The Ghent Altarpiece may be the most stolen artwork in history. One panel is still missing.
Van Eyck's great altarpiece of 1432 has been carried off to revolutionary Paris, pawned, sold to Prussia, taken in two world wars and hidden in a salt mine. One art historian counts 13 crimes against it, including seven thefts. A panel stolen in 1934 has never been found.
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, in St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, is a huge folding polyptych begun in the mid-1420s and installed in 1432. It is attributed to the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck: Hubert probably designed the structure, Jan painted most of the panels, and no one has convincingly separated their hands. Often called the first major oil painting, it is famed for its light, its near life-size Adam and Eve, among the earliest direct nudes in Western art, and a meadow of dozens of identifiable plants.
Its adventures read like a thriller. After the French Revolution it was taken to Paris and shown at the Louvre, returning only after Waterloo. In 1815 the diocese pawned the wings, which were sold on and ended up with the King of Prussia in Berlin. The Treaty of Versailles returned them after the First World War. In 1934 thieves stole the panels of the Just Judges and John the Baptist. The Baptist was returned as a goodwill gesture. The Just Judges never reappeared, and the panel seen today is a copy by the restorer Jef Van der Veken.
In 1940 Belgium tried to send the altarpiece to the Vatican for safekeeping, but it got stuck in France when Italy entered the war. In 1942 Hitler had it seized and taken to Neuschwanstein Castle, then to the Altaussee salt mines in Austria, which badly damaged the paint and varnish. The Monuments Men recovered it in 1945. The art historian Noah Charney counts 13 crimes against it since its installation, seven of them thefts.
A restoration from 2012 revealed that about 70 percent of the outer panels had been overpainted in the 16th century, and mathematicians helped map cracks digitally. When the restored lower panels returned in 2020, the uncovered original Lamb of God caused a stir: it has a strikingly human face, with forward-facing eyes that stare straight out at the viewer.
Source: Wikipedia — Ghent Altarpiece · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
