The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
 | Harper, 2008, Hardcover Customer Rating: 19 reviews Recommend |
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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.
Title: The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Sales Rank: 12925 in Books
Author: Edward Dolnick
Publisher: Harper, 2008-07-01, Hardcover, 368 pages, ISBN: 0060825413
Package Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches, 1.5 pounds
- 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 War II, where war criminals like Hermann Goering are shown to be "rubes" by the clever forger. That Van Meegeren himself was a Nazi-sympathizer seems unimportant in this storyline,… More reviews
- the forger
- I almost gave this a 5 star. It is a really well written detailed book about the man who fooled Goering and sold him a fake bill of goods during WW11 and learning afterwards what Goering's reaction was is what the cost of this book.
However, somewhere in the middle of this book, the author strays a bit and goes into too… More reviews
- Great Book
- Wonderfully engaging and informative book! I highly recommend it, as well as the documentary, Rape of Europa, for further context on the highly fraught artistic landscape during WWII under Hitler. More reviews
- Short course in psychology, art and forgery
- Not having read Edward Dolnick's previous book, "The Rescue Artist", I did not come to read "The Forger's Spell" with primed expectations. Mr. Dolnick succeeds in what many writers on this subject fail to do by showing and not telling the finer points of his subject. Far from being pedantic, the author's storyteller's style draws the reader into… More reviews
- the forger's spell
- The Forger's Spell is a delightful romp through and around the Han Van Meeregen phenomenon, even if some of the chapters are repetitious. I especially enjoyed the description of the work that went into developing materials to mislead so-called experts and high points of the 1947 trial. It was the best book I have read in this genre since a book I read… More reviews
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