FIVE THINGS ABOUT A MASTER ART FORGER.

1 ILL-GOTTEN GAINS

At the peak of his criminal career in the Second World War, Han van Meegeren was so flush with cash that he bought more than 120 houses in Amsterdam. His own mansion housed stacks of gold, jewelry and cash.

2 IMITATED OLD MASTER VERMEER

Van Meegeren earned more money painting than did Picasso, but his pictures were signed with the name of celebrated Old Master Johannes Vermeer. Roughly onesixth of Vermeer’s entire presumed output was made up of Van Meegeren forgeries. One, Supper at Emmaus, was centre stage at a 1937 blockbuster show at a museum in Rotterdam. For eight years, it was one of the most famous paintings in the world. But it has virtually only one detail characteristic of the work of Vermeer: the sacramental bread is painted with little sparkling dots of light.

3 MADE PAINT SEEM OLDER

Oil paint less than a century old dissolves in alcohol, so Van Meegeren discovered that a solution called albuterol, mixed with oil paint, would stiffen to Old Master levels of hardness. He had help in this from Theodore Ward in London, who owned a company at the cutting edge of combining paint with plastics.

4 SOLD TO GOERING

With this compound, Van Meegeren created more forgeries. Over the next few years, a host of other “lost” Vermeers came to market. Each was worse than the last, yet prices kept rising. One sold to the Rijksmuseum and another to Nazi leader Hermann Goering, for what was then the highest sum ever paid for a picture.

5 CONVICTED BUT NEVER SAW JAIL

Van Meegeren was caught because he got lazy, leaving a paper trail leading directly from Goering to himself. He was arrested not for forgery but for collusion with the enemy. Van Meegeren pleaded mental frailty and was given just a year in jail. Slippery to the last, he contrived to die without serving a day of his sentence.