36. Perfect Forgery of Art Requires Perfecting the Art of Forgery
Van Meegeren went to great lengths to prepare his forgeries. He began by purchasing authentic seventeenth-century painting canvases. He also mixed his own paints, using the same materials and formulas used by the Dutch Masters, and created paintbrushes from the same materials they had used. However, his greatest challenge was making a painting made a few months ago seem like it was three centuries old.
It takes decades for an oil painting to fully harden: a blob of paint in recent work dents if pressed. Van Meegeren needed to make paint that looks old, which meant it had to be dry. So he bought a pizza oven, and experimented to find the right paint mix that could withstand the heat of the oven and harden, without losing its brilliance. His experimental paints kept burning and melting, but he kept at it – for years. Eventually, he discovered that the trick was to dissolve a small amount of plastic into the paint. Van Meegeren was now ready for the ultimate criminal art con job.
