I'm baccccck! Exams are finally over which is relief, it's pretty much one of the most stressful things I've ever gone through, proving for two hours that you've learnt something. Anyway now that I'm free I got to find things to do and one of them will be blogging and trying to make the blog look better.
Today's post is on one of the topics I wrote about in my exam yesterday. I actually find the field of forgery very interesting and find it amusing how people could believe a painting, especially the works I'm writing about, could be genuine.
Han van Meergeren was a Dutch forger who painted works and signed them as that of Vermeer. He got away with it as Vermeer does not have a lot of surviving works, he 'filled in the gaps' of the artists body of work and created a new area of religious works in which there was no genuine example of.
What I find particularly interesting is that Meergeren painted in his own style, with a bit of Caravaggio mixed in.
With his paintings he managed to fool the most expert of art scholars and critics who declared the works to be the finest of Vermeer's work. This is what I amusing as while his work is good when compared to actual Vermeer's it's clear how different they are.
These are authentic Vermeer's, his most famous being Girl with a Pearl Earring. It is clear when comparing the works how different the works are with the style of the figure being totally different particularly their faces. Meergeren was only got caught when the police were tracing the provenance of a painting owned by a high ranked Nazi officer back to him where he was arrested and later confessed to have painted it himself.
Hope you all enjoyed this post :D
xoxo
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