The Ghent Altarpiece: the truth about the most stolen artwork of all time
Napoleon robbed it, Calvinists nearly burned it, the Nazis were desperate to own it, and part of it has been missing for 80 years.
Just about everything bad that could happen to a painting has happened to Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also known as the Ghent Altarpiece). It's almost been destroyed in a fire, was nearly burned by rioting Calvinists, it's been forged, pillaged, dismembered, censored, stolen by Napoleon, hunted in the first world war, sold by a renegade cleric, then stolen repeatedly during the second world war, before being rescued by The Monuments Men, miners and a team of commando double-agents. The fact that it was the artwork the Nazis were most desperate to steal – Göring wanted it for his private collection, Hitleras the centrepiece of his citywide super-museum – has only increased its renown.
It's easy to argue that the artwork is the most influential painting ever made: it was the world's first major oil painting, and is laced with Catholic mysticism. It's almost an A to Z of Christianity – from the annunciation to the symbolic sacrifice of Christ, with the "mystic lamb" on an altar in a heavenly field, bleeding into the holy grail.
In 1934, one of its 12 panels was stolen in a heist that has never been solved, though the case is still open and new leads are followed all the time.
On 11 April of that year, Ghent police commissioner Antoine Luysterborghs pushed through a crowd at the St Bavo Cathedral that had gathered to gawk at something that was no longer there. One of the panels, depicting The Just (or Righteous) Judges, was gone. The commissioner took a quick look, and left. The missing panel – from what was already the most stolen artwork in the world – could wait. Across the street was another theft on the same night he had already been investigating: at a cheese shop.
This is just one of many bizarre twists in the story of one of the most famous art heists in history. The theft was followed quickly by a ransom demand for one million Belgian francs. As a show of good faith, the ransomer returned one of the panel's two parts (a grisaille painting of St John the Baptist). But police remained baffled.
Then a stockbroker called Arsène Goedertier had a heart attack at a Catholic political rally. He summoned his lawyer, Georges de Vos, to his deathbed. Just before he died, De Vos claimed, Goedertier whispered: "I alone know where the Mystic Lamb is. The information is in the drawer on the right of my writing table, in an envelope marked 'mutualité.'" The lawyer followed the instructions and found carbon copies of the ransom notes, plus a final, unsent note with a tantalising clue about the stolen panel's whereabouts: "[it] rests in a place where neither I, nor anybody else, can take it away without arousing the attention of the public."
But if Goedertier did steal the panel, why? The church has been defensive, and there is an air of cover-up – as well as evidence that other members of the bishopric were involved. One theory goes that a group of church members, Goedertier among them, were involved in a failed investment scheme that lost church money. Rather than admit their failure, they stole the panel and ransomed it to cover the losses. But Goedertier was wealthy and devout; it seems odd he would resort to extorting his beloved diocese.
The investigation that followed was no more thorough than Commissioner Luysterborghs's had been. De Vos failed to alert police about Goedertier's confession for a month. Eventually, after many false leads, police concluded Goedertier had been the thief. The case went cold. The panel is still missing. But to this day, a detective with the Ghent police remains assigned to it, inheriting the case from his predecessors. Progress is still being made... read more:
