# The Art Forger, the Nazi, and "The Pope"

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 12 Mar 2021, 35 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/10b66698-0923-48b9-b0cb-ae39003ce410/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

"The Pope" was a revered Dutch art expert - and yet he fell for a not very convincing forgery of a "lost" Vermeer masterpiece. The forger had duped other art connoisseurs too - including the high ranking Nazi Hermann Göring. But perhaps Han van Meegeren's biggest con was to convince the Dutch public that he was a cheeky resistance hero. We assume knowledge and intelligence can protect us from being duped - but often they are not enough to save us from the fraudster's greatest ally - our own wishful thinking. Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Abraham Bradius was nobody's fool. He was the world's
[0:28] Speaker 1: leading scholar of Dutch painters, and particularly of Johannes Vermeer,
[0:34] Speaker 1: one of the most admired and most mysterious figures in
[0:37] Speaker 1: European art. When Bradius was younger, as an art critic
[0:42] Speaker 1: and collector, he had made his name by spotting works
[0:45] Speaker 1: wrongly attributed to vermir Now, at the age of eighty two,
[0:50] Speaker 1: he was enjoying a retirement swan Song in Monaco. He
[0:54] Speaker 1: had just published a highly respected book in which he
[0:58] Speaker 1: had identified two hundred fake or misattributed Dutch masters. His
[1:03] Speaker 1: opinions were viewed as so authoritative that had been dubbed
[1:08] Speaker 1: the Pope. It was at this moment in Bradius's life,
[1:13] Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven, that Haroard Bone paid a visit
[1:17] Speaker 1: to his Monaco villa. Bone was also a pillar of
[1:21] Speaker 1: the Dutch establishment, a member of parliament who had spoken
[1:25] Speaker 1: out earlier than most against fascism and anti semitism in Europe.
[1:30] Speaker 1: Bone had come to Abraham Bradius on a mission of mercy.
[1:35] Speaker 1: He told Bradius that a Dutch family of anti fascists
[1:38] Speaker 1: were living in Mussolini's Italy, and they needed to raise
[1:42] Speaker 1: money to emigrate to the safety of the United States.
[1:45] Speaker 1: But they had something to sell that might be of value.
[1:50] Speaker 1: Possibly only Bradius had the expertise to judge, and so
[1:56] Speaker 1: Bone unpacked the crate he had brought out of Italy.
[2:00] Speaker 1: Inside it was a large canvas, still on its ancient
[2:04] Speaker 1: wooden stretcher. The picture depicted Christ at a and in
[2:10] Speaker 1: the top left hand corner was the magical signature I
[2:15] Speaker 1: the mayor Johannes Vermir himself. But Bone was eager to
[2:22] Speaker 1: know what did Bradius think he was the expert. The
[2:27] Speaker 1: old man was spellbound. He delivered his verdict. Christ at
[2:33] Speaker 1: Amaeus was not only a genuine Vermir, it was the
[2:37] Speaker 1: Dutch master's finest work. We have here. I am inclined
[2:43] Speaker 1: to say the masterpiece of Johannes Vermir of Delft quite
[2:49] Speaker 1: a different from all these other paintings, and yet every
[2:55] Speaker 1: inch a Vermuir. When this masterpiece was shown to me,
[3:02] Speaker 1: I had difficulty controlling my emotion. Appraham Radius used an
[3:08] Speaker 1: interesting word to describe his discovery. Almost reverently. He called
[3:13] Speaker 1: it the Dutch word to describe something virginly pure, and untouched.
[3:21] Speaker 1: It was an ironic choice of words, because EMUs could
[3:24] Speaker 1: hardly have been more corrupt. It was a rotten fraud
[3:29] Speaker 1: of a painting stiffly applied to an old canvase just
[3:33] Speaker 1: a few months before Gradius caught sight of it. I'm
[3:37] Speaker 1: Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. The trickery
[4:04] Speaker 1: may have been crude, but Abraham Gradius wasn't the only
[4:08] Speaker 1: one to be fooled. Cererard Bonne had been lied to
[4:11] Speaker 1: as well when he visited Bradeus. It was as the
[4:14] Speaker 1: unsuspecting accomplice of a master forger, and soon enough the
[4:20] Speaker 1: entire Dutch art world was sucked into the Khan christ
[4:25] Speaker 1: at Amaeus sold to the Boyman's Museum in Rotterdam, which
[4:28] Speaker 1: was desperate to establish itself on the world stage. Bradius
[4:33] Speaker 1: urged the museum on and even contributed to help pay
[4:36] Speaker 1: for the picture. And there are only forty of ramers,
[4:40] Speaker 1: and this is the most important one. And in my judgment,
[4:45] Speaker 1: do more's beautiful one. If we wait, we'll lose it.
[4:49] Speaker 1: The total cost was five hundred and twenty thousand guilders,
[4:53] Speaker 1: compared to the wages of the time that is well
[4:56] Speaker 1: over ten million dollars to day. Amaus drew admiring crowds
[5:02] Speaker 1: and rave reviews. Several other paintings in a similar style
[5:06] Speaker 1: soon emerged in the Netherlands. Once the first forgery had
[5:10] Speaker 1: been accepted as a Vermeer, it was easier to pass
[5:14] Speaker 1: off these other fakes. They didn't fool everyone, but like
[5:18] Speaker 1: a Maus, they fooled the people who mattered. Critics certified
[5:23] Speaker 1: the fakes, museums exhibited them, collectors paid vast sums for them,
[5:28] Speaker 1: a total of more than one hundred million dollars in
[5:31] Speaker 1: today's money in financial terms alone, this was a monumental fraud.
[5:38] Speaker 1: It is also a puzzle. The Dutch art world revered.
[5:43] Speaker 1: Vermer is one of the greatest painters who ever lived.
[5:47] Speaker 1: He painted mostly in the sixteen sixties and had been
[5:51] Speaker 1: rediscovered only in the late eighteen hundreds. As Bradius said,
[5:55] Speaker 1: only forty Vermeer paintings were thought to have survived. So
[6:00] Speaker 1: the apparent emergence of half a dozen newly discovered Vermeers
[6:04] Speaker 1: in just a few years was a major cultural event,
[6:08] Speaker 1: but also an event that should have strained credulity. But
[6:13] Speaker 1: it did not. Why don't look to the paintings themselves
[6:22] Speaker 1: for an answer. If you compare a genuine Vermeer to
[6:26] Speaker 1: the first forgery Emaus, it's hard to understand how anyone
[6:31] Speaker 1: was fooled, let alone anyone as discerning as Abraham Bradius
[6:36] Speaker 1: Vermier was a true master. His most famous work is
[6:41] Speaker 1: Girl with a Pearl Earring, a luminous portrait of a
[6:44] Speaker 1: young woman seductive, innocent, adoring, and anxious all at once.
[6:50] Speaker 1: In the Milkmaid, a simple scene of domesticity is lifted
[6:55] Speaker 1: by details such as the rendering of a copper pot
[6:59] Speaker 1: and a display of fresh baked bread that looks good
[7:02] Speaker 1: enough to grab out of the painting. Then there's woman
[7:06] Speaker 1: reading a letter. She stands in the soft flight of
[7:09] Speaker 1: an unseen windows. She perhaps pregnant. We see her in
[7:15] Speaker 1: profile as she holds the letter close to her chest,
[7:18] Speaker 1: eyes cast down as she reads. There's a dramatic stillness
[7:23] Speaker 1: about the image. We feel that she's holding her breath
[7:26] Speaker 1: as she scans the letter for news. We hold our
[7:29] Speaker 1: breath too. A masterpiece, and christ at Amaus it's a static,
[7:37] Speaker 1: awkward image by comparison, rather than seeming to be an
[7:41] Speaker 1: inferior imitation of Vermeer. It doesn't look like Vermeer at all.
[7:46] Speaker 1: It's not a terrible painting, but it's not a brilliant
[7:49] Speaker 1: one either. Set alongside Vermeer's works, it seems dour and clumsy.
[7:54] Speaker 1: Yet it fooled the world and might continue to fool
[7:59] Speaker 1: the world to this day, had not the Forger been
[8:02] Speaker 1: caught out by a combination of recklessness and bad luck.
[8:11] Speaker 1: For the Forger, the beginning of the end was a
[8:14] Speaker 1: knock on the door. It was just past nine o'clock
[8:17] Speaker 1: in the evening on the twenty ninth of May nineteen
[8:20] Speaker 1: forty five. The war in Europe was at an end.
[8:25] Speaker 1: The aftershocks were not an officer and an armed soldier
[8:30] Speaker 1: from the Allied Art Commission were the wands doing the knocking.
[8:35] Speaker 1: They were standing at the top of the steps leading
[8:37] Speaker 1: to the door of three hundred and twenty one Kaiserskracht,
[8:41] Speaker 1: one of Amsterdam's most exclusive addresses. Mister van Megreen, Ah, gentlemen,
[8:49] Speaker 1: you have the advantage of me. Lieutenant Joseph Piller of
[8:54] Speaker 1: the Provisional Military Government. I see old do come in.
[9:02] Speaker 1: The house was lit by kerosene lamps. War ravaged Amsterdam
[9:06] Speaker 1: would have no electricity for weeks to come. The Dutch
[9:10] Speaker 1: had just endured what they called the hunger winter, with
[9:14] Speaker 1: some people reduced to eating gruel made from tulip bulbs
[9:18] Speaker 1: to try to stave off starvation. But Lieutenant Pillar could
[9:22] Speaker 1: see that at three hundred and twenty one Kaisers Gracked
[9:25] Speaker 1: there was plenty of everything. Pillar got to the point
[9:30] Speaker 1: a masterpiece by Johannes Vamir the woman taken in adultery
[9:36] Speaker 1: had been found in the possession of a German Nazi,
[9:40] Speaker 1: and not just any Nazi, but Hitler's right hand man,
[9:45] Speaker 1: Hermann Gering. The Germans, being Germans, had kept good records,
[9:51] Speaker 1: Pillar followed the money through various middlemen and eventually traced
[9:56] Speaker 1: five different Vermeer paintings back to deals with van Megren.
[10:04] Speaker 1: At that point the trail went cold. Where he obtained
[10:09] Speaker 1: these Dutch treasures? I am not able to help. I
[10:14] Speaker 1: know nothing of this, and DI mentioned mister Vennigren. Where
[10:19] Speaker 1: did the money come from? It wasn't just a one mansion.
[10:23] Speaker 1: Van Megren owned fifty six other properties in Amsterdam alone,
[10:28] Speaker 1: commercial properties, private homes, apartment blocks, even a hotel. At
[10:34] Speaker 1: number seven hundred and thirty eight, Kaisers gracked a fifteen
[10:37] Speaker 1: minutes stroll away. He hosted regular orgies at which sex
[10:42] Speaker 1: workers were rewarded for their exhausting efforts by being offered
[10:46] Speaker 1: the chance to grab a fistful of jewels in the
[10:48] Speaker 1: hallway as they left. Decades before the war, the young
[10:54] Speaker 1: van Megren had enjoyed some brief success as an artist
[10:59] Speaker 1: in middle age. As his jowls had loosened and his
[11:02] Speaker 1: hair had silvered, he had grown rich as an art dealer,
[11:07] Speaker 1: very rich. Indeed, Van Megren was arrested and marched at
[11:13] Speaker 1: gunpoint across town to prison. He responded with furious denials,
[11:17] Speaker 1: trying to bluster his way to freedom, but after a
[11:21] Speaker 1: round the clock interrogation, Van Megren cracked. Idiots, if you
[11:26] Speaker 1: think I sold a vermir to that fat girring, but
[11:30] Speaker 1: it's not a famir. I painted it myself. It's absurd.
[11:35] Speaker 1: I can't prove it. There's another painting underneath the one,
[11:39] Speaker 1: gurring heads I painted right over it. Give me paper
[11:44] Speaker 1: and charcoal and I'll sketch the composition for you. X
[11:47] Speaker 1: Ray the fake Vermeer and you'll see it's not the
[11:51] Speaker 1: only one either. I painted other vamiers and a couple
[11:54] Speaker 1: of de Huche and ms Emaus in the Bouments that's
[12:00] Speaker 1: mine too. The fraud had unraveled not because anyone spotted
[12:05] Speaker 1: these forgeries, but because the forger himself confessed, and why
[12:10] Speaker 1: wouldn't he? The alternative was worse. Selling an irreplaceable Vermeer
[12:15] Speaker 1: masterpiece to hermann Goering was treason, and treason could carry
[12:20] Speaker 1: the death penalty. Better for Van Magren to admit to
[12:24] Speaker 1: the less heinous crime of forgery and claim that the
[12:27] Speaker 1: Vermeers had never actually existed. All Van Magren had to
[12:32] Speaker 1: do was to prove it. When I first heard the
[12:44] Speaker 1: story of the fake Vamier, I was charmed by the
[12:47] Speaker 1: idea that the despicable Gurring had been duped by a
[12:51] Speaker 1: master forger. I loved the irony of the situation Van
[12:54] Speaker 1: Magren found himself in. In order to avoid a firing squad,
[12:59] Speaker 1: he needed to prove that he had committed a different crime.
[13:03] Speaker 1: We'll get back to that. I wanted us to focus
[13:06] Speaker 1: first on Abraham Bradius, the art critic who first fell
[13:11] Speaker 1: for the fraud. I began my new book, The Data Detective,
[13:16] Speaker 1: with the story of this forgery. The Data Detective is
[13:19] Speaker 1: a book about how to think clearly about the world,
[13:23] Speaker 1: and I wanted to start with Bradius because add a question,
[13:28] Speaker 1: how could a man as expert as Abraham Bradius have
[13:33] Speaker 1: been fooled by so crass a forgery? The answer is this,
[13:39] Speaker 1: when we're trying to interpret the world around us, we
[13:42] Speaker 1: need to realize that our expertise can be drowned by
[13:46] Speaker 1: our feelings. When Bradius wrote I had difficulty controlling my emotion,
[13:54] Speaker 1: he was alas correct. Nobody had more knowledge of Vermeer
[13:59] Speaker 1: than Bradius, but Van Maghren understood how to turn Bradius's
[14:04] Speaker 1: knowledge into a disadvantage. The story of how Van may
[14:09] Speaker 1: and fool Bradius is much more than a footnote in
[14:12] Speaker 1: the history of art. It can teach us why we
[14:15] Speaker 1: buy things we don't need, fall for the wrong kind
[14:18] Speaker 1: of romantic partner, and vote for politicians who betray our trust.
[14:24] Speaker 1: It explains why so often we buy into statistical claims
[14:27] Speaker 1: that even a moment's thought would tell us can't be true.
[14:32] Speaker 1: Van Megren was not a brilliant artist, but he was
[14:36] Speaker 1: a brilliant con man. He intuitively understood something about human nature.
[14:43] Speaker 1: Sometimes we want to be fooled. In twenty eleven, Guy Mayraz,
[14:51] Speaker 1: then a behavioral economist at the University of Oxford, conducted
[14:55] Speaker 1: a test of wishful thinking. Mayraz showed his experimental subjects
[15:01] Speaker 1: a graph of a price rising and falling over time,
[15:04] Speaker 1: and told them that the graphs showed recent fluctuations in
[15:08] Speaker 1: the price of wheat. He asked each person to make
[15:12] Speaker 1: a forecast of where the price would move next, and
[15:15] Speaker 1: offered them a small cash reward if their forecasts came true.
[15:20] Speaker 1: But Mayras had also divided his experimental participants into two categories.
[15:25] Speaker 1: Half of them were told that they were farmers, who
[15:28] Speaker 1: would be paid extra if wheat prices were high. The
[15:31] Speaker 1: rest were bakers, who would earn a bonus if wheat
[15:35] Speaker 1: was cheap. The subjects could earn two separate payments, then,
[15:40] Speaker 1: one for making an accurate forecast, and the second a
[15:44] Speaker 1: windfall if the price of wheat happened to move in
[15:46] Speaker 1: their direction. Yet may Ras found that the prospect of
[15:51] Speaker 1: the windfall influenced the forecast itself. The farmers hoped that
[15:56] Speaker 1: the price of wheat would rise, and they also predicted
[16:00] Speaker 1: that the price of wheat would rise. The bakers did
[16:03] Speaker 1: the opposite. They hoped and predicted that the price of
[16:06] Speaker 1: wheat would fall. This is wishful thinking in its purist form,
[16:12] Speaker 1: letting our reasoning be swayed by our hopes. It's just
[16:16] Speaker 1: one of many studies demonstrating what psychologists call motivated reasoning.
[16:22] Speaker 1: Motivated reasoning is thinking through a topic with the aim
[16:26] Speaker 1: of reaching a particular conclusion. Sometimes it's a conscious process,
[16:31] Speaker 1: as with a lawyer in the courtroom or a candidate
[16:33] Speaker 1: in a political debate, but we often don't know we're
[16:36] Speaker 1: doing it. It can be something as simple as sports
[16:39] Speaker 1: fans convincing themselves that game after game, referee after referee
[16:44] Speaker 1: is biased against their team. Wishful thinking isn't the only
[16:51] Speaker 1: form of motivated reasoning, but it is a common one.
[16:54] Speaker 1: A farmer wants to be accurate in his forecast of
[16:57] Speaker 1: wheat prices, but he also wants to make money, so
[17:00] Speaker 1: his forecasts are swayed by his avarice. And an art
[17:05] Speaker 1: critic who loves Vermeer is motivated to conclude that the
[17:09] Speaker 1: painting in front of him is not a forgery but
[17:12] Speaker 1: a masterpiece. It was wishful thinking that undid Abraham Bradius.
[17:21] Speaker 1: He knew and loved vmir better than anyone alive and
[17:24] Speaker 1: was keen to be the man to discover one final
[17:27] Speaker 1: work by Vermir. But it was more than that. Bradius
[17:32] Speaker 1: had a pet theory about Vermir. He had become fascinated
[17:36] Speaker 1: by the gap between Vermeer's early works, which had biblical themes,
[17:40] Speaker 1: and his later, more famous portrayals of everyday domestic life.
[17:45] Speaker 1: No known paintings existed in that gap. What lurked undiscovered
[17:51] Speaker 1: in those apparently fallow years. Wouldn't it be wonderful if
[17:55] Speaker 1: another biblical work were found. Bradius also speculated that the
[18:00] Speaker 1: Dutch master had, as a young man, traveled to Italy
[18:03] Speaker 1: and been inspired by the religious works of the great
[18:06] Speaker 1: Italian artist Caravaggio. This was conjecture. Not much was known
[18:11] Speaker 1: about Vanmia's life. Nobody knew if he'd ever seen a Caravaggio.
[18:17] Speaker 1: Van Maghren was a forger who understood his victim all
[18:21] Speaker 1: too well. He created Ameeus to fulfill all Bradius's dreams.
[18:27] Speaker 1: It was on a biblical theme, and, just as Bradius
[18:30] Speaker 1: had argued, all along was a homage to Caravaggio. When
[18:34] Speaker 1: Bradius saw the picture, he had no doubts. Why would
[18:39] Speaker 1: he Van Maghren's unwitting stooge, Herold Boone wasn't just showing
[18:44] Speaker 1: Bradius a painting bone, was showing him evidence that had
[18:48] Speaker 1: been right all along. In the final years of his life,
[18:53] Speaker 1: the old man had found the missing link at last.
[18:58] Speaker 1: But his wishful thinking really this powerful. Yes, Abraham Bradius
[19:03] Speaker 1: was emotionally involved. He loved Vermeer, He was proud of
[19:06] Speaker 1: his record as a connoisseur. He was death but not
[19:09] Speaker 1: to miss the chance of a major discovery. But shouldn't
[19:12] Speaker 1: his expertise have enabled him to spot such a crude khn.
[19:17] Speaker 1: The French satirist Moliere once wrote, a learned fool is
[19:23] Speaker 1: more fullish than an ignorandue. Perhaps Moliere was right. If
[19:29] Speaker 1: people with deeper expertise fall into the trap of wishful thinking,
[19:34] Speaker 1: they're able to muster more reasons to believe whatever they
[19:37] Speaker 1: really wished to believe. One recent study by Maggie Toplach
[19:42] Speaker 1: and other psychologists found that intelligence was no defense against
[19:47] Speaker 1: motivated reasoning, and an older study something of a modern classic,
[19:51] Speaker 1: also throws light on the question. The political scientists Charles
[19:55] Speaker 1: Tabor and Milton Lodge looked at motivated reasoning about two
[20:00] Speaker 1: political hot button issues, gun control and affirmative action. They
[20:06] Speaker 1: asked people to evaluate various arguments for and against each position,
[20:10] Speaker 1: and they found, as he might expect, that politics got
[20:14] Speaker 1: in the way of people's ability to dissect the strengths
[20:17] Speaker 1: and weaknesses of different points. More surprising, however, was that
[20:22] Speaker 1: simply reading the arguments pushed people further towards political extremes.
[20:27] Speaker 1: They grabbed onto arguments they liked and quickly dismissed or
[20:30] Speaker 1: forgot about counter arguments. Even more striking was that this
[20:35] Speaker 1: polarizing effect was stronger for people who already knew a
[20:39] Speaker 1: lot about civics and politics. These well informed people were
[20:43] Speaker 1: better at cherry picking the information they wanted and dismissing
[20:46] Speaker 1: the rest. More information and more expertise produced more strongly
[20:52] Speaker 1: motivated reasoning. From his Monaco villa in nineteen thirty seven,
[20:57] Speaker 1: Abraham Bradius offers us the perfect warning about the dangerous
[21:02] Speaker 1: combination of wishful thinking and deep expertise. Bradius noticed details
[21:09] Speaker 1: about the forgery that a less skilled observer would have missed,
[21:12] Speaker 1: and those details supported the conclusion he wanted to reach
[21:17] Speaker 1: those telltale white dots on the bread For instance, the
[21:21] Speaker 1: bright speckles seemed a bit clumsy to the untrained eye,
[21:24] Speaker 1: but they reminded Bradius of Vermeer's highlights on that tempting
[21:29] Speaker 1: loaf of bread in the milk maid. The composition echoed
[21:33] Speaker 1: a tense and understated painting of the Amaus scene by Caravaggio.
[21:38] Speaker 1: That resonance would have been lost on a casual viewer,
[21:41] Speaker 1: but it was not lost on Bradius. He would have
[21:44] Speaker 1: picked up other clues designed to show Amaus was the
[21:48] Speaker 1: real thing. There's a jug in the painting, just a
[21:51] Speaker 1: jug to most observers. That Bradius would have noted that
[21:54] Speaker 1: it was in a seventeenth century style, not the sort
[21:58] Speaker 1: of vessel available in biblical times. That is just the
[22:01] Speaker 1: sort of anachronism that indicates an authentic work. But van
[22:06] Speaker 1: Megren was a step ahead here, aimed a seventeenth century
[22:10] Speaker 1: antique and used it as a prop There were seventeenth
[22:14] Speaker 1: century pigments too. Van Magren had duplicated Vanmeer's color palette
[22:19] Speaker 1: and his materials. It bought year's worth of rare lapis
[22:23] Speaker 1: lazually paint from a London supplier in order to produce
[22:26] Speaker 1: an authentic Vermeer blue. An expert such as Bradius could
[22:32] Speaker 1: spot at nineteenth or twentieth century forgery simply by looking
[22:35] Speaker 1: at the back of the painting and noting that the
[22:37] Speaker 1: canvas was too new. Van Magren knew this. He had
[22:42] Speaker 1: painted his work on a seventeenth century canvas, carefully scrubbed
[22:46] Speaker 1: of its surface pigments, but retaining the undercoat and its
[22:50] Speaker 1: distinctive pattern of cracking. And then there was the simplest
[22:53] Speaker 1: test of all, was the paint soft The challenge for
[22:58] Speaker 1: anyone who wants to forge an old master is that
[23:00] Speaker 1: oil paints take half a century to dry completely. If
[23:04] Speaker 1: you dip a cotton swab into some pure alcohol and
[23:07] Speaker 1: gently robbed the surface of an oil painting, and the
[23:10] Speaker 1: cotton may come away stained with pigments. If it does,
[23:14] Speaker 1: the painting is a modern fake. Only after several decades
[23:19] Speaker 1: will the paint hardened enough to pass this test. Bradius
[23:24] Speaker 1: had identified fakes using this method before, but the paint
[23:28] Speaker 1: on Emmaus stubbornly refused to yield its pigment. This gave
[23:33] Speaker 1: Bradius an excellent reason to believe that Emaus was old
[23:37] Speaker 1: and therefore genuine, and Magren had fooled him with a
[23:42] Speaker 1: brilliant piece of amateur chemistry. The forger had figured out
[23:46] Speaker 1: a way to mix seventeenth century oil paints with a
[23:50] Speaker 1: very twentieth century material, phenol formaldehyde, a resin that, when
[23:56] Speaker 1: gently cooked for two hours, turned into the robust new
[24:00] Speaker 1: material known as baker light. No wonder, the paint was
[24:04] Speaker 1: hard and unyielding. It was infused with industrial plastic. Bradius
[24:11] Speaker 1: had half a dozen subtle reasons to believe that Amaeus
[24:15] Speaker 1: was of Ameer. They were enough to dismiss one glaring
[24:19] Speaker 1: reason to believe otherwise that the picture doesn't look like
[24:23] Speaker 1: anything else Vanmeir ever painted. I'm no art critic, but
[24:28] Speaker 1: to my eyes the painting is drab. The eyelids in
[24:32] Speaker 1: particular catch my attention. They're droopy and strange and very
[24:36] Speaker 1: distinctive of Van Magren's other work. But then I'm looking
[24:41] Speaker 1: for a van Magren. Gradius was looking for a Vermeer.
[24:47] Speaker 1: Listen again to that extraordinary rave review from Abraham Gradius.
[24:52] Speaker 1: We have here. I am inclined to say the masterpiece
[24:58] Speaker 1: of Johannes Veramir of Delft quite a different from all
[25:03] Speaker 1: his odor paintings. And yet every inch of quite different
[25:11] Speaker 1: from all his other paintings. Shouldn't that be a warning?
[25:16] Speaker 1: But the old man desperately wanted to believe that this
[25:19] Speaker 1: painting was the Vermeer he'd been looking for all his life,
[25:22] Speaker 1: the one that would provide the link back to Caravaggio himself.
[25:27] Speaker 1: Van Meghren set a trap into which only a true
[25:30] Speaker 1: expert could stumble. Wishful thinking did the rest. It's hard
[25:44] Speaker 1: not to love the story of the clever forger who
[25:47] Speaker 1: fooled the experts and scanned the Nazis hand. Van Meghren
[25:51] Speaker 1: seemed to be David Versus Goliath, Robin Hood and the
[25:54] Speaker 1: Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into one. Many biographies have been
[25:59] Speaker 1: written about him, including two authoritative books by Edward Dolnick
[26:04] Speaker 1: and by Jonathan Lopez. Several movies have been made too,
[26:09] Speaker 1: doing the recent The Last Vermeer. Van Maghren his Box Office.
[26:15] Speaker 1: His early biographers made him out to be a misunderstood trickster,
[26:19] Speaker 1: hurt by the unjust rejections of his own art, but
[26:22] Speaker 1: happy to outsmart his country's occupiers. One oft reported story
[26:27] Speaker 1: is that Gering, awaiting trial in Nuremberg, when told he
[26:32] Speaker 1: had been duped by Van Magren looked as if for
[26:36] Speaker 1: the first time he had discovered there was evil in
[26:39] Speaker 1: the world, and the authorities responsible for bringing Van Magren
[26:44] Speaker 1: to justice unwittingly helped make his story world famous. Forensic
[26:50] Speaker 1: chemists quickly verified that, as Van Megren claimed, the paintings
[26:55] Speaker 1: were hardened with bakolite and aged with India ink. But
[26:59] Speaker 1: in an absurd stunt, prosecutors challenged Van Magren to prove
[27:04] Speaker 1: that he was the forger by painting a picture in
[27:07] Speaker 1: the style of a maus, and of course he did.
[27:11] Speaker 1: One breathless headline reported he paints for his life. Newspapers
[27:19] Speaker 1: in the Netherlands and around the world couldn't tear their
[27:22] Speaker 1: gaze away from the great showman. By the time the
[27:26] Speaker 1: trial came in nineteen forty seven, the charge was forgery,
[27:30] Speaker 1: not treason or collaboration. Everything was set for a media
[27:35] Speaker 1: circus in which the charismatic Van Magren was the ringmaster.
[27:40] Speaker 1: Called the next witness, mister Renz stribes your honor, I'm
[27:46] Speaker 1: a little nervous. I don't know anything ab old art.
[27:51] Speaker 1: Don't worry. These lawyers don't know anything either. Spoiled smister
[27:59] Speaker 1: van Negren. Please, when van Megren himself took the stand.
[28:05] Speaker 1: He spun his story that he'd only forged the art
[28:08] Speaker 1: to prove his worth as an artist and to unmask
[28:12] Speaker 1: the art experts as fools. But mister van Megren, you'll
[28:15] Speaker 1: sold these figs for high prices, your honor. Had they
[28:19] Speaker 1: sold them for low prices, it would have been obvious
[28:23] Speaker 1: that they were favor and Magren had them all spelled
[28:26] Speaker 1: under order in the court. In his closing statement to
[28:32] Speaker 1: the court, he claimed again that he hadn't done it
[28:35] Speaker 1: for the money, which had brought him nothing but trouble.
[28:39] Speaker 1: The newspapers and the public lapped up his story. Van
[28:43] Speaker 1: Maghren was found guilty of forgery, but was cheered as
[28:48] Speaker 1: he left the court room. A Dutch opinion poll found that,
[28:51] Speaker 1: apart from the Prime Minister, Han Van Meghren was the
[28:55] Speaker 1: most popular man in the country, and that was his
[28:59] Speaker 1: final bow. A few days after being sentenced, Van Magren
[29:04] Speaker 1: was admitted to hospital with heart trouble. A few weeks later,
[29:08] Speaker 1: he died a hero, without ever serving a day of
[29:12] Speaker 1: his prison term. For a while, there was even talk
[29:16] Speaker 1: of putting up a statue of the man who fooled Girring.
[29:22] Speaker 1: There's just one problem with this picture of Hand van
[29:26] Speaker 1: Magren as a lovable rogue. He was, in fact an
[29:31] Speaker 1: enthusiastic Nazi taking England. One is a book illustrated and
[29:38] Speaker 1: published by Hand van Magren. It's so sinister looking that
[29:42] Speaker 1: Jonathan Lopez, Van Magren's biographer has hidden his copy away
[29:47] Speaker 1: so that visitors don't see it. It's an evil book
[29:52] Speaker 1: full of grotesque, antisemitic poetry and illustrations using Nazi iconography
[29:57] Speaker 1: and colors. It's lavish, with no expense spared in the
[30:02] Speaker 1: printing of the book, no wonder given whom Van Magren
[30:06] Speaker 1: hoped might read it. The was hand delivered to Adolf
[30:11] Speaker 1: Hitler with a handwritten declaration in artist's charcoal to all
[30:17] Speaker 1: my beloved fur in grateful tribute und von Mager. Remember
[30:26] Speaker 1: where we began our cautionary tale. Harard Bone came to
[30:30] Speaker 1: Abraham Bradius with a maus at, a story about an
[30:33] Speaker 1: anti fascist family with an old canvas in a back room,
[30:37] Speaker 1: desperate to escape from Muslin's Italy and hoping that the
[30:41] Speaker 1: work might be worth something. They were a figment of
[30:44] Speaker 1: Van Megren's imagination. Bone was just another victim of the
[30:49] Speaker 1: forger's cynical gift for pushing all the right emotional buttons.
[30:55] Speaker 1: Bone had spoken out against fascism and anti Semitism, and
[30:59] Speaker 1: Van Megren the secret fascist Cruelly spannam a yarn about
[31:04] Speaker 1: heroic dissidents as a ruse to get the painting into
[31:07] Speaker 1: the hands of Abraham Brady. Of course, Bone fell in
[31:11] Speaker 1: love with the idea. After the war, the Dutch didn't
[31:17] Speaker 1: have much time for collaborators. There were too many of them,
[31:21] Speaker 1: and some of their crimes, such as colluding in transportation
[31:24] Speaker 1: of Jews to death camps, were too awful to ignore.
[31:29] Speaker 1: There was little sense of reconciliation or forgiveness. The traitors
[31:33] Speaker 1: were shamed in the streets or worse so, what would
[31:38] Speaker 1: have happened if Hitler's personally inscribed copy of Taken England
[31:42] Speaker 1: One had been discovered before Van Magren's trial. The discomforting
[31:48] Speaker 1: truth is that it was discovered. A Dutch resistance newspaper
[31:53] Speaker 1: had published the news that Van Magren's personally dedicated book
[31:57] Speaker 1: had been found in Adolf Hitler's library. Van Magren waved
[32:03] Speaker 1: it away, claiming that it signed hundreds of copies of
[32:06] Speaker 1: the book and the dedication must have been added by
[32:09] Speaker 1: someone else. It's a ludicrous excuse, but people believed it.
[32:15] Speaker 1: That seems incredible. Handvan Megren had prospered mightily under Nazi occupation,
[32:22] Speaker 1: buying up a portfolio of expensive properties and holding those
[32:26] Speaker 1: decadent parties. You don't get to act like that in
[32:29] Speaker 1: German occupied territory unless you've made friends with a few Nazis.
[32:35] Speaker 1: But handvan Megren sensed that the Dutch people needed a
[32:39] Speaker 1: new story, something upbeat, a lighthearted tale of boldness and
[32:44] Speaker 1: trickery in which a Dutchman had struck back against the Nazis,
[32:49] Speaker 1: and he gave it to them. A man who should
[32:52] Speaker 1: have been viewed as a traitor reshaped his reputation into
[32:55] Speaker 1: that of a patriot, even a hero. He manipulated the
[33:00] Speaker 1: emotions of the Dutch people as he had manipulated the
[33:03] Speaker 1: emotions of Abraham Radius before the war. Abraham Radius desperately
[33:08] Speaker 1: want of a mere The Dutch public desperately wanted symbols
[33:13] Speaker 1: of resistance to the Nazis. Wishful thinking is a powerful thing.
[33:19] Speaker 1: Hand van Maigren knew how to give people exactly what
[33:23] Speaker 1: they wanted. If you'd like to hear another cautionary tale
[33:35] Speaker 1: about a trickster who Captivated a Nation. One of my
[33:38] Speaker 1: favorite episodes is Cautionary Tales Season one, episode two, The
[33:43] Speaker 1: Rogue Dressed as a Captain enjoy Key. Sources for this
[33:50] Speaker 1: episode include The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez,
[33:55] Speaker 1: The Forger's Spell by Edward Donnick, and my own book
[33:59] Speaker 1: The Data Detective Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics.
[34:04] Speaker 1: For a full list of references, see Tim Harford dot com.
[34:08] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tale as is written by me Tim Harford with
[34:11] Speaker 1: Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust.
[34:15] Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of
[34:18] Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. Starring in this
[34:23] Speaker 1: series of Cautionary Tales Helena Bonham, Carter and Jeffrey Wright,
[34:28] Speaker 1: alongside Nazzar Elderazzi, Ed Gohen, Melanie Guttridge, Rachel Hanshaw, copnaholbrook Smith,
[34:36] Speaker 1: Greg Lockett, Messiah Munroe and Ruthless Wright. This show wouldn't
[34:42] Speaker 1: have been possible without the work of Neil LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg,
[34:46] Speaker 1: Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Karlie mcgliory, Eric Sandler, Emily Roster,
[34:52] Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor Ann, Yellow Lakhan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales
[34:58] Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,
[35:03] Speaker 1: please remember to rate, share, and review by

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