COUNTERFEIT

These literary replicas of a number of cases- archaelogical- literary- and artistic- which duped and deceived professionals in the field or the public at large are for the most part interesting ones, and along with these accounts of famous forgeries, there is also something of the motives which induce them, the methods which reveal them. Van Meegeren gained the immortality which was denied him as an artist when he created a Vermeer as a revenge against the critics; a Frenchman Chasles was the victim of his mania, bought 30,000 autographs attributed to 660 persons which were all the product of one forger; the ""restoration"" of the frescoes in the Marienkirche in Luebeck, supposedly 500 years old, climaxed a long collaboration of picture frauds; the Moulin Quignon Jaw and the Calavera skull match the more famous Piltdown puzzle which again has its fuller explanation here.... Mrs. Cole, who in her line is a faithful copyist, reproduces these cases with care rather than color, and they will appeal to the true crime fancier.