Intro source: Wikipedia (EN)
Author
Jan van Eyck
Movement / period
Renaissance
Medium
altarpiece
Location
St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent
One panel, "The Just Judges," was stolen in 1934 and has never been recovered — the current panel you see in Ghent is a 1945 copy made by Jef Van der Veken, and no one knows where the original ended up.
Highlights
Facts & legends
- The altarpiece has been stolen more times than any other artwork in history — at least 13 individual thefts since it was completed in 1432, including a panel taken by Napoleon's troops in 1794 and another swiped by the Nazis in 1942.
- One panel, "The Just Judges," was stolen in 1934 and has never been recovered — the current panel you see in Ghent is a 1945 copy made by Jef Van der Veken, and no one knows where the original ended up.
- X-ray scans done during the 2012–2019 restoration revealed a completely different lamb's face hidden underneath the painted surface — the original had startlingly human-like forward-facing eyes, which conservators actually restored to the visible paint layer in 2020.
- The altarpiece contains over 250 individual figures across 12 panels, and when open it measures roughly 11.5 by 15 feet — medieval viewers would have seen this almost entirely by candlelight, which dramatically changes how the oil paint's translucent glazes glow.
- Hitler personally ordered the altarpiece seized and shipped to his planned Führermuseum in Linz; it survived the war only because Allied soldiers found it bricked up 500 feet underground in the Altaussee salt mines in Austria in May 1945.
- The inscription on the frame names Hubert van Eyck as the primary creator who began it, but no other work is definitively attributed to Hubert — some art historians have seriously argued he never existed and that Jan invented a dead brother to inflate his fee from the Ghent city council.
More details How two brothers built an altarpiece with two states, why restoration returned the Lamb's almost human gaze, what Jan changed in Hubert's design, and how the work survived Napoleon, theft, and a Nazi salt mine.
Two states
Closed weekdays and open feast days tell different stories
Completed for Joos Vijd and Elisabeth Borluut in 1432, the wings transform restrained Annunciation into a blaze of figures converging on the Lamb.
The work is a ceremony of opening, not a single static image.
The closed exterior was not a poor cover. The Annunciation unfolds across a domestic interior whose empty interval between Mary and Gabriel becomes a pause; below, saints painted in grisaille imitate stone while the donors appear alive beside them. Opening the wings changes the scale of reality: heavenly music, precious textiles, nude Adam and Eve, and a broad landscape bind earthly and divine worlds. For a fifteenth-century viewer, the opening itself was a transition.
Hubert began, Jan completed
Research separates the brothers
The frame credits Hubert with beginning and Jan with completing the altarpiece.
Underlying paint confirms Hubert's design, while Jan replaced his natural spring with the Fountain of Life.
The Latin quatrain on the frame calls Hubert the greatest painter and Jan second in art, and records the display date of 6 May 1432. It may preserve the dead elder brother's memory while praising Jan, who delivered the commission. Research has revealed an early design and extensive revisions, but not a simple chart assigning each panel to one hand. Cathedral and conservators still stress that the precise division between the brothers remains unresolved.
The Lamb looks forward again
The strange face is original
Restorers removed a sixteenth-century overpaint and revealed front-facing, almost human eyes.
The intervention restored Van Eyck's conscious Christ-symbol rather than inventing a modern expression.
The Lamb's face was only the most visible discovery. Conservators found that later overpaint covered close to 70 percent of the altarpiece's surface, while original paint survived well in most tested areas. Cool and brilliant colours, cast shadows on the frames, textile depth, and material sparkle returned. The almost human eyes matter because they face outward: saints, prophets, and pilgrims converge around the sacrifice, yet the Lamb first establishes contact with the person standing before it.
One panel is still a substitute
The 1934 theft remains unsolved
The thief returned Saint John while demanding ransom, but the Just Judges never resurfaced.
A 1945 copy occupies its place and marks an unresolved loss.
The theft reads like fiction, but its documented details are stranger. After returning the reverse panel of Saint John the Baptist through the left-luggage office at Brussels North station, the criminal continued ransom letters. On his deathbed Arsène Goedertier told his lawyer that he alone knew the hiding place; copies of the demands were found among his papers, but not the panel. Searches and later confessions have produced no verifiable result. The copy therefore marks an open case rather than concealing a solved mystery.
Napoleon and the Nazis moved it
The altarpiece was repeatedly reassembled
Panels went to Paris, were sold and even sawn apart before returning after Versailles.
During World War II the work survived Hitler's intended museum and the threatened destruction of the Altaussee salt mine.
The wholeness we take for granted had to be reconstructed repeatedly. French forces carried central panels to Paris; other wings were sold and sawn through their thickness so both faces could be shown; the Treaty of Versailles reunited them in Ghent. During World War II the Nazis moved the work to the Altaussee salt mine. The threat to destroy the mine was real, although its rescue was more complex than later tales of one hero suggest. Protected display and phased conservation answer six centuries of movement, intervention, and danger.
Official sources
Where to check
- Commission, frame inscription, date, and cathedral historySaint Bavo's Cathedral
- Restoration phases, overpaint, and the original LambMuseum of Fine Arts Ghent
- High-resolution technical documentationKIK-IRPA / Closer to Van Eyck
- Dispersal, wars, recovery, and the 1934 theftCity of Ghent
- The disappearance of the Just JudgesCity of Ghent
- Conservation treatment synthesisKIK-IRPA / City of Ghent
Visual context
