33. Forging for His Life
Arrested and faced with collaboration charges punishable by death, van Meegeren realized that saving his life required that he come clean. So he confessed to having forged the “Vermeer” purchased by Goering, plus many other paintings falsely attributed to Dutch Masters. Understandably, the authorities were skeptical, so van Meegeren offered to prove it by producing another forgery. He would literally paint, or forge, for his life.
From July to December, 1945, in the presence of reporters and court-appointed witnesses, van Meegeren proceeded to forge another “Vermeer”. Using the same materials and techniques, he produced Young Christ in the Temple, which experts acknowledged was produced by the same hand that had created the “masterpiece” bought by Goering. A witness described the then-imprisoned Goering’s discovery that his beloved Christ With The Adulteress had been a criminal forgery, as that of a stunned innocent discovering for the first time that there is evil in the world.
