The second room we visited that evening contained an equally miscellaneous assortment of pictures. Here the canvases were even more varied in size. A Dutch Interior by Pieter de Hooch, a View of the Piazza San Marco by Canaletto, and two Courbet landscapes were lined up along one wall. The de Hooch, an exceptionally fine example of the work of this seventeenth century master, was listed in the inventory as having belonged to Baron Édouard de Rothschild of Paris. The Courbets were something of a rarity, as Göring had few French paintings of the nineteenth century. One of the landscapes, a winter scene, was an important work, signed and dated 1869. The inventory did not indicate from whom it had been acquired. In one corner stood a full-length portrait of the Duke of Richmond by Van Dyck. Our list stated that it had come from the Katz collection. Beside it was a brilliant landscape by Rubens. There were perhaps ten other pictures in the room, among them several nondescript panels which appeared to be by an artist of the fifteenth century Florentine school, a portrait by the sixteenth century German master, Bernhard Strigel, a “fête champêtre” by Lancret, and two or three seascapes of the seventeenth century Dutch school.
Lamont and I had been looking at this assemblage for some little time before we noticed an unframed canvas standing on the washbasin by the window. The upper edge of the picture leaned against the wall mirror at an angle which made it difficult to get a good look at the composition from where we stood. Closer inspection revealed the subject to be Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery. I studied it for a few minutes and was still puzzled. Turning to Lamont I asked, “What do you make of this? I can’t even place it as to school, let alone guess the artist.”
“Unless I am very much mistaken,” he said slowly, “that is the famous Göring ‘Vermeer.’”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “Why, I could paint something which would look more like a Vermeer than that.”
We consulted the inventory. Lamont was right. A few lines below the listing of the Rubens landscape—a picture I had just been admiring in another part of the room—appeared the entry “Vermeer, Jan ... ‘The Adulteress’ ... Canvas, 90 cm. × 96 cm.” The subject coincided with that of the picture on the washbasin. The measurements were identical.
I tried to visualize the picture properly framed, properly lighted and hanging in a richly furnished room. But still I couldn’t conceive how such trappings could blind one to the flat greens and blues, the lack of subtlety in the modeling of the flesh tones, the absence of that convincing rendering of the “total visual effect” which Vermeer had so completely mastered.
“Who attributed this painting to Vermeer?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Lamont, “but it is related stylistically to the ‘Vermeer,’ in the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam, the Christ at Emmaus.”
So this was the painting Hofer was talking about; this was the painting Göring had given the nurse. One of the notorious Van Meegeren fakes.