Lopez indicates that Han van Meegeren's defence during his trial in Amsterdam was a masterpiece of trickery, forging his own personality into a true Dutchman eager to trick his critics and also the Dutch people by pretending that he sold "Christ and the Adulteress", a fake Vermeer, to Göring because he wanted to teach the Nazi a lesson. Van Meegeren remains one of the most ingenious art counterfeiters of the 20th century. After his trial, however, he declared, "My triumph as a counterfeiter was my defeat as creative artist."