48 x 30 cm, painted around 1940


Believed to be a preliminary study by van Meegeren for the head of Christ in The Last Supper, this picture was nevertheless painted as a fake, on an old, re-lined canvas and was intended for sale. In 1941 it was sold with a similar cover story to that of the Emmaus to Rotterdam ship-owner D.G. van Beuningen, using as intermediaries a house-agent, R.Strijbis, and the dealer Hoogendijk. It fetched 475,000 guilders, about 1.2M GB pounds today.