I Was Vermeer
Frank Wynne
288 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 074756681X
ISBN13:
Language: English
Publish: January 1, 2007
ArtArt HistoryAutobiographyBiographyCrimeHistoricalHistoryMysteryNonfictionTrue Crime
In 1945, a small-time Dutch art dealer was arrested for selling a forgery of a priceless national treasure – a painting by Vermeer – to Hitler’s right-hand man. The charge was treason, the only possible sentence death. And yet Han van Meegeren languished in his dank prison cell, incapable of uttering the words that would set him ‘I am a forger.’ This riveting account of greed, hubris, excess, treason and fine art is the story of a failed artist and the greatest forger of all time, who executed a swindle which earned him the equivalent of fifty million dollars and the acclaim of the very critics who had mocked him.