The Ghent Altarpiece
If you thought Rembrandt’s Jacob de Gheyn III had been stolen a lot, strap in. The work we’ll be discussing today, The Ghent Altarpiece (also called Adoration of the Mystic Lamb), has been involved in at least 13 different crimes. Let’s touch on a few of the major ones.
The Ghent Altarpiece
This work of art is a large and complex 15th-century polyptych altarpiece that lives in St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. Polyptych means that *checks Google* the work has been divided into panels and isn’t all on one piece of canvas or board. This work was created by brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck between the mid-1420s and was completed in 1432. The altarpiece is considered a masterpiece of European art and a world treasure.
The piece consists of 12 inner panels and 12 outer panels and, fun fact, you can actually fold it closed like a little book. Actually not so little, it’s 11x15 ft when opened fully.
On the inner panels (above), we can see the heavenly redemption at the top. We can see a classic representation of God sitting on the throne, he is flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist on their own panels. They, in turn, are flanked by angels playing music and finally on the outermost panels we have Adam and Eve. On the lower inner panels, we can see different groupings of saints, sinners, clergy, and soldiers all present at an adoration of the Lamb of God, all overseen by the dove of the Holy Spirit.
The outer panels (below), visible when the altarpiece is closed, are divided into groupings. On the bottom row on the middle two panels are sculptural paintings of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist and on the two outer panels on the bottom row are portraits of the donors of this piece, Joost Vijdt and his wife Lysbette Borluut. In the middle row of panels is the archangel Gabriel and the Annunciation. Finally, on the very top row are prophets and sibyls.
As you can see, even explaining it and understanding everyone who is represented in this work is complex.
Some Crimes the Altarpiece has Been Involved With
Before we get to the crime that is most famous I’ll talk about a few other times when the Ghent Altarpiece has been targeted.
In 1566, Calvinist militants rebelling against Catholic idolatry used a tree trunk as a battering ram to break down the doors of St. Bavo’s Cathedral. They rushed in and attempted to burn the altarpiece but guards had already taken the artwork up the church tower before the mob arrived. For the next 18 years, it was kept safe in a fortified town hall.
In 1781, Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire (which included Belgium) took issue with the panels depicting Adam and Eve without clothing. He replaced them with copies (thankfully) wearing bearskin cloths.
After this came the French Revolution, with France conquering Belgium. The French confiscated a number of fine art from around the country, including the Ghent Altarpiece, because they were symbols of royalty. The altarpiece along with all the other confiscated works were sent to the Louvre which had recently become a public museum. In 1815 the altarpiece was returned to Ghent after Louis XVIII ascended the throne.
Unfortunately, the altarpiece didn’t stay in Ghent for long. The following year, in 1816, six of the panels were stolen by St. Bavo’s own vicar-general. They travelled through the hands of a series of art dealers and salespeople until they ended up with a Berlin-based art collector who gave them to the Prussian Kingdom. A few decades later, in Ghent, the nude depictions of Adam and Eve were sold to a museum. So at this point, the panels are split up and all over the place.
At the outbreak of WWI, Germany tried to reunite the entire altarpiece by stealing the remaining panels from Ghent. Great thought, terrible execution, too much entitlement. Thankfully they failed because the church custodian hid the remaining panels between the walls and under the floorboards of the bishop’s house. In 1918 the same custodian was able to smuggle the panels into the countryside for safekeeping.
After the war ended, the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to return the stolen six panels to Ghent and the local museum returned the nude Adam and Eve panels. For the first time in more than a century, the Ghent Altarpiece was complete.
The 1934 Theft (The Big One)
This is the theft that has stumped the police and has armchair detectives and internet sleuths from around the world baffled.
On the morning of April 11, 1934, Oscar van Bouchaute, a church steward at St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, entered the church to do his morning chores only to find a parishioner already there. He realized that the doors must have been left open overnight. He hurried to check the church jewels and articles of worship and was relieved to find them all there, he must have thought that nothing had been stolen. However, when he went to remove the protective shroud from the altarpiece for the day I can’t even imagine how he must have felt to see that the lower right panel was missing. Technically it’s two panels (one inner and one outer) depicting St. John the Baptist on the outside and The Just Judges on the inside.
The police were quickly called but in the meantime news of the theft had leaked and about 1500 members of the public showed up and trampled through the crime scene, touching things and erasing any evidence that could have been collected. The police did nothing to stop this and even left for a while to investigate another theft at a nearby cheese shop. It won’t surprise you to learn that three weeks passed with zero progress on the case.
Then Ghent’s bishop, Honoré Jozef Coppieters, received a letter in the mail. The writer claimed to have the two missing panels and demanded 1 million francs for their safe return. Part of the letter reads:
“It is our privilege to inform you that we possess the two paintings by van Eyck which were stolen from the cathedral of your city. We feel that it is better not to explain to you by what dramatic events we now possess these pearls. It happened in so incoherent a manner that the current location of the two pieces is known only to one of us. This fact is the only thing that should concern you, because of its terrifying implications” (Reilly, 2018).
They go on to tell the church that if they promise to send the money that they will return the St. John the Baptist panel as a sign of good faith. They will then return the Just Judges panel upon receiving the money.
Bishop Coppieteres signalled to the note writers, who signed off as D.U.A. that he agreed to their demands by taking out an ad in the classifieds section of the local newspaper. It read, “D.U.A. In agreement with the authorities, we accept your propositions totally” (Reilly, 2018). In response, the bishop received another letter on May 25 saying “We have read your answer in the paper of 25 May and take full note of your obligations, observe them conscientiously, and we will preserve ours” (Reilly, 2018). Also inside was a ticket for the luggage check at the Brussels train station. Crown prosecutor Franz de Heem, who had stepped in to lead the ransom negotiations, raced to the train station and sure enough, was provided with the St. John the Baptist Panel wrapped in black wax paper in return for the luggage ticket.
On June 1, another letter arrived for Bishop Coppieters notifying him that for the final handoff of the money they were to give the package (along with a very specific strip of torn newspaper provided within the letter) to a vicar at a local church who had been roped into this scheme without any knowledge of what he would actually be doing. De Heem advised Bishop Coppieters to play along and they wrapped up the ransom money in brown paper along with the strip of newspaper and gave it to the vicar. The vicar in turn gave it to a man who came to the church and first examined the newspaper before taking the package.
Unfortunately, by doing this they only angered the ransom demanders. Inside the package was not 1 million untraceable francs, as requested, but only 25,000 very traceable francs. They wrote back “We risked our lives to come into possession of these two jewels and we keep thinking that what we ask is not excessive or impossible to realize” (Reilly, 2018). They’re basically saying we went to all this trouble to steal this artwork and you can’t even respect us??!!
The police went back and forth with the thieves over the next few weeks but nothing really panned out. Don’t know if you could tell by now but the police didn’t really seem to care about this case whatsoever. De Heem (the lawyer) decided to try a new tactic and stonewall every further demand from the thieves and wait for them to slip up. But this requires time.
What he didn’t know was that time was NOT on their side. On November 25, 1934, Arsène Goedertier, a stockbroker, collapsed at a meeting of the local chapter of the Catholic Political Party in Dendermonde, Belgium. He was known to be a good Catholic man, very involved with the church and who helped run two different Catholic charities. But you know that that’s not why I’m bringing him up.
He was rushed to the hospital and immediately asked for his lawyer, Georges de Vos, to come into the room and close the door. Goedertier turned to de Vos and whispered to him “I alone know where the Mystic Lamb is. The information is in a drawer on the right of my writing table labelled Mutualité” (Reilly, 2018). With that breath, Goedertier died. Very dramatic way to go, kind of love it.
De Vos rushed over to his house and rifled through his study to find the drawer, inside were carbon copies of the 12 ransom notes that had been sent to Bishop Coppieters and the police, plus one additional note that had never been sent. All with the distinctive signature of D.O.A.
So What Happened?
De Vos decided not to tell the police about the confession right away and instead consulted with four legal colleagues, one being De Heem the crown prosecutor who had been in charge of the ransom negotiations. Each lawyer did their own investigation but came up with nothing. The police were notified about a month later and they also found nothing (no surprise there). The only real clues were that Goedertier was portly and couldn’t see well so they knew that there must have been at least one accomplice (though none have ever been identified) and the information that Goedertier’s wife and son provided.
Goedertier’s wife said that over the years her husband had made some comments about the Ghent Altarpiece like if he had to look for it he would look inside St. Bavo’s Cathedral and that it hadn’t been stolen only moved. Goedertier’s 13-year-old son died in 1936 of ongoing health complications but before he died he kept muttering, thieves...police...thieves...police. Which isn't much but suspicious.
Finally, the most compelling clue of all was provided by Goedertier himself in the unsent 13th ransom letter. He wrote, “The Just Judges are in a place where neither I nor anyone else can take it without drawing the public's attention” (Reilly, 2018). Massive searches were carried out of the cathedral (they’re still searching today with new technologies), even x-rays of walls and ground were taken to a depth of 10 meters because people thought the panel might be hiding in plain sight, but nothing was ever found. In 2019, the square outside the cathedral was even dug up to no avail. In 1937 the case was officially closed by the Belgian police and they officially deemed the panel ‘lost’.
In 1939 a Belgian art conservator/forger named Jef van der Veken began making a copy of The Just Judges, with no prompting from the church, in his spare time. When he was finished he offered it to St. Bavo’s Cathedral as a replacement for the time being and it sits there today. Some people are suspicious of this seemingly generous act because the quality of the work is exceptional. Is this panel actually the original that van der Veken had painted over slightly? Did van der Veken have access to the original to use as a reference? The weirdest part is that on the back of the panel van der Veken wrote this Flemish poem:
“I did it for love
And for duty
And to avenge myself
I borrowed
From the dark side” (Reilly, 2018).
Take from that what you will.
And After That?
The drama doesn’t stop there. At the beginning of WWII, the Belgian government sent the altarpiece (with the exception of the missing panel) to a hideout in southwestern France. However, in 1942 Josef Goebbels ordered the Nazi Art Protection Department to search for the piece, they ended up finding it and taking it. They believed that they had a legitimate claim to the painting (how??) and they wanted to give it to Hitler as a present. After the war, the painting was discovered and taken back to Ghent for the umpteenth time in its life.
To this day the attorney general’s office maintains a 2,000-page file on the theft and receive many tips each year, at one point the files on The Ghent Altarpiece took up 26 feet of filing space! Some sleuths even went so far as to physically dig up Goedertier’s skull to ask it some questions, another man tracked the trail of the panel to a church in Goedertier’s hometown where he found an outline in the dust, the exact dimensions of the panel, but ultimately the trail went cold. There have been a ton more theories but each one has gaps and all of them, eventually, have come to a halt. This case is just asking to be solved and I hope we find where the panel is soon. Now the altarpiece sits behind 5 million euros worth of bulletproof glass.
Works Cited
Charney, Noah. “Lost Art: Chasing the Elusive Ghent Altarpiece Panel”. The Art Newspaper. 2018. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/feature/lost-art-chasing-the-elusive-ghent-altarpiece-panel
Charney, Noah. “The Ghent Altarpiece: The Truth About the Most Stolen Artwork of All Time”. The Guardian. 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/dec/20/ghent-altarpiece-most-stolen-artwork-of-all-time
Reilly, Lucas. “The Enduring Mystery of the Ghent Altarpiece, the World’s Most-Stolen Painting”. Mental Floss. 2018. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/546749/enduring-mystery-ghent-altarpiece-worlds-most-stolen-painting