[1] Van Meegeren became a national hero after World War II when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Korteling had rejected the Impressionist movement and other modern trends as decadent, degenerate art, and his strong personal influence may have led van Meegeren to do likewise.

On 8 January 1913, he received the prestigious Gold Medal from the Technical University in Delft for his Study of the Interior of the Church of Saint Lawrence (Laurenskerk) in Rotterdam.

[4] To supplement his small salary of 75 guldens per month, Han sketched posters and painted pictures for Christmas cards, still-life, landscapes, and portraits for the commercial art trade.

He undertook numerous journeys to Belgium, France, Italy, and England, and acquired a name for himself as a portraitist, earning commissions from English and American socialites who spent their winter vacations on the Côte d'Azur.

By 1928, the similarity of Van Meegeren's paintings to those of the Old Masters began to draw the reproach of Dutch art critics, who said that his talent was limited outside of copying other artists' work.

[18] Jonathan Lopez writes that Van Meegeren "denounced modern painting as 'art-Bolshevism' in the articles, described its proponents as a 'slimy bunch of woman-haters and negro-lovers,' and invoked the image of 'a Jew with a handcart' as a symbol for the international art market".

In 1934 Van Meegeren had bought a seventeenth century mediocre Dutch painting, The Awakening of Lazarus, and on this foundation he created his masterpiece à la Vermeer.

The experts assumed that Vermeer had studied in Italy, so Van Meegeren used the version of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, located at Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera, as a model.

The feeling of the consecration overflows on the visitors, although the picture has no ties to ritual or church", and despite the presence of masterpieces of Rembrandt and Grünewald, it was defined as "the spiritual centre" of the whole exhibition.

On 18 December 1943, he divorced his wife, but this was only a formality; the couple remained together, but a large share of his capital was transferred to her accounts as a safeguard against the uncertainties of the war.

[6] In 1942, during the German occupation of the Netherlands, one of Van Meegeren's agents sold the Vermeer forgery Christ with the Adulteress to Nazi banker and art dealer Alois Miedl.

[37] Van Meegeren painted his last forgery between July and December 1945 in the presence of reporters and court-appointed witnesses: Jesus among the Doctors, also called Young Christ in the Temple[38] in the style of Vermeer.

[41] The collaboration charges had been dropped, since the expert panel had found that the supposed Vermeer sold to Hermann Göring had been a forgery and was, therefore, not the cultural property of the Netherlands.

Thus, the test results obtained by the commission appeared to confirm that the works were forgeries created by Van Meegeren, but their authenticity continued to be debated by some of the experts until 1967 and 1977, when new investigative techniques were used to analyze the paintings (see below).

[citation needed] On 12 November 1947, the Fourth Chamber of the Amsterdam Regional Court found Han van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud, and sentenced him to one year in prison.

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.

[56][57] Daniel George Van Beuningen, the buyer of The Last Supper II, Interior with Drinkers, and The Head of Christ, demanded that Dr. Paul Coremans publicly admit that he had erred in his analysis.

[59] 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.

[citation needed] 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.

[66] In 1998, 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.

[citation needed] In July 2011, the BBC TV programme Fake or Fortune investigated a copy of Dirck van Baburen's The Procuress owned by the Courtauld Institute.

[67] In 2008, Harvard-educated art historian Jonathan Lopez published The Man Who Made Vermeers, Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meegeren.

His extensive research confirmed that Van Meegeren started to make forgeries, not so much because of feeling misunderstood and undervalued by art critics as some maintain, but for the income that it generated, which he needed to support his addictions and lavish lifestyle.

[70] A Dutch opinion poll conducted in October 1947 placed Han van Meegeren's popularity second in the nation, behind only the Prime Minister's and slightly ahead of Prince Bernhard, the husband of Princess Juliana.

[3] Lopez argued that Han van Meegeren's defence during his trial in Amsterdam was a masterpiece of trickery, forging his own personality into a true Dutchman eager to trick his critics and also the Dutch people by pretending that he sold his fake Vermeer to Göring because he wanted to teach the Nazi a lesson.

"[73] List of known forgeries by Han van Meegeren (unless specified differently, they are after Vermeer):[74][75][76] Posthumously, Van Meegeren's forgeries have been shown in exhibitions around the world, including exhibitions in Amsterdam (1952), Basel (1953), Zürich (1953), Haarlem in the Kunsthandel de Boer (1958), London (1961), Rotterdam (1971), Minneapolis (1973), Essen (1976–1977), Berlin (1977), Slot Zeist [nl] (1985), New York (1987), Berkeley, CA (1990), Munich (1991), Rotterdam (1996), The Hague (1996) and more recently at the Haagse Kunstkring, The Hague (2004) and Stockholm (2004), and have thus been made broadly accessible to the public.

Other works include his prize-winning St. Laurens Cathedral;[92] a Portrait of the actress Jo Oerlemans[93] (his second wife); his Night Club;[94] from the Roaring Twenties; the cheerful watercolor A Summer Day on the Beach[95] and many others.

[citation needed] Han van Meegeren was played by Guy Pearce in the movie The Last Vermeer, which tells the story of the investigation into his sale of the painting "Jesus and the Adulteress" to Nazi officer Hermann Göring.

[96][97] The movie was based on the book The Man Who Made Vermeers, Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meegeren, by Jonathan Lopez.