Art history is a matter of provenance; art collecting an affair of prestige. Commerce in art is the ineluctable confluence of provenance and prestige. Han van Meegeren (1889–1947), a talented painter who despised the work of modernists such as Picasso, understood that he could only succeed as an artist by obliterating himself and becoming his 17th-century avatar, Vermeer.

To Han, as Frank Wynne calls him throughout this lively biography, “I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger” (Bloomsbury, 276 pages, $24.95), Vermeer’s radiant realism was the very embodiment of the highest art. Ironically, Vermeer’s own reputation rose most rapidly in the early 20th century — largely through the efforts of a Dutch critic, Abraham Bredius — even as artists were abandoning the kinds of verisimilitude Vermeer perfected.

While Han’s own work languished for lack of critical attention, critics hungered for more Vermeers, a slight body of work now reckoned to include no more than 35 or so paintings. Bredius speculated that because Vermeer’s reputation had only recently risen, there might well be other Vermeers that a discerning critic might discover.

So it was that Han set out to create a veritable Vermeer. Possessed of extraordinary skill, Han also was fired by a desire to humiliate critics who had shunned his own work. To prove them fools, however, he had to do more than paint like a genius. He had to re-create the paints Vermeer employed, find just the right 17th-century canvas he could strip of its paint, reproduce in depth the crackling (fine lines) that grace the work of Old Masters, and harden the painting’s surface so that it could withstand various tests designed to ascertain whether a canvas had indeed aged over time.

Finally, Han had to choose just the right subject matter. Here he was at his cunning best, choosing “The Supper at Emmaus,” which he would pass off as a rare example of Vermeer’s middle period, a work that would fill the gap between the artist’s early and late periods.

The trick was to get Bredius to authenticate the painting. Shrewdly Han worked through intermediaries, friends he coached to tell the tale of how this painting belonged to a Dutch family that preferred to remain anonymous because they had been forced to smuggle it out of Italy, fearing the Fascists would confiscate it. Better that the Dutch government buy this masterpiece in hope it would remain in Holland.

Han’s initial plan was to disclose the forgery as soon as the painting sold, in 1937. But he was a reckless and extravagant man who quickly went through the fortune he acquired for the forgery. Living the good life meant more forgeries and millions of dollars for Han. Even Herman Goering was swindled, a ruse which, unfortunately for Han, ended the forger’s career.

Right after the war the Dutch were eager to punish collaborators, and Han found himself in prison because of his dealings with Goering. It took Han some time to tell the truth. So convinced were certain critics that they stuck by their attributions. What nonsense, they cried, the idea that an inferior artist could produce a Vermeer! But Han set about creating another Vermeer while serving a sort of house arrest, thus proving his bona fides — an odd word, to be sure, to use in connection with a forger.

Han never served his sentence, dying in 1947 shortly after his trial. In the end, he hardly seemed a criminal at all to the Dutch. One journalist wrote, “It is not the Vermeers, but the experts who authenticated them that are fakes.” The journalist even proposed erecting a statue to Han van Meegeren, collecting funds for a work that was never built.

Mr. Wynne misses certain opportunities that a student of art history might have explored. What about Han’s scorn for the critics? Although he was able to dupe the greatest Vermeer expert in the world, Han got lucky, since Bredius, then in his 80s with failing eyesight, was perhaps not in top form. At the same time, there were always critics who saw through Han’s Vermeers. Like other forms of criticism, art criticism is only as good as the critic.

Han’s success, however, raises other significant questions about art and art criticism. Do we, for example, stand in awe of the Mona Lisa because we know we are supposed to stand in awe of the Mona Lisa, because generations of admirers have done so? Walter Pater suggested that such works of art derive their value not merely from what is actually on the canvas but from what the beholder brings to the painting. Similarly, Oscar Wilde, Pater’s student, suggested in “The Critic as Artist” that art’s value is a matter of projection — that in order for the critic to say something valuable about the work of art he has to re-create it, so that, in effect, he is an artist.

Han may have in one sense conned the critics, but in another way (according to Wilde) he affirmed art. Had Han not confessed, countless people would still be admiring his Vermeers — as one critic whom Mr. Wynne invokes suggests. The biographer also notes that other forgeries remain on museum walls, while still others are attributed to the wrong artists.

Frank Wynne tells Han’s story well, although how well it is hard to say. He clearly relies on other biographies, including several in Dutch, a language that the biographer apparently knows well. He includes a bibliography but no source notes. Especially troubling are the long dialogues between Han and others. Do these conversations come from other biographies? And if so, how accurate are they? And how strange that a biography of a forger should provoke troubling questions about its own provenance!