Looking for Vermeer

A counterpoint to the Rijksmuseum's 2023 retrospective, telling the story of Dirk Hannema's lifelong (mis)hunt for Vermeers. The show contained no genuine Vermeers — its centrepiece was Han van Meegeren's Christ and the Adulteress, the picture found in Hermann Göring's collection, on long-term loan from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. Hung alongside it were works by followers of Vermeer that had also been shown at Boijmans in 1935, and at least seven Old-Master pictures from Hannema's private collection at Kasteel het Nijenhuis that he had attributed to Vermeer in his 1972 pamphlet — among them The Good and the Bad Thief Being Taken to Golgotha and a Family Portrait with Crystal Ball. None are accepted today.