It was believed that The Procuress, at the The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, was a 17th century anonymous copy of a 1620s brothel scene by Dutch master Dirck van Baburen.
After tests for a BBC One show, Fake of Fortune?, it is now accepted that the work is a forgery by Han van Meegeren, a Dutch forger who died in 1947.
As recently as 2009, the respected Art Newspaper revealed that curators at the Courtauld and the National Gallery (NG) believed the painting had “every appearance of being of 17th-century origin”, as the latter put it.
Now, scientific tests commissioned for the BBC programme detected a synthetic resin similar to Bakelite mixed into the paints to mimic age.
Full story at The Telegraph
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I watched the program yesterday evening. Fascinating. Thanks for the post
Han van Meegeren, forger yes, but also a great painter
Expanding on sailor’s thought, I wonder if there is a Forged Art museum out there somewhere. There would surely be some masterpieces (so to speak) in there!
Its quite an untalented and most horrendous looking painting…small wonder in my mind.
This is actually a fairly common occurrence in the world of fine art.