The history of faking is nearly as old as the history of art. Dutchman Van Meegeren (1889-1947) produced a stream of “Vermeers” and was sentenced to a year in prison for fraud.

The history of faking is nearly as old as the history of art, and for as long as there have been documents, there have been forgeries. “This is not a lie, it is indeed the truth,” runs an inscription of the earliest forgery we know, a Babylonian cuneiform inscription from…