Editing Han van Meegeren (section)

==Aftermath==
[[Image:Van Meegeren's nalatenschap onder de hamer-510337.ogv|thumb|250px|The auction of the estate of Han van Meegeren (in Dutch).]]
After his death, the court ruled that van Meegeren's estate be auctioned and the proceeds from his property and the sale of his counterfeits be used to refund the buyers of his works and to pay [[income tax]]es on the sale of his paintings. Van Meegeren had filed for [[bankruptcy]] in December 1945. On 5 and 6 September 1950, the contents of his Amsterdam house were auctioned, along with 738 other pieces of furniture and works of art, including numerous paintings by old and new masters from his private collection. The house was auctioned separately on 4 September.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

The proceeds amounted to 123,000 guilders. Van Meegeren's unsigned ''The Last Supper&nbsp;I'' was bought for 2,300 guilders, while ''Jesus among the Doctors'' (which van Meegeren had painted while in detention) sold for 3,000 guilders (about US$800, or about US$7,000 today).{{efn|name="multiple"}} Today the painting hangs in a [[Johannesburg]] church. The sale of the entire estate amounted to 242,000 guilders<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=1950-09-18 |title=Art: Not for Money |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,813267,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110131124524/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,813267,00.html |archive-date=2011-01-31 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|TIME]] |language=en-US}}</ref> (about US$60,000, or about US$500,000 today).{{efn|name="multiple"}}

Throughout his trial and bankruptcy, van Meegeren maintained that his second wife Jo had nothing to do with his forgeries. A large part of his considerable wealth<ref>{{Cite web |title=Authentication in Art List of Unmasked Forgers |url=http://authenticationinart.org/aia-archive/aia-unmasked-forgers/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171222052056/http://authenticationinart.org/aia-archive/aia-unmasked-forgers/ |archive-date=2017-12-22 |access-date=2017-12-21 |website=Authentication in Art |language=en}}</ref> had been transferred to her when they divorced, and the money would have been confiscated if she had been ruled to be an accomplice.  Though some biographers believe she must have known the truth,<ref name="Godley127"/> her involvement was never proven and she was able to keep her substantial capital. Jo outlived her husband by many years, in luxury, until her death at the age of 91.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

===M. Jean Decoen's objection===
M. Jean Decoen, a Brussels art expert and restorer, stated in his 1951 book he believed ''The Supper at Emmaus'' and ''The Last Supper&nbsp;II'' to be genuine Vermeers, and demanded that the paintings should again be examined. He also claimed that van Meegeren used these paintings as a model for his forgeries.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Decoen |first=Jean |title=Retour à la véritè, Vermeer-Van Meegeren: Deux Authentiques Vermeer |publisher=Editions Ad. Donker |year=1951 |location=Rotterdam |language=nl |trans-title=Back to the truth, Vermeer-Van Meegeren: Two genuine Vermeer |oclc=3340265}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Schueller|1953|pp=48–58}}</ref> Daniel George Van Beuningen, the buyer of ''The Last Supper&nbsp;II'', ''Interior with Drinkers'', and ''The Head of Christ'', demanded that Dr. Paul Coremans publicly admit that he had erred in his analysis. Coremans refused and Van Beuningen sued him, alleging that Coremans's wrongful branding of ''The Last Supper&nbsp;II'' diminished the value of his "Vermeer" and asking for compensation of £500,000 (about US$1.3&nbsp;million, or about US$10&nbsp;million today).{{efn|name="multiple"}}

The first trial in Brussels was won by Coremans, because the court adopted the same reasoning of the court ruling at van Meegeren's trial. A second trial was delayed owing to van Beuningen's death on 29 May 1955. 
In 1958 the court heard the case on behalf of van Beuningen's heirs. Coremans managed to give the definitive evidence of the forgeries by showing a photograph of a ''Hunting Scene'', attributed to [[Abraham Hondius|A. Hondius]], exactly the same scene which was visible with [[X-ray]] under the surface of the alleged Vermeer's ''Last Supper''. Moreover, Coremans brought a witness to the courtroom who confirmed that van Meegeren bought the ''Hunt scene'' in 1940.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bianconi |first=Piero |title=Vermeer |publisher=Gemeinshaftsausgabe Kunstkreis Luzern Buchclub Ex Libris Zürich |year=1967 |page=101 |language=de}}</ref> The court found in favour of Coremans, and the findings of his commission were upheld.<ref>{{harvnb|Godley|1951|pp=256–258}}</ref>

===Further investigations===
In 1967, the Artists Material Center at [[Carnegie Mellon University]] in [[Pittsburgh]] examined several of the "Vermeers" in their collection, under the direction of Robert Feller and Bernard Keisch. The examination confirmed that several of their paintings were in fact created using materials invented in the 20th century. They concluded that they could be van Meegeren forgeries. The test results obtained by the Carnegie Mellon team are summarized below.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

Han van Meegeren knew that [[white lead]] was used during Vermeer's time, but he had to obtain his stocks through the modern colour trade.  In the 17th century, lead was mined from deposits located in the Low Countries; however, by the 19th century, most lead was imported from Australia and the Americas, and differed both in [[isotope]] composition and in the content of trace elements. Dutch white lead was extracted from ores containing high levels of trace elements of [[silver]] and [[antimony]],<ref>{{Cite thesis |title=Analysis of investigations of pigments from paintings of south German painters in the 17th and 18th century |last=Strauss |first=R. |date=1968 |publisher=[[Technical University Munich]]}}</ref> while the modern white lead used by van Meegeren contained neither, as those elements are separated from the lead during the modern [[smelting]] process.<ref name= False>Exhibition catalog Essen and Berlin. ''Falsification and Research'' (1976) "Museum Folkwang, Essen and Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin". Berlin. Language: German. {{ISBN|3-7759-0201-5}}.</ref>

Forgeries in which modern lead or white lead pigment has been used can be recognized by using a technique called Pb(Lead)-210-Dating.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Keisch|first=B.|title=Dating Works of Art through Their Natural Radioactivity: Improvements and Applications|doi=10.1126/science.160.3826.413|journal=Science|volume=160|issue=3826|pages=413–415|year=1968|pmid=17740234|bibcode=1968Sci...160..413K|s2cid=38078513}}</ref> [[Pb-210]] is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of lead that is part of the [[uranium-238]] [[Decay chain|Radioactive decay series]], and has a [[half-life]] of 22.3 years. To determine the amount of Pb-210, the [[alpha radiation]] emitted by another element, [[polonium-210]] (Po-210), is measured.<ref>Flett,  Robert (8 October 2003). [http://www.flettresearch.ca/Webdoc4.htm Understanding the Pb-210 Method.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019010637/http://www.flettresearch.ca/Webdoc4.htm |date=2017-10-19 }}</ref> Thus it is possible to estimate the age of a painting, within a few years' span, by extrapolating the Pb-210 content present in the paint used to create the painting.<ref name=False/><ref>Froentjes, W., and R. Breek (1977). "A new study into the identity of the [portfolio] of van Meegeren". ''Chemical Magazine'': 583–589.</ref>

The white lead in the painting ''The Supper at Emmaus'' had polonium-210 values of 8.5±1.4 and [[radium-226]] (part of the uranium-238 radioactive decay series) values of 0.8±0.3. In contrast, the white lead found in Dutch paintings from 1600 to 1660 had polonium-210 values of 0.23±0.27 and radium-226 values of 0.40±0.47.<ref name="keisch1967">{{Cite journal |last1=Keisch |first1=B. |last2=Feller |first2=R. L. |last3=Levine |first3=A. S. |last4=Edwards |first4=R. R. |year=1967 |title=Dating and Authenticating Works of Art by Measurement of Natural Alpha Emitters |journal=Science |volume=155 |issue=3767 |pages=1238–1242 |bibcode=1967Sci...155.1238K |doi=10.1126/science.155.3767.1238 |pmid=17847535 |s2cid=23046304}}</ref>

In 1977, another investigation was undertaken by the States forensic labs of the Netherlands using up-to-date techniques, including [[gas chromatography]], to formally confirm the origin of six van Meegeren forgeries that had been alleged to be genuine Vermeers, including the ''Emmaus'' and the ''Last Supper''. The conclusions of the 1946 commission were again reaffirmed and upheld by the Dutch judicial system.<ref>Nieuw onderzoek naar het bindmiddel van Van Meegeren (New investigations in the chemicals of Han van Meegeren), Chemisch Weekblad Nov. 1977. {{in lang|nl}}.</ref>

In 1998, [[A&E (TV channel)|A&E]] ran a TV program called ''Scams, Schemes & Scoundrels'' highlighting van Meegeren's life and art forgeries, many of which had been confiscated as Nazi loot. The program was hosted by skeptic [[James Randi]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

In July 2011, the BBC TV programme ''[[Fake or Fortune]]'' investigated a copy of [[Dirck van Baburen]]'s ''[[The Procuress (Dirck van Baburen)|The Procuress]]'' owned by the Courtauld Institute.<ref name="FoF4">{{Cite episode|title=Rembrandt|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012m6p5|access-date=2011-08-04|series=Fake or Fortune?|network=[[BBC]]|airdate=2011-07-10|number=4|archive-date=2011-08-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806231701/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012m6p5|url-status=live}}</ref> Opinion had been divided as to whether it was a 17th-century studio work or a van Meegeren fake.<ref name="FoF4" /> The programme used chemical analysis of the paint to show that it contained [[bakelite]] and thus confirmed that the painting was a 20th-century fake.<ref name="FoF4" />