The issue of truth often underpins the issue of belief, but it is central in the case of counterfeiters. From the case of the famous counterfeiter Han van Meegeren, this paper shows how the counterfeiter’s “modalities of persuading” meet the “desire to believe” of experts and buyers in a specific context. Here, we can observe a “hermeneutics of the counterfeiter,” which includes, on one hand, the modalities of persuasion (pictorial and stylistic techniques, contextualization history) and, on the other hand, the will to believe (missing work in an artistic production, competition between the market players), which meets these techniques and reaches an agreement on this illusion that is the fake work of art.