Reader's Digest

88 | July• 2018

THE ART DETECTIVE

ewasrunning
out the Beltracchis continued f lit-
ting between their European homes
andlazingontheiryacht;ill-gotten
gainsfromwhatwouldprovetobe
thebiggestartforgerycaseofthe
21st century. Their luxury lifestyle
was afforded by Wolfgang’s ability
to reproduce classic paintings worth
more than US$40 mill
The Beltracchis w
gang included Helene
sister Jeanette
Spurzem and friend
Otto Schulte-Kel-
linghaus pulled off
an elaborate scam
that duped auction
houses museums an
private collectors ali
for more than 20 years
It’s believed that o ga g
now a well preserved 71-year-old
with shoulder-length grey hair be-
gan his criminal career in the 1980s.
It wasn’t until he married Helene in
1993 that the operation became truly
sophisticated by which time physicist
conservator and art historian Nicholas
Eastaugh was emerging as a leading
art detective.

While the gang scoured provincial

French auctions for appropriately

aged canvasses Wolfgang could use

Eastaugh was busy using his exper-

tise to expose other less ambitious

fraudsters.

Wolfgang took just a few days to

copyanOldMasterorPicassobut

found the biggest money to be made

mitating 20th-cen-

Modernists. One of

greatest successes

as calledhe Forest

2)purportedlyby

ax Ernst which

as wrongly au-

henticated by a

enowned art his-

rian at the Beltrac-

’villainthesouthof

e. It sold for US$2.3

oadin2006wasloaned

totheMaxErnstMuseuminGer-

many.Firmlybelievedtobegenuine

a French publishing tycoon then pur-

chased it for US$7 million.

RATHER THAN COPYexisting paint-

ings Wolfgang’smodus operandi

wastocreatesupposedlyunseen

or lost works by relatively unknown PHOTO: DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

s art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi and his wife

Helene drank champagne on a Caribbean

islandtheyhadnoideathataforensicart

investigatorwashoningtheskillsthatwould

puttheminprison.InvestigatorNicholas

Eastaugh wasn’t on their tails yet – but he soon would be.