I hatched my diabolical plan several years ago.

It was not until I had stumbled upon and acquired an early 17th-century oil-on-canvas work that I could finally proceed. I had been scouring Northern Europe for such material for months. The painting itself was pedestrian, but the craftsman who had constructed the canvas was to be commended. After all these years, the stretcher was surprisingly sturdy. It looked to be built with oak beams, approximately 0.6 cm thick. Rubens himself was using oak of this thickness in the 1630s. The dimensions of the canvas were 47 1/4 inches by 39 1/2. After some reflection, I decided that this canvas size seemed appropriate for portraiture. It was big enough to be of someone important, but not grand enough to be hanging in a palace. But there was time for such deliberations later. At the moment, I was elbow-deep in pumice and water. It took hours, but soon I was staring at a relatively blank canvas, aside from the intricate network of cracks that would surely fool the half-wits working in any forensic lab in Europe or the United States. Now that I had a canvas of acceptable authenticity, it was time to display my talents as a painter. I laid out my palette of synthetic resins, along with the pine resin found in trace amounts in so many of Rubens' paintings over the years. I applied the dark ground but hesitated. Perhaps I was rushing into this. I still had not decided on a subject. I scanned my supply of colors. It struck me. The Kassel/Cologne earth what had they called it? Ah yes, Van Dyck brown. It seemed perfect. Van Dyck had joined Rubens' studio in 1618. Could the master not have given his young collaborator a gift in recognition of his skill as a painter and business partner? A portrait, perhaps? My materials, however, would date such a

portrait about ten years too early. The wheels in my devious mind turned. How could I resolve this problem? Thanks to my stellar education in Art History at the University of Montana, I knew that Van Dyck had been knighted by Charles I in 1632. It seemed natural that Rubens, who had been knighted himself, could have painted a portrait of his associate, in recognition of the honor they both shared. I was back on track. I began to paint. Van Dyck was a slender, rather sickly fellow. I settled on the three-quarters profile Rubens helped popularize. I worked up a number of studies before settling on my final design. Van Dyck would be situated on the right of the picture. I would model it on Van Dyck's 1921self-portrait, which Rubens would have undoubtedly seen. Instead of Van Dyck's sober use of color, I would concentrate on emphasizing the bright color palette Rubens preferred towards the end of his life. In place of the silver chain slung over Van Dyck's left shoulder, I would depict the golden medal given to him by Charles I in honor of his knighting. Rubens, in his late works, seemed to relish using primary colors in nearly all of his paintings. I had the yellow already. I would give Van Dyck a red shirt, which I knew Rubens would not have been able to have helped but do. I would paint the shirt with a sheen, which would highlight the light source coming down from the upper left-hand corner. The light seemed to want to come from the vantage point of the viewer more than from the left of the picture. I fixed Van Dyck's eyes on the approximate origin of the light source. He was looking out and slightly up, as if to acknowledge the viewer's recognition of his medal and knighted status. In contrast to the bright highlights modeling his face and clothing, I left the rest of the picture dark and muddied, in order to

bring out the brilliance of Van Dyck's shirt and medallion. Suddenly, I was having some doubts. Maybe the red was too much. Rubens tended to use his reds as accessory. It usually appears as a reference to the main figure in a composition. In the case of a portrait, however, it seemed like overkill. Instead, I chose blue for the shirt, and added a white collar. The red, I decided, would reside in a curtain behind Van Dyck's head, as a backdrop. It would be an interior scene. Should I paint the artist in his studio? I decided against it. After all, this was to be a portrait celebrating the artist as gentleman. I looked back to Rubens' self-portrait of 1638 and copied his one-glove motif, knowing that this was a direct reference to Van Dyck's (as well as Rubens') status as refined aristocrat. I also lifted Rubens' classical architecture motif from the self-portrait. I placed the base of the pillar directly to the left of Van Dyck's now gloved hand. The horizontal lines of the base helped draw the eyes to the glove. Van Dyck's portrait would differ from Rubens' self-portraits in a distinct way: he would wear no hat. He, unlike Rubens, was not balding, and his hatless-ness would accentuate his boyish, waif-like physical appearance. I had defined the field of depth for my 'masterpiece' inadvertently. The pillar had been added to establish the classical mood of the picture, but by placing it so high in the composition, and so small, I had described the space as rather deep. It was the perfect opportunity to add a small dog, behind Van Dyck and near the pillar. Adding the cocker spaniel established this squarely as a Northern European piece, while the Roman architecture referenced Rubens' respect for the art of Italy.

I had been painting all day, and was physically and emotionally exhausted. I took a break for a few days to concentrate on some of my other criminal enterprises and to let the paints set. Working in the loose, feathery style of Rubens' mature work was taxing. I did not realize how much concentration it would take to accomplish such a seemingly carefree style. I was stretching my own boundaries trying to simultaneously master Rubens' versatile arsenal of brushstrokes. I had spent an entire morning working on Van Dykes' white collar, with its embroidery and linen-like shine. It took another two entire days to perfect Van Dyke's feathery hair in Rubens' looser style. Despite Van Dyck's physical frailty, I rendered his skin in Rubens' characteristic lush tones. This, after all, was to have been done at the end of Rubens' life, when his liberated palette seemed to encompass nearly every color in the rainbow. Rubens could be excused for picturing his friend in a healthier light then reality might have shown. He had color in his cheeks. I decided that this was consistent enough with Rubens' style at the time to be able to fool any of the feeble-minded 'experts' who would be inspecting this great work. The painting was almost complete. The composition, however, seemed a bit simple. What could I add to tie everything together? I decided to gamble. I had just enough room between Van Dyck's face and the pillar for a window. What I was about to do might sink the entire operation, but I was willing to take a chance. I inserted the window and filled it with an outdoor scene. And then, ever-so-slightly, I added a corner of Ruben's Het Steen Estate. It was barely legible, but I knew that some over-eager graduate student would recognize it as Rubens' abode and I would be one step closer

to the untold riches I knew were headed my way. This would establish the painting as 1635 or later, which would hurt the legitimacy of Rubens having memorialized Anthony Van Dyke's knighting. The tantalizing detail of including Het Steen, though, would pay off in the end. I was sure of it. Plus, it helped to lighten up the painting as a whole. Would I regret this decision? I doubted it. After about a week of refining, I had added the last layer of glaze onto the red curtain behind Van Dyke's head. I stepped back and looked. My forgery was complete. I now only needed to bake the painting to dry it and give it the time-weathered look of a real seventeenth-century painting by Peter Paul Rubens. I had now only to establish the location of the painting and its provenance. It made sense that Van Dyke would have acquired this painting from Rubens in Antwerp, in 1635. Perhaps partially as a gift, and partially as a way for Rubens to boast of his new, beautiful piece of property. Some time after that, Van Dyke would have transported the painting to his house at Blackfriars, in London. By 1641, the painter had died there, and although he had little property by the time of his death, I believe that he kept this exceptional portrait as a cherished gift from a Baroque master and friend. I searched London for weeks until I found the perfect store to stage my 'discovery'. It was a musky second-hand store owned by a disgusting old couple. The store consisted of eight rooms packed to the brim with dusty, worthless junk. One entire room was filled with clothing. Most of it was unwashed, judging by the stench wafting from within it. The old couple were incontinent and both legally blind. It was a wonder the store stayed in business. I visited and cased the joint, subtly lifting a 15-pound price

tag from an old television set. Returning the next day with an accomplice, I smuggled my Rubens into the store while the old man was being distracted and the old woman was in the bathroom. I pretended to look around for ten or twenty minutes, as my coconspirator guarded the painting until I 'happened upon' it. I brought it from the table and proceeded to make quite a show of haggling with the old man, finally talking him down from 15 to 10 pounds. Though he did not seem to recognize where the painting had come from, I confused him with verbal hijinx until he was convinced that he had acquired it several decades ago at a local estate sale. I had framed the painting with a cheap, modern hemlock frame seemingly built by a high schooler for a shop class. This was my final stroke of genius. Not only did its unsightliness help me talk the old man down to 10 pounds, but the frame had a cardboard backing on it. Inside the backing, attached to the cross-beam of the stretcher, was a piece of paper. This piece of paper was trimmed from a intaglio print by a minor 17th century Flanders artist I had purchased for a pittance in Antwerp long before this ingenious plan had crystalized inside my mind. Using a fountain pen and references from my extensive library, I was able to forge a document that traced the work from Van Dyck's personal affects at the time of his death all the way to the phantom estate sale and into the second hand store. According to the paper, Van Dyck's mistress had claimed the painting, much to the chagrin of his wife, following his death. It was passed down through her family and gradually forgotten, before finally being auctioned off as part of a lot at said estate sale. As an added twist, I made reference in the provenance as being

painted entirely by Rubens' hand, which I knew all too well could perhaps triple its value. Now that it was in my custody, I would 'discover' the provenance and bring it to auction, hailing it as a late master-work made even more valuable by the fact that its subject is an equally-well known painter.