Jef Van der Veken

Jef Van der Veken was born in Antwerp, where his parents operated a crystal and porcelain ware business.

Van der Veken had to convince the organizers to remove the painting that he had made on the basis of a badly damaged original, provoking a scandal.

Renders was a wealthy banker and mecenas from Bruges who had the necessary funds to buy damaged or modest works which he asked Van der Veken to restore through the hyperrestoration process.

He was soon recognized as a renowned expert and was invited to take on the restoration of the finest panels of Hans Memling held by the Old St. John's Hospital and the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.

In order to harmonize his copy with the appearance of the other panels of the Ghent Altarpiece he applied a layer of wax to create a similar patina.

Van der Veken subtly indicated that his work was a copy by giving one of the horsemen the facial features of the then Belgian king Leopold III.

The local authority in charge of managing religious property, called the 'Kerkfabriek', had become interested in acquiring the copy to replace the stolen panel.

Van der Veken asked 300,000 Belgian francs for his work - a large sum in those days - but the Kerkfabriek did not agree to pay this fee.

Despite the onset of blindness he remained active until the end of his life, and his son-in-law, Albert Philippot, who had been trained by Van der Veken, gradually took over his restoration tasks.

[4] The role played by Renders as an art collector and his relationship with Jef Van der Veken were finally questioned at the end of the 20th century.

The discussion was initiated as a result of studies on three of the paintings that had belonged to the Renders Collection, had been sold to Goering and were subjected to modern scientific research decades after the war.

The Renders Magdalena is a portrait of Mary Magdalene, that was claimed to be a copy of the right panel of the Braque Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden, the original of which hangs in The Louvre.

When the collector died, his heirs wanted to have an expert opinion on its value and in 2004 they sent the panel to the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels.

[8] The diptych was probably separated in 1867, the year in which the portrait of Jean Gros was shown at an exhibition in Bruges, organized by the historian James Weale.

[5] When he was asked by Renders to restore the Madonna, Van der Veken endeavored to reconstruct all that had been irretrievably lost and damaged.

[citation needed] Research carried out in 1999–2000 by the Laboratoire d’étude des œuvres d’art par les méthodes scientifiques (French: Laboratory for the Scientific Examination of Artworks) of the Université Catholique de Louvain made it possible to determine the extent of the restoration and to describe the restoration process in detail.

[9] The conclusion of the recent scientific findings is that both Van der Veken and Renders appear to have engaged in intentional art forgery.

Since these revelations, all the works that had belonged to the Renders Collection or had been handled by Van der Veken and even his son-in-law Albert Philippot, many of which hang in major museums in Belgium and abroad, are viewed with suspicion.