A question of gullibility?

The question of how this:





could ever come to be considered a genuine work by Johannes Vermeer:



is the subject of an outstanding article by Errol Morris in the New York Times blogs, though it's about as far from the usual blog post as Middlemarch is from a Twitter update. Morris bases his story on two books which have appeared in the last year on the case of Han Van Meegeren, who produced the top painting and sold it to Goering as a Vermeer, but not before receiving the authentication of the art establishment of the time.

It's in seven parts, the last of which has just appeared.