Anyone involved in the world of painting, whether amateur or professional, is faced with the problem of authenticity and in times like ours, in which the prices of works of art have risen to dizzying heights, it is tempting to try to pass off fakes, which is not to say that such practice is anything new. R.H. Marinjnissen, long associated with the famous Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique/Koninklijk Institut voor het Kuntstpartrimonium in Brussels, provides both the layman and the expert with an exhaustive series of criteria by which a judgment about a painting can be made. His observations are confined to the painting of the Low Countries, with which he is thoroughly conversant.