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| News & Scoreboards |
Vermeer Immortal
Kasey Wehrum
06/01/2004
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For the first time in more than 80 years, a painting by legendary Dutch artist
Johannes Vermeer will soon come to auction. Long thought to be a forgery, Young
Woman Seated at the Virginals, will go on the block in July at Sotheby’s in
London, the climax to a story packed with enough mystery and intrigue to make
The Da Vinci Code seem dull by comparison.
 The diminutive work, measuring 8
inches by 10 inches, was the subject of an intense forensic art investigation
that lasted more than a decade. Dating to 1670, Young Woman passed through the
hands of many collectors over three centuries, and all rightly believed that it
was authentic. It was not until the mid-20th century that the painting’s
legitimacy came into question. The 1947 trial of master forger Han van Meegeren
revealed that, between 1937 and 1943, he had sold no fewer than seven fake
“Vermeers” to unwitting museums and collectors. As a result, a number of works
previously thought to be from Vermeer’s brush were deattributed, including Young
Woman.
Gregory Rubinstein, the Sotheby’s Old Masters specialist who led
efforts to reexamine the discredited masterpiece, expects it to sell for upward
of $5.5 million. “I was intrigued by the painting,” he says. “There was
something magical about it, and there were areas, particularly the white skirt,
that looked exactly like Vermeer. It wasn’t clear to me whether this was a real
Vermeer—but that certainly seemed to be a possibility; and one I felt needed to
be properly explored.”
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