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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

35. Painting the Perfect Vermeer

Van Meegeren’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’. Wikimedia

After years of experimenting with his criminal forgery techniques, van Meegeren was finally ready to make his big move. In 1936, he painted The Supper at Emmaus in the style of Vermeer, and handed it off to a lawyer friend, claiming it was a hitherto “undiscovered” work by the famous Dutch Master. A renowned art historian examined it, accepted it as genuine, and praised it to the skies as “the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft“.

The “discovery” of The Supper at Emmaus took the art world by storm. Wealthy art lovers of The Rembrandt Society chipped in, and purchased the painting for the equivalent of $5 million in 2020 dollars. It was donated to a prominent Rotterdam museum, where it was highlighted as a centerpiece in an exhibition of Dutch masterpieces. Pleased at having pulled it off – and even more pleased with the money gained – van Meegeren invested the proceeds in buying himself a nice mansion in Nice, and began to pump it out more forgeries.

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.