Original subtitles

[Music]

vermeer is the ultimate enigma

he created some of the world's most

treasured paintings including the girl

with a pearl earring

but we know very little about him

in fact for two centuries his

masterpieces were largely forgotten

but an intrepid french explorer in the

19th century managed to hunt them down

in hidden locations where they'd been

scattered across europe

you don't hear people making these

pilgrimages for most artists and what is

it about vermeer that encourages this

need

slowly but surely vermeer came to be

appreciated for the artistic genius that

he was

for me is one of the most enigmatic

dutch artists of the 17th century once

you see a vermeer you never forget it

and you never forget where you saw it

however the process of reclaiming his

paintings has been fraught with peril

one of the most successful forges of all

time han van migran managed to fool the

experts for years with his collection of

fake vermeers

his trial was a media sensation that

rocked the art world

it seems astonishing to us now that we

were fooled by the van maker and fakes

it's wishful thinking you really want a

painting to be vermeer if you just want

it you know it will be he was just a

brilliant psychologist and he understood

that scholars would think

we've always been expecting to find

these and here they are

there are very few genuine vermeers

around and many have been lost to us

once again being stolen by members of

the ira and the boston mob

it would appear that they were very

selective in what they took

even adolf hitler and hermann goering

were looking to get their hands on

vermeers by whatever means necessary

hitler managed to get a hold of two

goring was sold a fake made by van

migran

the forgeries have made life difficult

when it comes to the work of the dutch

master

if you would discover a genuine vermeer

it would make your day but you have to

be really careful

it's been an epic struggle to reclaim

the works of johannes vermeer from their

hidden locations and from the thieves

that took them

that struggle continues today

[Music]

at the end of world war ii joseph pillar

a jewish resistance hero was tasked with

hunting down ss and gestapo members

after the liberation of the netherlands

he also managed to track down han van

migran a very wealthy resident of

amsterdam who he discovered had been

behind the sales of many recently

rediscovered vermeers

but one of those sales had been made to

the nazi leader hermann goering and van

migran was accused of collaboration

we're going to answer the question mr

vanmigren

my father told me

i would never amount to anything

he didn't approve of your career

i know nothing

he used to say

incapable of nothing

well he was wrong wasn't he

man doesn't acquire 50 houses 52

yes 52.

you had to be clever to do what you did

yes

where did they come from mr van meegeren

where did you find the vermeers

but what pillar didn't know was that van

migran was one of the most successful

art forgers of all time

[Music]

just like johannes vermeer himself van

migrant lived and worked in the city of

delft and was also an artist

but he was chastised by art critics at

the time

they said his style was just an

imitation of the old masters

van migrant decided to retaliate by

proving that he could imitate them so

accurately that even the experts would

be fooled

i think he had two motives one was

obviously money it was a way of earning

some money by making these fakes but i

also think he wanted to get his own back

on the art world they didn't like his

art

so he thought he would do something to

get his own back on the critics famigon

was a dutch delft architect

who has some made some buildings in

daltonsville so around the delft you

will find some real vomitings there are

buildings

alongside canals vamp discovered he

could make wonderful vermeers with the

kind of paint vermeer used in his time

and people from that area liked it very

much and thought the possibility to to

own a real vermeer

han van migran made forgeries of other

artists but it was the fact that

johannes vermeer was such a mystery that

allowed these fakes to be so successful

johannes vermeer was born in delft in

1632

exactly 300 years before van migrant

started his fakes

he joined the artistic guild of saint

luke and may have been taught by another

celebrated artist who worked in delft

carol fabricious

fabricious was rembrandt's greatest

pupil but was tragically killed at the

age of 32 when a gunpowder store

exploded in delft destroying much of the

city

the event became known as the delft

thunderclap

vermeer survived the gunpowder explosion

and started working on his paintings

including a view of delft made six years

after the tragedy

we know very little about his life and

he actually ran

an inn or tavern in the town of delft

outside the hague the city of delft in

the 17th century was very rich we did

business all over the world wonderful

buildings already stoned but also very a

lot of a lot of wooden houses he was a

dutch golden age painter that great

flowering of you know the dutch republic

we think for me it was in the middle

class of people his mother-in-law was

very rich of course his father had to uh

to ends it was time to say he suffered

from his father who um

had been a cloth worker and dealer and

became a tavern keeper and killed a

soldier and was generally sounds like a

rogue

um married a catholic had 15 children 11

of which survived

one imagines his life didn't look

anything like a vermeer maybe that was

the point

we have no definitive pictures of

johannes vermeer but it's believed by

scholars that he may have painted

himself into one of his early works

the procureus

it's a genre scene where you have a

figure in the background and he looks

like a painter and you know he may be

vermeer

i i like to think it is familiar but you

know

we don't know that for sure

vermeer may also have painted himself

into one of his later works the art of

painting he had other jobs so you know

he earned his money as a painter but he

had an inn and he dealt in art so he was

an art dealer he had 11 children with

his wife

he was also an innkeeper he had

the two ins of his father

he was a seller of antiques and that

that kind of things and oh he was

painter as well how the poor man find

time to paint at all is

a miracle some very successful artists

like rembrandt had a studio and employed

a lot of assistance who would work

doing some menial tasks but vermeer

seems to have worked just by himself and

that's probably a reflection of both of

the way he wanted to work and the fact

that he didn't earn very much money you

know there's a great idea that great

suffering makes great art

vermeer's unique way of working and the

materials he used seem to explain why

there are so precious few examples of

his paintings in the world today

i think it's a combination of two

reasons why we have such a very small

output one is that we simply don't have

the paintings that they were lost

because of course

a lot of pictures do get lost and some

of his must have done the other thing is

he probably did work very slowly i mean

they're very meticulously and carefully

painted he painted using lapis lazuli

quite quite a lot and he painted

gem-like pictures that were made out of

gems often vermeer used very expensive

colors the stone lab is lazuli in those

years it was very expensive because he

produced so little he probably didn't

earn a great deal and there were also

economic problems in the netherlands at

the time and when he died he was in debt

vermeer died in delft at the age of just

43.

his reputation as an artist did not

extend much beyond his hometown and his

name faded into obscurity very quickly

along with his paintings

it was not until almost two centuries

later that he finally got the

recognition that he deserved when a

french exile made it his mission to

bring vermeer to the world

[Music]

johannes vermeer lived and painted in

the city of delft near the hague

but his reputation as an artist didn't

extend much beyond the city he worked in

and when he died at the age of 43 it

seemed vermeer had missed his chance to

be considered one of history's greatest

artists

i don't imagine that his pictures so

for much and there weren't very many of

them if you're painting probably two

pictures a year

that's not like being picasso in those

times rembrandts and and some other

painters also on delft from mirvelt and

peter hall for instance

sold a lot more paintings to other

people than vermeer did the volume of

the work available is a key component in

this even accounting for ones that may

have been lost or destroyed even it's

still a relatively small

output for someone who was an artist for

over 20 years in those years it was not

very common to like a vermeer the prices

which were paid on the selling in

amsterdam were also not so very high for

instance there were no paintings by

vermeer in french public collections i

think the vermeer in the mouths house

was the first vermeer to enter a public

collection in the netherlands so if you

have these paintings in private

collections if you had good contacts you

could go there but it's different from a

museum

there were a few collectors of his work

and they were saved by them often they

were later attributed to other artists

not to vermeer and then vermeer was

rediscovered

in the 19th century

vermeer's rediscovery was due to a

french exile named tayofield torreira

who found himself captivated by the

paintings

toray made it his life's work to track

down as many vermeers as he could

it wasn't going to be an easy task

though after vermeer's death his

paintings had scattered across europe

and were often incorrectly listed as the

work of far better known artists at the

time

many of them would end up in royal

possession

in 1742 a girl reading a letter by an

open window was acquired for augustus

iii the king of poland with the belief

that it was a painting by rembrandt

the music lesson was also bought by a

king in 1762 when it was purchased for

king george the third of england

it entered the royal collection at

buckingham palace where it was listed as

being by franz van meeres

in 1802 the guitar player became the

property of lord palmerston who would go

on to become prime minister of the

united kingdom

the art of painting vermeer's most

treasured item that he always kept in

his possession would end up being listed

as a work by peter the hook

it traveled to vienna where it became

part of the house of chernin collection

in

1813 the little street

and the milkmaid stayed in the

netherlands though when they entered the

collection of the aristocratic dutch

family the sixes at the house of six in

amsterdam

i had never heard the name before either

but it was simply astonishing

the first one i saw was at the hague

the brilliance of the light

the intensity of the color both real

and utterly original

i had to know who painted it

he went to the margaret's house in the

hague in 1842

saw this huge panorama on delft and well

he was blown away immediately by this

incredible painting the view of delft is

an amazing picture very beautifully

painted i can see that it was a

landscape which would certainly have

appealed

to people in the 19th century

i searched every gallery in holland i

knew everyone

i found two more in private collections

again simply astounding work

this was art concerned with the real

servants at work

the town where he lived unadorned

this was art for man

he traveled all over the place and

discovered new paintings the only thing

i can get to know is by reading what he

left us and it's almost a diary of his

travels he drew up a list of works which

he felt were by vermeer and identified

quite a lot of them for the first time

we had wondered what you got up to

during your time away

a mistress or two my brother thought

we never thought you'd fallen in love

love is selfish isaac i could not keep

vermeer to myself

in fact

that was the reason i asked you here

[Music]

isaac pereira was a wealthy parisian

financier and art collector

toray hoped that he could convince

pereira to purchase one of the vermeers

he'd found

it was 1866 and torrey was publishing

his findings in the gazette de bozar

this was for him like the starting point

for like you have a remnant research

project he had a vermeer research

project and i think it took him the rest

of his life to to do this

he wrote an article in the gazette

which is a kind of groundbreaking

essay on vermeer his earth

and his life

1866 is sort of the key date he was

published in the gazette the bazaar

which increased everyone's awareness

of him as an artist of um and of his

works he really writes everything how he

went to the hague how he saw the

painting how he had never heard of van

der meer de delft

torrey had actually bought several

vermeers for himself during his travels

but he was hoping that pereira would

purchase the geographer to help

establish vermeer's name

[Music]

a vermeer in your collection would

transform the way people think of him

see how the scholar grips the book as if

caught in the very moment of inspiration

he doesn't want to let it go

and his understanding of light isaac

it is a very fine piece

this

doesn't do it justice

the scholar's cloak is blue

but the deepest blue you could imagine

you must have it

you must

i'm sorry

pereira would soon be persuaded though

and vermeers would quickly become a

must-have item for the world's

wealthiest collectors

[Music]

was a very well-known collector you have

the publication in the gazette de bozar

so all the connoisseurs read that of

course all the collectors read this and

if there is a new discovery of a new

name then of course everybody wants to

own her vermeer and

was no exception to that

why don't you buy it yourself

the old master has demanded much of me

he needs new advocates now

well he could have no finer ally

and none more persuasive

[Music]

show it to me again

it was thanks to tori that we really

rediscovered vermeer and that sort of

put him on the map if you like and then

he became very collectible in the 20th

century

but of course at that time it was very

hard to come by so these paintings were

really expensive and we know that at

that time even forgeries were made in

the early 20th century

forgeries had started to appear but real

discoveries were still being made

toray had identified many of the

vermeers he found by the subtle and

varying signatures that the artist used

that signature was then found on two

paintings in the early 20th century

diana and her companions and christ in

the house with mary and martha

they were very different from most of

his known works and if they didn't have

signatures it's unlikely they would ever

have been attributed to vermeer

surprisingly vermeer's most famous work

the girl with a pearl earring was not

identified by torrey before he died in

1869

however it had not gone unnoticed by

those who had seen it

the girl of pearl earring is a

fascinating story and as we know was was

sold for like six gilders or something

incredible

actually it turns out it was more

recognized at that time than you would

think because it was from very early on

really greatly admired by novelists

these are actually novelists who are

writing stories stories about traveling

to the netherlands early on it was

recognized and then slowly becomes

written about among the art art

historians of the world

the art historians believed that there

were still more vermeers to be found

though especially from his early career

and han van migran saw an opportunity

his vermeer fakes made in the 1930s were

hugely successful

and his career as an art forger would

have probably continued if he hadn't

sold one of them to hermann goering

sir

going's mad he's been found

has he talked yet i don't know sir

that's all we have

[Music]

han van migran in a desperate attempt to

save his own skin was about to send the

art world into a panic when he revealed

his deception

he was put on trial where he had to

prove himself guilty of forgery

rather than face conviction of nazi

collaboration

[Music]

when world war ii came to an end it was

discovered that hitler had stashed away

many priceless artworks for his own

private collection

he'd even managed to get hold of two

vermeers including the astronomer and

the art of painting

hermann goering it seemed had also got

hold of a vermeer and the trail led

right back to han van migrant

your german friend medal

he's been arrested hiding in spain

he's no friend of mine well he's had

plenty to say about you

van maker was accused of

selling

a painting to goring and

collaborating with the nazis unusually

for going he actually paid for it a

relatively decent sum of money from an

art dealer who

either genuinely believed that it was a

vermeer or must have been crapping his

pants i mean really you know knowing

that or selling a fake to

to going isn't a very safe thing to do

and in order to avoid that charge he

said that he'd sold a fake so this is

how the whole thing came out into the

open

he says that you came to him

guring's art dealer

with the sole purpose of doing business

with the nazis that's a lie you'll swear

to it

isn't that right yes sir on oath

he's lying

no he isn't

the simple fact mr vanmigren is we don't

need to talk to you anymore

this will convict you for collaboration

though naturally any cooperation you

might offer at this point would be

considered when it came to sentencing

where did you get the vermeers mr van

meegeren

where did you take them from

helped you no one

[Music]

no one helped me

[Music]

i did it

i painted

[Music]

i them them all

[Music]

being accused of forgery was a far

lesser crime than collaboration with the

nazis

but van migrant would have to prove that

these newly discovered vermeers were in

fact fakes

and so a trial was conducted where oddly

van migrant had to prove himself guilty

rather than innocent of a crime

[Music]

it seems astonishing to us now that we

were fooled by the van maker and fakes

but they were accepted by some of the

the top experts in dutch art including

bradys and

once one or two experts had accepted the

others seemed to the touch from achen

used

just not not to to to make something

vermeers very famous for but making it

look like it could be a vermeer

people were so eager to to have those

paintings

it is not easy to admit when you be made

a fool of

you laid a trap for us mr van meegeren

it was a clever one too

we wanted to walk into it

for your work seemed to give us the

answer to a mystery

they filled the chasm between early

vermeers like this one

and his mature masterpieces

our search for truth and beauty blinded

us

and in the end we were all caught out

it's a very clever thing which was that

he he made vermeers that didn't look

like vermeers and that was really

sensible you know if you'd done girl

with a pearl brooch

you could have held it up next to go

with the pillow and say i don't think so

but in those days scholars believed that

vermeer had studied in italy which he

hadn't

um and so what he did was he painted the

caravaggio separate mess in the style of

vermeer and every you know scholars

who saw with their brains rather than

their eyes thought oh well this

obviously you know we can explain this

like this and people were fooled i would

like to begin my analysis if i may with

the supper ademayas

the pigment used by mr van meegeren

although chemically identical is quite

different when viewed under a microscope

it's always easy to be wise after the

event because when you do a fake there's

something of your own time that goes

into it and later on it looks wrong

something that everybody wanted

and you can wait so i'm still waiting

for the self-portrait of vermeer to

appear

uh

but you have to imagine at that point in

time so there were a lot of monographs

the documents had been published so

everybody knew that there were more

paintings they were different from the

vimeos that we now know they were early

religious works it was said so

van maygren had tried to fill a hole in

vermeer's career

this black substance

uh a dye of some sort

imitating centuries accumulation of dirt

was used to further the illusion of age

it's wishful thinking it's something you

really want a painting to be vermeer if

you just want it you know it will be

it's a brilliant con you really saw what

scholars were like and they would just

say yes you know we've long suspected

there was there'd be italianate pictures

and of course he was a catholic so you

know

here at last very clever forgery meaning

an old canvas was used and acolyte was

used so it really had to calculate you

know the the calculate pattern that you

see in old master paintings

this x-ray

reveals the remnants of the original

painting below

a priming layer with patches

of lead white paint here

and here

i do think he was brilliant van maker

and not a brilliant painter or brilliant

i mean material forger but he was just a

brilliant you know psychologist and of

course the next van maker that comes

along and doesn't look like a vermeer

it's not going to be compared with

viewfinder it's going to be compared

with the last van maker and

van meegeren was forced to paint a

vermeer fake in front of reporters and

court appointed witnesses to show

exactly how it was done

i must thank mr van meegeren

for his cooperation throughout this

process

indeed

i have never known a defendant so

anxious to be found guilty

it's very easy for us to think these

people were foolish to think it is

because it's a terrible painting i think

many people

know about formation but when you ask

them the real story behind it they don't

know

you do admit to painting these works

yes

and selling them at the exorbitant

prices charged

if i'd have sold them cheaply everyone

would have known they were fake

everyone is interested in fakers so it

does give one a certain notoriety and

there is a great deal of interest in van

maker and some people like to have his

work just because of who he was

so there is a certain admiration for

someone who got away with it for so long

what was it that made you continue after

painting a mess

you had made your money

why go on

it was the

satisfaction of deceiving good men like

dr corman's

of swindling them

the satisfaction

of perfecting my technique

i couldn't stop myself

so money had no influence on your

decision

money

has brought me nothing but misery

of course he's also very damaging to

vermeer's work and it's important to

sort out what is the real vermeer and

what are the fakes

han van migran died soon after the trial

was completed and before he served any

time in prison

the forgery scandal he created showed

just how hard it's been to reclaim

vermeer's legacy

but in the decades that followed many of

the genuine articles were lost to us

once again in daring heists

and one

is still missing

and van migran had forged numerous

vermeers for over a decade

his sensational trial in 1947 had proved

an embarrassment for the scholars of

vermeer who had fallen for his deception

and as a result one painting called a

young woman seated at the virginals

which had been accepted as a vermeer

since 1904 was suddenly labeled yet

another forgery

it was not until the 21st century that

it started to be accepted once again

well i think that is a premiere i didn't

think so initially although not

all of what one sees is by vermeer as

far as i'm concerned there's been lots

of technical analysis done in the

painting uh and to the canvas

and i think that strongly indicates i

believe that is vermeer she has a large

yellow cloak that covers upper part of

her body you can see that the tin yellow

underneath layer and that the modeling

of the underneath layer seems to me

appropriate for mirror where is the

modeling on the upper layer not so i

think that painting was reworked at a

certain point for some reason some

comments could be made on the quality of

for example the depiction of our arms

but scientifically i think it's been

proven that it is part of his

work yes

the young woman seated at the virginals

suddenly became the only remaining

vermeer in private hands

all the others had become part of museum

or state collections

and over the last few decades they've

been the target of some of the most

notorious art thefts in history

in 1971 the love letter was taken from

the fine arts palace in brussels where

it was on temporary exhibition

it was recovered two weeks later and

returned to its home at the reichs

museum in amsterdam

another vermeer that was stolen in the

1970s was the guitar player

once owned by prime minister lord

palmerston this later work of the artist

was taken from kenwood house

the guitar player was still in 1974

kenwood house

is an isolated house in hampstead heath

so it was a bit vulnerable at that time

the person broke in through the window

through the shutters into this the room

and stole the vermeer specifically

ran off with it wasn't caught there was

various theories there's been links made

to ira and demands were made to transfer

prisoners from a prison also there was a

ransom note saying they're going to burn

on saint patrick's night

however it ended with an anonymous tip

off

it was later found abandoned in the

churchyard in smithfield's in central

london a helpful phone call ringling

hello you don't know me but there's a

there's a mirror in your church yard

when i arrived here about quarter of an

hour ago i found a lot of press here

saying that the painting had been found

and of course i was absolutely thrilled

because it was so terrible if it ever

been stolen really there it was propped

up against a

gravestone it was damp but relatively

unharmed it has slightly suffered from

the atmospheric conditions while it's

been away from us and this is hardly

surprising um a skilled restorer will

have to see to the very slight cupping

of the paint surface that has occurred

i seem to recall that they stole some

other pictures from kenwood and dumped

them down by the lake and made off so

leaving the things in wet grasses wasn't

unusual for them obviously not a

professional thief did it there's not

much point in taking a picture and then

just leave it in a church yard i should

think possibly if anyone wanted to leave

anything without being seen anywhere in

the city of london at night it's rather

good place because it's all very

deserted and very few people live around

here you see it's the only uh vermeer

that is still on its original or very

early stretcher

so

it is unique and it's very special and

we have to take obviously extra extra

care of it

because it's quite fragile this picture

was on its original 17th century

stretcher and there's no mistaking that

there's no mistaking the original wooden

dowels around the

edge of the canvas too they are of

course are the pegs that vermeer put in

today artists have used galvanized text

so we can be absolutely certain it's

amazing that this is you know still on

its same stretcher from 1672.

the same year as the guitar player was

stolen yet another vermeer was taken the

lady writing a letter with her maid

it's the only vermeer in ireland and had

to endure a second theft in the 1980s

the lady writing letter with a maid was

stolen in ireland

in the 1970s

and the ira was involved that was at the

height of the troubles

that was also recovered it was stellar

from raspberry house outside dublin

there was a wonderful sort of figure of

my childhood called dr rose dugdale who

was a sort of debutant

a turned ira terrorist who um you know

she stole it first and they found it

about a week later i think it's unfair

to say the ira was responsible no at the

time bridget rose dugdale and her

boyfriend eddie gallaher were not just

irish nationalists but they were

paramilitary sympathizers their big idea

was to

get these things and then hold them to

ransom as much as you can establish a

motive for the theft of those paintings

both in kenwood and at raspberry the

painting was stolen the second time in

the 1980s by a criminal from

northern ireland and it was recovered in

antwerp the painting is back and now at

the national gallery of ireland in

dublin

fortunately all these stolen vermeers

have been returned to their rightful

homes

but one is still missing the concert

this was taken from the isabella stewart

gardner museum in boston along with a

painting by one of vermeer's

contemporaries rembrandt

in one of the most daring art thefts of

all time

the concert was taken in 1990 along uh

with rembrandt and a number of other

important works from the

isabelle stewart gardner museum in

boston

on the night of st patrick's day 1990

two boston police department cops turned

up at the museum banged on the door the

guys walked in produced a gun tied up

the two guards then spent several hours

in the museum

deciding what to take certainly the

concert of him there

and also rembrandt's storm on the sea of

galilee are two exceptionally valuable

paintings taken away in

over a matter of hours

and they haven't been seen since most

important works that are stolen do

eventually turn up but this one is now

20 or more years ago

but the hunt is still on

the problem has been

that the fbi have gone down one road

and i think there were other roads to go

down

for years the theft has been linked to

james whitey bulger a notorious figure

in boston organized crime who was

captured in 2011.

the whitey bulger story is the story he

was the kingpin i cannot see how

it's possible that whitey did not have

either at the time or certainly soon

afterwards some connection to those

paintings

however to be fair to the fbi there is

no hard evidence of that well i've been

very lucky that i've actually studied

every vermeer in the world under the

microscope i've seen it out of the frame

and the concert i spent two days with in

that way and i still have all these

slides of the painting and all the kind

of uh little magical ways in which these

colored highlights and it's always a

huge loss that i still feel i hope it

will come back i hope it will come back

because for the museum it's very sad

that you don't have the work itself

anymore

the hunt for the concert goes on but

it's not the only missing vermeer that

could be out there vermeer died in

poverty and most of his works were later

auctioned off in a 1696 sale of a man

called jacob disius who had inherited 21

of vermeer's paintings some of the works

listed in the auction catalogue hadn't

been found yet and include another

little street and even a self-portrait

of the artist

i'm still looking

for the self-portrait that he made

because it is documented that he made

one and we know there was a second

little street like the painting in the

rights museum

so

maybe paintings will turn up but it's

not really the largest production it

would be absolutely incredible i mean if

we would be able to find one of these

paintings that have been mentioned in

the this year's sale in 1696 already but

have completely disappeared

one painting that wasn't listed in the

this year's sale but has been attributed

to vermeer for a while is the saint

proxidus

in 2014 christie's in london auctioned

the painting after announcing that

technical analysis carried out at the

reichs museum strengthened the case that

this is a genuine vermeer thank you we

move on to lot 39

please know that there is additional

literature that's been posted throughout

the view lot 39 the vermeer

it may even be his earliest known work

as the lead isotope tests on the white

paint of the saint proxidus indicate

that the exact same batch of white paint

may have been used on both this painting

and diana and her companions

i actually did see that painting it was

an exhibition in rome i think two years

ago

and it's a very

difficult painting to attribute because

this praxed is saint

she is depicted by felicia figuerelli an

italian painter and then there is a copy

after that painting and it's very

difficult if there is a copy like who

made this copy

the saint praxis picture is very unusual

um there's a signature on it which is

thought to be

vermeers and it appears to be a copy of

an italian painting and there is one

scholar in america arthur wheelock who

believes that it's an authentic vermeer

i feel very strongly it is by vermeer

and

and i've had the opportunity to study

that one very closely and also to see it

together with the figarelli painting and

they're to me they're entirely different

and a very different character one very

much a dutch painting and one

very much italian painting

and there's a lot of elements of the

same proxis that are consistent with

early vermeer the complicated thing

obviously is based on another painting

um and so

many of the elements of it are

have this italian quality that people

aren't comfortable with in vermeer's

world we're still hoping there will be

more vermeers and and then there is also

the thing is it real for me or not

because that's everyone every time a

vermeer

pops up or

yeah you'll get those questions

at three million three million two

hundred thousand

three million five hundred thousand

three million eight hundred thousand now

at three million eight yes four million

we have no other copies of paintings by

vermeer

so this will be unique if it is a

full-size

copy of a painting four million two

hundred thousand yes four million five

hundred thousand four million eight

hundred thousand

at four million eight hundred thousand

parts it's unclear as to why he would

have wanted to copy this particular

painting and stylistically

it's been questioned as whether it's

consistent with vermeer's work

five million five hundred thousand

pounds last chance

so thank you for five million five

hundred thousand

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just like the lady seated at the

virginals scientific tests seem to be

bringing another painting back into his

cannon

it's been quite a battle trying to

rescue the legacy of johannes vermeer

arguments will continue over the

attribution of some of the paintings

including the unique saint proxidas

but even if no new vermeers do turn up

the few paintings we do have continue to

entrance people all across the globe

the mystery of vermeer goes on

there's always a chance that something

might emerge i think it's a little bit

unlikely at this stage because he's been

famous for 100 years

but who knows something might emerge i

mean you can hope but he's so well known

now that i'd be surprised if something

came up new and it wasn't already known

but you never know in a private

collection it may appear in future years

today one of the real absolute stars of

what the dutch golden age in painting

was

but also a painter with a very tiny

little earther once you see a vermeer

you never forget it and you never forget

where you saw it the milk made where you

see the view of delft do you see the

girl the pool earring or you see the

woman of the balance the national

gallery the woman blew i mean you name

it it's magical to watch the power of

this artist but the most important thing

is they are all such distinctive images

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you