The strange history of the world's most stolen painting - Noah Charney
Throughout six centuries,
the Ghent Altarpiece
has been burned, forged,
and raided in three different wars.
It is, in fact, the world’s
most stolen artwork.
And while it’s told some of its secrets,
it’s kept others hidden.
In 1934, the police of Ghent, Belgium
heard that one of the Altarpiece’s panels,
split between its front and back,
was suddenly gone.
The commissioner investigated the scene
but determined that a theft
at a cheese shop was more pressing.
Twelve ransom notes appeared
over the following months
and one half of the panel was even
returned as a show of good faith.
Meanwhile, art restorer Jef van der Veken
made a replica of the other half
for display until it was found.
But it never was.
Some suspected that he was involved
in the theft and,
once ransom demands failed,
had simply painted over the original
and presented it as his copy.
But a definitive answer wouldn’t
come for decades.
Just six years later, Hitler was planning
a grand museum,
but was missing his most desired
possession: the Ghent Altarpiece.
As Nazi forces advanced, Belgian
leaders sent the painting to France.
But the Nazis commandeered
and moved it to a salt mine
converted into a stolen art warehouse
that contained over 6,000 masterpieces.
Near the war’s end in 1945,
a Nazi official decided he’d rather
blow up the mine
before letting it fall into Allied hands.
In fact, the Allies had soldiers
called Monuments Men
who were tasked with protecting
cultural treasures.
Two of them were stationed 570
kilometers away when one got a toothache.
They visited a local dentist,
who mentioned that his son-in-law
also loved art and took them to meet him.
They discovered that he was actually
one of the Nazi’s former art advisors,
now in hiding.
And miraculously, he told them everything.
The Monuments Men devised a plan
to rescue the art
and the local Resistance delayed
the mine’s destruction until they arrived.
Inside, they found the Altarpiece
among other world treasures.
The Ghent Altarpiece,
also called "The Adoration of the Mystic
Lamb" after its central subject,
consists of 12 panels
depicting the Biblical story.
It’s one of the most influential artworks
ever made.
When Jan van Eyck completed
it in Ghent in 1432,
it was immediately deemed
the best painting in Europe.
For millennia, artists used tempera paint
consisting of ground pigment in egg yolk,
which created vivid but opaque colors.
The Altarpiece was the first to showcase
the unique abilities of oil paint.
They allowed van Eyck to capture
light and movement
in a way that had never been seen before.
He did this using brushes sometimes
as tiny as a single badger hair.
And by depicting details
like Ghent landmarks,
botanically identifiable flowers,
and lifelike faces,
the Altarpiece pioneered an artistic mode
that would come to be known as Realism.
Yet, conservation work completed
in 2019 found that, for centuries,
people had been viewing
a dramatically altered version.
Due to dozens of restorations,
as much as 70% of certain sections
had been painted over.
As conservators removed these layers
of paint, varnish, and grime,
they discovered vibrant colors and whole
buildings that had long been invisible.
Other details were more unsettling.
The mystic lamb’s four ears
had long perplexed viewers.
But the conservation team
revealed that the second pair
was actually a pentimento—
the ghost of underlying layers of paint
that emerge as newer ones fade.
Restorers had painted
over the original lamb
with what they deemed
a more palatable version.
They removed this overpainting
and discovered the original to be
shockingly humanoid.
The conservators also finally determined
whether van der Veken
had simply returned the missing panel
from 1934.
He hadn’t.
It was confirmed to be a copy,
meaning the original is still missing.
But there was one final clue.
A Ghent stockbroker, while on his deathbed
a year after the theft,
revealed an unsent ransom note.
It reads:
it “rests in a place where neither I,
nor anybody else,
can take it away without arousing
the attention of the public.”
A Ghent detective remains assigned
to the case but,
while there are new tips every year,
it has yet to be found.
