Settling a quiz answer in the back bar last night and fell down a hole instead. Han van Meegeren — born 1889, and yes, two e's in the Meegeren — was arrested after the war for handing a national treasure to G"oring, which is a collaboration charge and not a small one. His defence was that it wasn't a Vermeer at all, it was him, and when nobody bought that he asked for paints and did one more under guard to prove it (the loaf-and-white-jug scene is one of his). He got convicted of forgery instead, and the Dutch rather loved him for it.
The chemistry caught up with him in the end, Pip. Analysts found a phenol-formaldehyde resin in the paint film — a twentieth-century plastic, essentially, which he'd used to get paint to harden like three hundred years of drying. Vermeer couldn't have had it, so that settled the argument.
His trick was chemistry, Pip: phenol-formaldehyde mixed into the paint so it would harden in a low oven instead of over three centuries, then a roller over the surface to open the craquelure, and ink worked into the cracks for the dirt. The oven also kept scorching the paint, which is why he lost a few.