Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledge

Chapter One

5 Scandals That Rocked Art

Forgeries, thefts, and outright vandalism? That's right. Art history's about to get a whole lot more interesting.

_01:: The Vermeer Forgeries
Every age sees art through its own eyes, and the cleverest forgers play up to this. One of the most notorious forgeries ever occurred in the 1930s. A Dutchman named Han van Meegeren (1889–1947) produced forgeries of early works by the Dutch 17th-century master Jan Vermeer. They were technically brilliant and faultless, using old canvas and the correct 17th-century pigments. Cunningly, van Meegeren chose religious imagery that some experts believed Vermeer had painted, but very few examples of which existed. Most (though not all) of the greatest experts were completely taken in, but when you see the paintings now, you'll wonder why. All the faces look like the great film stars of the 1930s, such as Marlene Dietrich and Douglas Fairbanks.

_02:: The Mona Lisa Theft
It's sometimes suggested that rich criminals arrange for famous works of art to be stolen so that they can have them exclusively to themselves in private. Such theories have never been proven ... read full excerpt from Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledg ebook