Hans van Meegeren is a master forger known as a national hero in the Netherlands for selling his fake art to Nazis during WW2. After the war, people believed the paintings were real, and he was charged as a collaborator. To prove his innocence, he painted a new forgery at his trial. It worked.

Han van Meegeren

Henricus Antonius “Han” van Meegeren (Dutch pronunciation: [ɦɛnˈrikɵs ɑnˈtoːniɵs ˈɦɑn vɑn ˈmeːɣərə(n)]; 10 October 1889 – 30 December 1947) was a Dutch painter and portraitist and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. Despite his life of crime, van Meegeren became a national hero after World War II when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, and he set out to become an artist himself. Art critics, however, decried his work as tired and derivative, and van Meegeren felt that they had destroyed his career. He decided… Continue Reading

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren