"Stealing the Mystic Lamb"
by Noah Charney.
PublicAffairs (New York, 2010). 319 pp.
$27.95.
Art historian Noah Charney's "Stealing
the Mystic Lamb" is subtitled "The True
Story of the World's Most Coveted
Masterpiece." It is the story of the
Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan Van
Eyck, painted between the years 1426 and
1432, one of the hallmarks of Western
art.
An enormous work, the
altarpiece is made up of 20 separate
panels in two tiers. Some of the smaller
panels, particularly those of "The
Annunciation," "The Heavenly Choir" and
"Adam and Eve," may be more famous than
its central lower panel depicting a lamb
upon an altar, its blood flowing from
its side into a golden cup.
Even at its
installation in St. Bavo Cathedral in
Ghent, Belgium, the altarpiece was too
large for the space it was designed for
and the side panels could not be opened
flush to the wall. It is remarkable that
this altarpiece, weighing over two tons,
has moved at all, much less been stolen
seven times.
The Ghent Altarpiece
hung undisturbed for 140 years and then
became the target of Protestants eager
to destroy graven images of God. The
first attack in 1566 was repelled by the
outer doors of the cathedral; by the
second assault with a battering ram, the
altarpiece had been hidden in one of the
towers and it escaped the wrath of the
mob.
In 1794, the French
Republican army invaded Flanders and
began a campaign of looting artworks and
sending them to France. On Aug. 20,
1794, the central panels were taken from
the St. Bavo Cathedral and transported
to Paris and put on immediate display at
the Louvre. It is not clear if the side
panels had been hidden or were ignored
by the invading army, but they remained
in Ghent. A few years later, the
director of the Louvre would ask the
Ghent authorities if they would consider
giving over the side panels, so the
altarpiece could be whole again, albeit
in France, not Belgium.
With Napoleon's defeat
in 1814, the monarchy was restored in
France. But, when Napoleon escaped from
his first exile on Elba and amassed
another army and marched on Paris, King
Louis XVIII fled from France and found
refuge in Ghent. After Napoleon's final
defeat at Waterloo, King Louis, in
gratitude to the city that had sheltered
him, arranged for the return of the
central panels to Ghent. The painting
was once again a complete work for a
year until the side panels were severed
from the central panels and stolen on
Dec. 19, 1816.
The side panels ended
up in the collection of Edward Solly, an
Englishman based in Berlin. In 1821, the
Prussian emperor, Frederick William III,
bought Solly's collection and used his
legitimately purchased works of art as
the core of the collection for the newly
established Prussian national gallery,
the Berlin Museum. In a move that would
horrify art conservationists today, the
side panels were split vertically, so
both sides could be viewed by
museumgoers at once. The side panels
remained until 1920 on Museum Island in
Berlin. The side panels were returned to
Ghent in one of the most humiliating and
painful reparations inflicted on the
defeated Germany by the Allies.
The Ghent Altarpiece
was whole again for 20 years until the
Nazis stole it during the Second World
War and placed it, along with hundreds
of other major paintings, in the Alt
Aussee salt mine in Bavaria. Adolf
Hitler had planned to build a vast
museum in Linz, Austria, his birthplace,
to house the thousands of artworks that
had been looted from the defeated
nations of Europe. The story of how
these precious artworks were rescued
from almost certain destruction by a
zealous local official determined to
carry out Hitler's "scorched earth"
policy is one of the most fascinating
sections of the Ghent Altarpiece's
complicated history.
It is a reminder that
our art treasures that hang quietly on
museum walls or in apses of cathedrals
were probably stolen from someone at
some time. Most European museums are
filled with artworks taken in one
invasion or another. More chilling is
the thought that a work as singular and
beautiful as the Ghent Altarpiece could
be destroyed in a few seconds by a
frustrated criminal who did not get the
ransom he expected or a passing soldier
eager to avenge his fallen comrades. The
Ghent Altarpiece has endured these
calamities and many more, a glowing
tribute to the genius of the brothers
Van Eyck and the God who inspired them.
- - -
Yearley is a graduate of the Ecumenical
Institute at St. Mary's Seminary in
Baltimore.
END
02/04/2011 11:45 AM ET
Copyright (c) 2011 Catholic News
Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops
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