MEEGEREN, HAN VAN

born Oct. 10, 1889, Deventer, Neth. died Dec. 30, 1947, Amsterdam byname of Henricus Antonius Van Meegeren Dutch painter, best known for his successful and complex scheme of forging and selling paintings attributed to Dutch masters. Van Meegeren's activities as a forger first came to light after World War II, when an Allied art commission was established to identify and restore to their owners the works of art that had been collected by Nazi leaders. Puzzled at the discovery of a painting called Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Jan Vermeer among the collection amassed by Hermann Gring, the commission traced the sale of the painting to van Meegeren, an eccentric and wealthy Amsterdam painter. Arrested in 1945 and faced with charges of collaboration, van Meegeren confessed to having forged the reputed Vermeer and other paintings, stating that his original intention had been to reveal his authorship of them after the paintings had been acclaimed by critics. Of van Meegeren's 14 known forgeries of works by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, 9 had been sold before the war at enormous profit, including the painting entitled Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus, which had been proclaimed by scholars as a masterpiece by Vermeer. Van Meegeren was sentenced to one year in prison but died of a heart attack before beginning to serve his sentence.