On the Science and Mathematics blog: The almost perfect Vermeer
This article was published on the Science and Mathematics blog of the newspaper O Globo, coordinated by the deputy director of IMPA, Claudio Landim.
The history of art is constructed from the relationship between the works and the period in which they are made, providing context for the present artistic movement based on the evolution that links the past of the works to the possibilities of the future. Art critics are the ones who write this contextualization. History has been rewritten several times with the help of mathematics after a discussion about one of the best-known Dutch artists of the 17th century, Johannes Vermeer. One of the painter's masterpieces is Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted in 1665.
Another masterpiece had been lost over the course of history, and was rediscovered in 1937 by Abraham Bredius, a collector, art historian, and curator. This work was purchased for the equivalent of 4.6 million euros today, and is called The Disciples at Emmaus.
This painting disappeared once again during the Second World War, and only reappeared in 1945 in the collection of a German officer, Hermann Göring. Officials were responsible for repatriating works of art stolen during the war, and German documents indicated that the original seller was a painter and art dealer named Van Meegeren. When he refused to name the original owner of the painting, he was arrested for treason. The penalty for treason, if found guilty, was death. To avoid the charges, Van Meegeren said that he had painted several paintings and lied when selling them, claiming they were originally by Vermeer.
Van Meegeren had his own artistic career, but received numerous negative reviews as a young man, who said his talent was limited to imitating other artists and that he lacked originality. Therefore, he decided to prove to the critics that he was capable of producing a work as magnificent as the works of genius painters. And so began the almost perfect forgery of the Vermeer above, which lasted six years. He studied Vermeer's life, artistic techniques, the chemical composition of paints, and built brushes similar to the originals. He even bought a 17th-century canvas, scraped off the old paint, and painted over it using chemicals to give it an aged appearance. Finally, he fired the work in an oven to increase the number of brushstroke cracks and make the painting appear to be 300 years old.
To clarify the facts, the court requested tests to verify the authenticity of some paintings. Many of the tests indicated that Van Meegeren was in fact a forger, but the commission still believed that at least one of the works was genuinely by Vermeer – the Disciples at Emmaus. In 1951, Jean Decoen, a Brussels art expert and painting restorer, stated that all the paintings were authentic and genuine Vermeer works. Thus it was written in art history: Van Meegeren was not a forger, just a liar.