Volume 55, Number 17 · November 6, 2008
Victims of Vermeermania
By James Fenton
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren
by Jonathan Lopez
Harcourt, 340 pp., $26.00
The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
by Edward Dolnick
Harper, 349 pp., $26.95
Sometime after 1866, when a series of articles by Théophile Thoré in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts brought much of Vermeer's heretofore misidentified work together, his reputation began to acquire the ability to drive men mad, or at least to inspire them to fatal loyalties and gross errors of judgment. This suited Thoré very well. He was a dealer as well as a clever connoisseur. He wanted to drive Vermeer's prices up. He had been in the grip of the obsession himself, and now he wanted others to suffer what he had. 'This man Vermeer,' he wrote, 'he has driven us mad. But we have revived him.'[1]
Review, 4037 words
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