As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.
It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.
ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Well Written and Interesting....
A well written and informative story of one of the greatest hoaxes in art history. Being a novice to the art world, I was worried upon beginning the book that I might not understand the complexities of ... Read More
Rating: - Thoroughly enjoyable
I'm a reader of non-fiction, and too many non-fiction books suffer from the author's need to sensationalize the story. Not so here: the story is sensational on its own. I found it to be uniformly interesting ... Read More
Rating: - It's OK - could be better
The story of how Hans van Meergeren faked Vermeer paintings and fooled the experts and Goering is now 60 years old and has been told many times. This retelling is somewhat gee-whiz and frenetic (60 breezy chapters ... Read More
Rating: - I loved this book ...
My impression from reading other reviews of this book are that those who criticized it did so for one (or more) of 4 reasons. Either (1) it's not as good as his previous book "The Rescue Artist", (2) Van Megeeren's ... Read More
Rating: - Utterly feeble
"The Forger's Spell" offers up a cartoon version of history, leavened, to ill effect, by bombastic and cliche-ridden writing. Edward Dolnick seems to think of the Van Meegeren story as a light-hearted romp through World ... Read More
- Well Written and Interesting....
- It's OK - could be better