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Facts About These Notorious Law Breakers and Their Criminal History

Khalid Elhassan May 20, 2020 34 min

Al Capone - Bugsy Siegel — 1930s mobsters. Eugene Cannevari Collection

39. An Oldies Fan

Detail from a Vermeer painting, believed to be a self-portrait of the artist. Wikimedia

A small and dapper man in his mid-fifties at war’s end, van Meegeren was born in 1889 in the Dutch provincial town of Delft, the birthplace of seventeenth-century painter Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer had not been acclaimed during his lifetime, and faded into obscurity soon after his death in 1675. However, his works were rediscovered in the nineteenth century, and his reputation grew. By the time van Megeeren came of age, Vermeer was acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Growing up in Delft, van Meegeren developed a passion for the art of the Dutch Golden Age, and became a huge fan of Delft’s most famous painter, Vermeer. Van Meegeren was mentored by an art teacher who reinforced his passion for old-time paintings, and influenced him into rejecting modern art as decadent and degenerate. In his early twenties, and defying his father, who wanted him to study architecture, van Meegeren moved to The Hague to study painting.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.