Books like The man who made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez

During the final year of World War II, a daring group of American and British museum professionals—known as the Monuments Men—risked their lives behind enemy lines to salvage priceless European art from Nazi plunder and destruction.

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker.

Provenance follows the real‑life art fraud of John Drewe, who forged historic paintings with the help of artist John Myatt and then deceived the British art world into accepting the fakes as genuine, reshaping museum collections and the record of modern art.

A decaying palazzo on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome makes a discovery that inspires a search for a painting lost for almost two centuries. The artist was Caravaggio, a revolutionary painter beset by personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and streets of Rome, in and out of jail, all the while painting transcendent works. He rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn't alter his violent temperament. He died young, alone, and under strange circumstances. Caravaggio scholars estimate that between sixty and eighty of his works are in existence today. Many others--no one knows the precise number--have been lost to time. Somewhere, surely, a masterpiece lies forgotten. This quest is a synthesis of history and detective story.--From publisher description

A discussion on the theft and collection of great European art in World War 2.

Lawrence Gowing's classic study has long been treasured for the painterly sensibilities he brought to Vermeer's greatly loved body of work. Now the text is available again, with a new foreword by Sir Ernst Gombrich, a new essay on Vermeer written by Lawrence Gowing in 1991, a new select bibliography and fresh reproductions of Vermeer's paintings.