is his specialty. People
are like, oh man, this guy's amazing. He's he just
hunts for Vermiir and he's able to spot them with
his train.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Would be like, well, where'd you hunt that one up?

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Come up with a story?

Speaker 3 (24:50):
He's like, was it the good Will?

Speaker 4 (24:51):
No?

Speaker 2 (24:51):
The greatest con he pulls had to be the Supper
at Emos, which is reported to be Vermiir's finest lost work. Everyone,
I can't believe you found the masterpiece? Right? This is
so good totally. So to pull off his hoax, he
finds his canvas from the sixteen hundreds that has the
exact same dimensions that are known for this the separate emouse,
and he mixes his own paints using his techniques from

(25:13):
the old Dutch masters, the ancient materials all that. Then
he bakes them up using his oven techniques. So the
Craculaur was all convincing. To verify his hoax, he has
this art critic, the same one from before, doctor Abraham Bridius.
He declares the painting to not just be authentic, but
was quote the masterpiece of Johannes Vermier. Oh yes, but
not only that. Van Mirgen's techniques of his forgeries beat

(25:34):
all the tests of the day that they could use
to test it. This is before we had like, you know,
polonium testing and looking and like X ray tomogra Actually
know they used X ray tomography, but later on they
use like much more deeply penetrating stuff. So at this
point they were doing like pigment analysis, microscope examinations of
the canvas, which dates to the right time, and then

(25:55):
they did do basic X ray techniques, so it's like, oh, yes,
this is clearly the right thing. Once through forgeries, reported
to be confirmed as a true loss vermire, and this
is in nineteen thirty seven, the painting sells for millions millions. Wow, yeah, right,
the lost work gets celebrated as a true master work.
It gets hung in a gallery in Rotterdam. It's the
bell of the ball for this gallery, and it's seen

(26:17):
as evidence that Vermier had been inspired by the works
of Caravaggio, which leads the art world to start reconsidering
how the old Dutch masters were inspired by the Italians.
Now his forgeries are rewriting art history.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
It's so crazy.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, it's a big deal. So then a challenge for
his forgeries pops up something he could have never anticipated. Elizabeth,
what happened in Europe in nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
I was gonna say, he sells this familias in thirty seven,
and I'm like, oh art in the late thirties, and yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
World War two pops War two. So in the years
prior to the official start of World War Two, the
Nazis had been coveting great European artworks evidence of the
superiority of the area in race. Right, So a Dutch
master like Vermier was seen as this perfect exaspar the
so called like function shine art or whatever, like people's
art and like the simple pastoral life and everything, and

(27:07):
it becomes this exemplar of their so called master race
self delusion. So many great works from this period end
up being purchased by the Nazis, but also many are
being straight up stolen by prominent Jewish families or from
prominent Jewish families after the families get sent off to
the camp. Right in the art world, this sad and
like truly tragic time. It basically extends from thirty three
all the way through the war to forty five, and
it creates this black hole of provenance because you cannot

(27:29):
prove the painting, so people have to go and say, oh,
that looks like a Vermier, that looks like a Van Hawking, right,
So it becomes very difficult to know the true story
where a painting or a sculpture other masterpiece come from.
And this black hole of provenance it's still an issue today.
Many art detectives they do their work certifying masterpieces that
were lost in the pre war and war years, then
also trying to return them to the families from whom

(27:50):
the art was stolen. And there's a lot of court
cases about this, and you know, like trying to prove
you have.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
To go you have to be very broad in your
understanding of how to prove up that provenance. Exactly if
it's stolen from a family that there were given receipts, Yeah,
and now all of their receipts, all of their paperwork
is gone.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
It's gone too. Exactly to look for pictures that was
in the family home.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
You have to hope that there are those surviving pictures
that they weren't you know, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
You have to hope somebody else had the picture that
they took in your home with it. Yeah, exactly. So
in these pre warriors and during the Nazi occupation of
the Netherlands, Van Miergren is still working selling his forgeries.
In particular, he sold one of his vermier forgeries to
a Dutch art dealer who then turned around and sold
it to the Nazis, and not just any old Nazi.
The forgery it was dubbed the Adulterous or Christ with

(28:35):
the Adulterous. It was sold to Reich Marshall Hermann Goring. Yeah,
the head of the German Lufwaffer, the architect of the Gestapo.
An infamous lover of the finer things in life. Goring.
He collected priceless wines, he had a fine artwork collection.
He'd like to surround himself in beauty and delicacy as
he spread pain and suffering all around the world. Yeah, so,
this vermire forgery, It's coveted by Goring, And at first

(28:56):
he hung the painting Christ with the adulteress in his office,
and later on, as the war was ending, he made
sure to take it with him and his family when
he went into hiding, and to ensure that this painting
stayed safe from the British and American bombs, Goring safeguarded
the masterpiece deep in this Austrian salt mine. Then the
Soviet Union they reached Berlin, the Nazi regime collapses, and
being too much of a coward to kill himself, Goring

(29:18):
finds himself on trial in Nuremberg to face justice for
the horrifying crimes that he'd perpetrated. Meanwhile, the forged painting
gets recovered from that Austrian salt mine by the Americans.
Oh the monument, Yeah, exactly, exactly. So in this instance,
there was a paperwork trail that tracked this painting back
to the Dutch art dealer, and then from there it
went back to Van Mirgeren. That would become a big

(29:40):
problem for the art forger because he was now on
the record as a Nazi collaborator who'd sold off Dutch
masterpieces and cultural history to the hated Nazi regime. So
Van Miergeren gets arrested, charged with aiding and abetting the
Nazis and their heinous crimes against humanity. Although he hadn't
directly sold to Goring, he might well.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Have because he knew he knew that's where it was
going to come.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, exactly. In the eyes of the Dutch he was
a Nazi collaborator and during the Nazi occupation he'd certainly
lived well. He hadn't mind taking Nazi money for all,
like hanging out with Nazis. So the punishment for that
was death.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
I think that you know, if you're not outspoken against
the Nazis, yeah you're a Nazi.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah. It was pretty bad. And and he had like
some people said, fascist landing. Some people say he was
an anti fascist and just pretending that couldn't be known.
But there was plenty of him at a party, plenty
of him getting paid to sell a painting to a Nazi, and.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Like, there's the thing you think, Oh, he's just pretending
to like get by with the Nazis, Right, But you're
not just pretending. If you're living high on the hall, Yeah,
you're just living this luxurious life. But there are ways
to like just get by and keep your head down.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Exactly And then there's all then there's like you were
at the exactly so face now with the prospect of
a death sentence, because that's the punishment for being a
Nazi collaborator. The art forger's faced with the very unique
legal choice. Either he has to admit that he was
a forger who created the lost and Found masterpiece, which
would carry its own penalties and would unmask him and

(31:08):
all of the works that he allegedly found. Yeah, or
you know, or he could you know, keep his secret
and lose his life.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Oh, would obviously not a hard choice to make.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
I mean, he'd already proven his father wrong. He was
indeed somebody. He was not nothing. He was a great artist,
or at least a great forger, and he'd already gotten
his revenge on the art world for rejecting him and
labeling him a once talented and gifted artists who lacked originality.
But if he admitted he was an art forger to
save his life, he would unmask himself and he once
again be nothing. Essentially, his father would be right. He

(31:38):
would be the unoriginal artist that the art world determined
him to be. So it was like kind of a
psychological stumbling block. Yeah, So, anyway, what does he do?
How does he save his life and not lose everything
in the process and become what he's always been charged
by others?

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Great question, Elizabeth, thank you for asking.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Also not to mention the fortune he's made from all
the forges. He's also going to lose that he's got
like millions and millions of millions. Oh, what does he do?
Well after these messages, Elizabeth, We'll see how Van Meergren
plays the hand he's been dealt. Let's go back into
and two, Elizabeth Zarin, we're back. So what do you

(32:33):
do you dig in the strange tale of art force
and revenge against the world.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
It's so nuanced, there's so many little pieces to it.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
I like, not an easy one. Now, if you were
han Van meergrin, like, what do you do? You do
you admit what you've done? Do you take your secret
to the grave? Do you try to like play like
a I forged this one, but that's it? I mean, like,
how do you You can't control what happens once you
start telling the truth.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Well, I think if I'm a weasel like him, I say, yeah,
I guess what. I faked them all and I did
it to pull one over these evil Nazis. I'm a hero.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Problem has he been doing it so long? People knew
that was not true.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
I've been watching them for ages. Look at me, I'm
a hero around you're the heroes there.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
That is basically his leaning. You nailed it. So date
of his arrest is May twenty ninth, nineteen forty five.
The war has just ended in Germany and be like
the passions are high. So he gets charged with the
heinous crime of aiding and abetting the enemy aka the
Nazi war machine. His fellow countrymen and women want justice
against men like him, and people are getting shot in

(33:34):
the street. Yeah yeah, yeah. So collaborator too profited, enjoyed
life as others lost theirs and lost everything that makes
life worth living. It's kind of like scales of justice thing, right.
So he gets taken to prison, luckily and not shot
in the street, and there he has to await trial
for selling off the Dutch cultural history. But only he
at this point, only he knows his secret. Nobody thinks
that they're forgeries, because remember everybody all the art world

(33:55):
said these are great, so revealing it will be his
only way to get free or at least say, his life.
But he still will have to face justice, as you know,
as a forager. So he sits there as solitary confinement
for a good long time thinking about how he's going
to play this. He's working on your idea of like
how can I be the hero of like, oh, yes,
I'm a resistance fighter. Well, eventually he decides to tell
the truth. But this is because of his interaction with

(34:16):
this man named Joseph Piller, who was an actual resistance fighter,
and not just that he was a former tailor. He
was a Jewish man who was now an officer in
the reconstituted Dutch Army, and he's overseeing efforts to get
justice against collaborators. And they keep talking and meeting and
Pillar takes an interest in his case, he starts investigating
Van meerger In while he's awaiting trial. Pillar eventually wins

(34:38):
his trust, and Van meerger In you know, admits to
him that he sold the pen to Goring, but it
was a fake. It was a fraud, which delights this
former resistance fighter that he was able to trick the
great art collector of the nazis right. This also shows
van mierger In the way to free himself. I am
a resistance fighter. I tricked him. He focus on go Goring.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
No, don't, and don't look at what I did a
long time ago doing that.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Look at Goring, Look at Goring, not me. I'm over here.
I'm just an artist, but going man. So by the
time his trial starts, Van Miergren he makes his choice.
He decides to confess his art crimes to save his life.
During the trial, when he's confronted with actual photographic evidence
of Herman Goring holding the Vermier masterpiece, Van Miergren tells
the judge and the court quote the picture in Goring's

(35:24):
hands is not as you assume, a vermire of delft,
but actually Van Miergrin I painted the picture. I remember
he'd done such a good job with his forgery. He'd
fooled not only the notable art critics, but his forgery
fooled the microscope examinations, the actually tests. There's no one
in the court who believes him. The painting is clearly authentic.
He painted too well, so even after he confesses the truth,

(35:46):
no one will believes. He's now about to be doomed
by his own forgery. The irony is profound. He'd done
too good of a job, right, so he's gonna lose
his life because he's too good of a forger. So
his claims that he's a forger becomes major news story
of the day in the Netherlands but also Europe at large,
and like that, could this possibly be true? The newspapers
are basically wondering. So, in his desperate attempt to save

(36:06):
himself from his own forgery, Van Miergern demands that he'd
be given a chance to prove that indeed he could
forge the masterpiece. The judge is curious. He relents, he's
like hm, a known for mere masterpiece. So he then
you know, does a little research, you know, meets with
some people, and he selects a known for mere lost
masterpiece and he selects that one. He says, Okay, forge

(36:29):
this one, and I wanted to be tested and we
can see, you know, if you can do what you're
saying that you can create a forgery that will beat
the experts. So now he's got a strange twist of face, like,
we want you to do a crime to prove you
didn't do a crime. Incredible, But not only that was
a crime that he was allowed to perpetrate, because you know,
as an art forger, he developed this interesting habit that

(36:50):
when he was painting, he liked to drink a lot
and smoke opium. Wait, so he said that if I'm
going to do this forgery, I have to do it
the way I do forgery. So I'm going to need
to be drunk and high. And the judge's like, that's fair.
So now Van Myrgren is allowed to drink and smoke
opium in his jail cell as he paints a forgery
to prove his innocence. And this goes on for months.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah, because he can't just like, oh, I bang him
out in like a week.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah exactly. And he's like, yeah, so it takes me
a couple of months, and I'll hide the whole time.
So I'm gonna need a lot of opium yea, and
I'm gonna need a bunch of booze. And the judges like,
get them a bunch of opium, get them some booze.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Well, and you know that, like he makes the statement,
actually I forge these gas. Yeah, and then now everything
they do gas like the papers must have loved it.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
So I mean I always like also picturing like trying
to say that, sell that to a judge like, hey,
your honor, I have to be twisted if this is
gonna work. The judge like makes sense to me, give
the prisoner all the booze and opium he needs. So
Van Myrgren he's given months to work, you know, and
he's allowed to select his materials. They go and they
source out everything he would need, and then he gets
like an oven so he can bake the paintings, like

(37:55):
all his whole technique everything like okay, whatever you need.
But then to make sure that you know he's actually
doing this and he's not like just gonna like hand
it off to somebody else and they're gonna slip it
through like the prison window. There are appointed witnesses who
have to watch him the entire time. What did job?
They sit there like in like a gallery of chairs,
I imagine, just watching him work. But you know, as

(38:15):
also there's reporters. There's some reporters from like French papers
and Dutch papers. They're allowed to visit the prison cell
because everybody's kind of digging. This story nown just getting
crazier and crazier. So they also get to watch the
master forger work. But the judge wants to keep some
things under wraps because you're in indeed to go and
like you know, trick the.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
Experts right exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
So this whole process is going along. But you know
what revan me tell you about the whole process, Elizabeth,
I'd like you to close your eyes. I'd like you
to picture it. The year is nineteen forty five. World
War two is over and the world is rebuilding from

(38:53):
the destruction of the years of horrifying violence, the untold cruelty.
And there in the months between July and December, the
now infamous art forger han Van Meergren is laboring as
fast as he can to save his own life with
a brand new forgery. The judge in the trial has
selected the loss of vermir entitled Jesus among the Doctors,
also known as Young Christ in the Temple. At the
moment you, Elizabeth, are waiting for a prison door to

(39:15):
be opened, a turn key approaches. The jingle jangle of
his keys has a rhythmic quality. His footsteps smack against
the cold stone floor and softly echo against the damp
and equally cold stone walls. He takes his time getting
to you. Finally he sets the key in lock, the
prison doors open. He indicates you are to follow him
down this long hallway. You do as instructed, your heels

(39:37):
tapped against the same damp, cold stone floor. After a
short walk, you are brought to a viewing area outside
the cell of the infamous art forger han van Meergren.
A pair of court appointed witnesses already seated in the
makeshift gallery of chairs. You nod politely at them and
you take a seat, and there, with the others seated
outside his prison cell, you watch the art forger work

(40:00):
out of his hand as it pushes brush against canvas.
After a while of watching, you scribble in your notepad,
because you, Elizabeth, are a reporter for a Dutch newspaper
sent there to witness the creation of his forgery. After
an hour of working, Van Mehergrin takes a break from
his painting and it returns to the workshop section of
his prison cell. The infamous art forger hums an old

(40:21):
tune to himself. You watch as he grinds mortar and
pistol to create more paint. With the ancient pigments and
the linseed and lilac oils, he mixes up medieval colors
that he will need to pull off his forgery. You
dutifully watch him as he works. You scribble some notes
in your notepad. Your pen moves quickly. When you look
back up, you marvel at the progress he's made so far.

(40:43):
The painting is barely half done, but it's coming together.
You can see the work in progress. It's like looking
back in time to the days of the old Dutch masters.
But you are not wholly convinced this alleged master Forger
is indeed the real deal. So you watch him work,
hoping to catch something or see something that might convince you.
He returns to the canvas and applies the newly mixed

(41:04):
paints with the ancient pigments and oils. You focus on
his hand as he hums to himself again. You watch
the forgery coming to life. You scribble more notes in
your pad. The longer you watch, the more impressed you are.
He certainly is a talented painter, but is he what
he claims to be? You can't be certain. Your editors
certainly will not be happy to hear that. They expect results,

(41:26):
They expect answers, They expect you to have a conclusive
and exclusive evidence of a forgery or not. However, if
you're being honest, you just can't tell. Then you hear
your stomach grumble, I'm hungry for dinner. You realize how
long you've been in this cold, damp Dutch prison. And
then you see Van Miergren get up to pack his
opium pipe. It's not the first time he's done that today.

(41:47):
In fact, earlier you thought you caught a second hand high. Now,
when the smell of the burning opium reaches your nostrils,
you're like, yep, it's time for me to go, Time
for you to go scaups and dinner. So you'll just
have to wing it and come up with a story
based on the notes you've taken. Perhaps in the ad
you'll just flip a coin and decide if he's a
real dealer or not. Who knows. Okay, so since you
couldn't decide, you're no art expert, you're just a damn

(42:09):
good writer. What are you gonna do? Meanwhile, this goes on,
the opium smoking, the drinking, the art forging, and finally,
in December of nineteen forty five, Van Miergren is finished
with his forgery. He and the art work are brought
back before the judge and the court. Art experts and
scientists are called in to study the alleged forgery. They're
not told it's a forgery, they're just told, can you

(42:29):
authenticate this? Painting? Microscopes X raiser once again used to
test the work. Brushstroke analysis is performed. Also, they call
in the great art critic who had been tricked multiple
times now by Van Meergrin, good old doctor Abraham Bredius.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
Oh abe.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
He's called in to verify the work, and he's not
told of the promenance or that there's a possibility, yeah,
that it could be a forgery. Instead, he just studies
the work, unaware that's been painted by Van Miergren. The
man who, by the way, is nicknamed the Pope of
Vermirez is conned yet again. He's worse than that Elizabeth,
this cat declares and perhaps one of the most embarrassing

(43:06):
moments for an art critic and art critic history. Quote.
It is a wonderful moment in the life of a
lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted with
a hitherto unknown painting by a great master. That pretty
much steals the deal.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
After his careful examination and this larger panel of experts
and scientists who are also tricked, they determined that the
forgery is indeed a masterpiece, a true vermire. Boom, he's
done it again, one final time, and he's free, free
from the death sentence. The judge rules bang bang case
dismissed a quit this guy lets him off. Yeah, However,

(43:43):
justice is not done with him because he's still a
fraud so one who conn buyers out of millions and
millions of dollars. He will still have to pay for
his art crime, so he's immediately brought up on charges
of art forgery. Van Myrgren is eventually tried, convicted, and
sentenced to how long one year in prison for all
of his art crimes.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
With no opium and no ovens.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yes, none of that. No, he's going to have to
just white knuckle it at this point. The sentence for
his art forgeries obviously is far lighter than his previous
death sentence, but he's still fearing going to prison because
once you, as you pointed out, no opium, he'll be like,
you know, having to go here the craziest withdrawals there is.
And also he's a pretty serious alcoholic at this point.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
So oh god, you kind of wish they would have
been like, yeah, you know what, we'll call it even.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, not me, I don't. Before his official time in
prison is scheduled to begin in forty seven, he suffers
a heart attack in November, and then another one and
he drops dead from the second heart attack. He was
fifty eight years old in December of forty seven when
he dies, and this is before he starts his prison sentence,
so he never actually faces justice. Wow. Yeah, No. There's
one strange result of all his new fame as the

(44:45):
art forger who had conned Herman Gurring as well as
the Pope of Vermiers. It turns Van mirger In into
a national folk hero. He becomes this like bad boy
of the art world. Like, you know, he conned of Gurring. Yeah,
I get him. Of course he also con breed aha, right.
So and also I found this one detail I loved.
When Gouring was at this point is still alive and

(45:05):
still on trial and about to you know, do the
Nuremberg justice, he gets informed that the vermire that he
coveted and loved and used his proof of Aryan superiority
was actually a fake. And I found a contemporaneous account
that said quote Gurring looked as if for the first
time he had discovered that there was evil in the world,
God him being tricked the evil.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
I wouldn't have told him before I brought the painting
in front of him and set it on fire.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
And then tell. And then you tell a heart attack himself.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Moron is fake.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
So and also I shouldn't clarify it wasn't just the
Dutch who loved him. At this point. Over in France,
the newspapers had been covering the trial and its results,
and they'd love that Van Meergren had conned so many
high falutine art folks with his quote swindle of the century.
And the French absolutely loved that he'd conned the Germans,
who believed themselves to be the true cultural snobs of Europe.

(46:02):
The freats are like, we take back our title. So
of course there's one other legacy of his crimes I
should point out. The art world was forced to determine
which of the reported lost Vermiers were authentic which were forgeries,
as well as a number of other great Dutch artists
who I didn't mention who he was also forging master
artists like a Peter de Hoc right, So like this

(46:22):
went on for a long time, Like in twenty eleven,
his forgery of another Dutch painter's work called The Procures
was finally determined to be a fake by art historians
twenty eleven from the BBC show Faker Fortune Love that show.
I thought you did that show. That's how I wanted
to bring it up. They busted him out. That's like
one of the one of the last of his forgeries
to be unmasks. It was a super slow process. It

(46:45):
took him twenty years to determine that two of the
van Miergren's Vermier forgeries were fakes. There's one called the
Smiling Girl and another called the lace Maker. They were
both downgraded from being Vermiers to being possibly a work
of a student or follower of Vermier Vermiir exactly and
then finally nope, fake as hell, hell totally a fraud

(47:05):
perpetrated by Van Meergrin. And that's how we come back
to the official total of thirty six known for me.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
He's incredible, yes.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
And also his son, by the way, was also a painter.
Van Miergren's son was a painter. He started doing forgery
of his dad's works because people started collecting Van Myrergrin's
because it was this like, oh, he's this national folk hero.
So he starts banging out his own fortraits of his
dad's stuff. Now, just to be totally clear and put
everything on the table. I don't think Van Meergren was

(47:33):
a full hero outlaw, you know. I like full herro outlast.
This guy wasn't, because, as you pointed out, you can't
palle around with Nazis and enjoy the spoils of war
and earn our respect. He's no one to be celebrated
if you know what all he did. Like also, there's
something I hadn't mentioned yet. He once signed a book
that was gifted to Hitler, Like you know, like my
dear furor this is for you kind of thing. Yeah.
So he was a bad man, and not a bad

(47:53):
man in the good way, like you know, like a
man exactly. But I do see why, even in the
post war period, why the Dutch in the French would
celebrate him the way that they did because they wanted
to get back the emotional reclamation a victory exactly. So
when you see him celebrated, don't be too harsh in
judgment of the French and the Dutch. They needed to
get back and have something to hold. So there you go.

(48:15):
What's our ridiculous takeaway here, Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (48:17):
I once again, every time we talk about these forgers,
they are very skilled artists.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Huh. You think, hey, you can do this.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
You can do this if you if you weren't just mimicking.
But here he is so skilled in a method and
a school that is no longer in favor.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, and he didn't then, doesn't push himself to try
new things or have anything to say. He's just like
I like that money.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Take those skills and apply them to something that was
wholly his own, that would be incredible. But all of
these forgers, they're so good, they're great artists, but you
know they're Unorginal's ridiculous. Whoa I want to stop you
right there.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
I'm impressed. Considerate mine. Mine is a little simpler. I
always find it funny that the art forgers, when they
become famous, are always forged by somebody else. Yeah. We
saw that with Elma Dhiri. I mean it's just constantly
like I guessed it when I was reading, and I'm like,
I know somebody's forging him and it turned out to
be his own son. Yeah, so the whole father's son
relationship stayed weird in the van Miergeren family. So there

(49:24):
you go. You in the mood for a talkback or
wats it's all done?

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Love talkbacks?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Oh my god, I love you.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Hi. I'm Kilm.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
I'm from the Virginia North Carolina state border.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
I am too young to be elderly, and I'm too
old to be young, and I don't understand half of
what happens in the world today, with computers and the
way words are pronounced now, like button and important rather
than button and important. It's hard, but you take me
back to my comfort zone. How to disappear I learned

(50:05):
it from watching you Botany five hundred. I love you guys,
thank you for being familiar and comfort.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yes, it's our pleasure.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Oh you've nailed it with the button.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Oh yeah, Elizabeth constantly mentions that.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Gears.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, just focus on the botany five hundred. Let it
all wash away exactly. Well, thank you for the talk
about that was a joy. And always you can find
us online a Ridiculous Crime on the social medias and uh. Also,
now we have a new account, the Ridiculous Crime Pod
on YouTube. Please go like and subscribe, tell a friend,
leave a comment. We and the interns enjoy. I'm so

(50:39):
please do that. Also, we have our website, ridiculous Crime
dot com, which recently was named a Michelin Award winning site.
Although we didn't get a star, we did win what's
known as the Bib Gormond Award. Right. That's fun.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
That's fun.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Also, we love to hear your voices in the talkbacks,
as you can tell, so please go to the iHeart
app download it, leave a talkback. Maybe we'll hear your
voice here and you can email us if you want
at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Please start the
email Dear producer d. Recently, we received an email that
I'd like to read some highlights from it. Was sent
by a young listener and eleven year old named Calvin.
He wrote, check it, dear producer, Dave and everyone else,

(51:14):
love your show so funny. I live in Asheville, North Carolina.
One of my favorite episodes is design Beding episode. In
the Ai music episode, I especially love the picture it
with the sixty year old pizza lady. That was a
good one, Elisa. With Now, thank you, Calvin. I just
wanted to send a shout out to you and your
Ashville Empire lacrosse team, the Carolina Redwoods. Thanks for right this, Calvin.
We always appreciate it and allow me to say, go Redwoods. Okay,

(51:36):
that's all I got for y'all. Thanks for listening, and
we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by
our resident apothecary to the Stars Dave Coustin, and starring
Annaliese Rutger as Pooti. Research is by our favorite Dutch

(51:57):
Master Takila from the Wu Tang Clan Marissa Brown. Our
theme song is by the Ridiculous Crime House Band and
noted collectors of Souvenirs, Novelties, Party Tricks Thomas Lee and
Travis Dutt. The host wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred
guest hair and makeup by SPARKLESHUK. Executive producers are honorary
Ridiculous historians of the Dutch Resistance, Ben Bolin and Noel Brown.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Redic Cui say it one more time Crime.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
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