A Miracle of Survival: Jan Van Eyck Part 2.

 The majestic Ghent Altarpiece.

The van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece is acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest works of art; it was commissioned from Hubert van Eyck in the 1420s but largely unfinished at his death in 1642. The creation was passed to the sole care of his brother, Jan, who had been hugely involved in the project from the start, though he was described as ‘the second best in the art’ with Hubert, ‘greater than anyone.’ No painting by Hubert remains to support that claim but Jan’s work on the altarpiece, completed in 1432, virtually re-defined art and became immediately famous. His extraordinary creation portrayed the first realistic interior; the first genuine landscape; the first proper city-scape; the first natural nudes; the first authentic Renaissance portraits. The sophistication of his oil painting was stunning, using thin, almost transparent glazes to provide depth and astonishing degrees of light. Close inspection of the Altarpiece reveals van Eyck’s extraordinary skill in rendering tiny detail and it may be that at the beginning of his career in art, he developed this special miniaturist skill in his work illustrating manuscripts and Books of Hours.

 Iconoclasts demolishing a large wooden cross.

 Scene from the Great Iconoclasm 1566.

Michael Prodger suggests, in his New Statesman article [14-20 Feb. 2020 to which I am indebted], the price of being, almost immediately from its creation, the most famous painting in the world, meant that it became the most focused on, the most desired and the most stolen. In 1566, during Ghent’s ’Great Iconoclasm’, a Calvinist mob broke into St Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, to destroy it. The far-sighted Cathedral clergy had earlier winched it, panel by panel, [24 in all] into the bell tower out of sight of the iconoclasts. A further 18 years were to elapse before it was removed from its eventual hiding place in the Town Hall, and returned to its rightful position in the Cathedral.

 Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph 11.

Extraordinarily, the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph 11, visited Ghent in 1781 and took exception to the nakedness of Adam and Eve who were removed elsewhere. In 1794, French revolutionary soldiers stole the Mystic Lamb panel and took it to Paris where it remained in the Louvre until 18 years after the Battle of Waterloo (1815). At about the same time, the Ghent diocese which was bankrupt, pawned the side panels for around £240, from where, unredeemed, they were bought by an English collector, Edward Solly, for £4000, who promptly re-sold them on to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm 11. The panels were sliced in half, in Berlin, to enable simultaneous viewing and remained there until after WW1 when Germany was obliged to return them to Ghent under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. During the selected panels’ absence, in Sint Baafskathedral, the remaining panels managed to survive a fire in 1822 though one was split from side to side!

Fire in 1822.

During WW1, the Altarpiece was dismantled and bricked behind walls in two Ghent houses to hide it from the advancing Germans who were shown a letter stating that the treasure had been sent to England. However, in 1942 Hitler pounced and the Ghent Altarpiece was carried off to be hidden in the Altausee salt mine, protected with explosives against any attempt by the Allies to reclaim it. Hitler was accumulating great art for an intended prestigious Fuhrer Museum in Linz and he was determined that the advancing Soviets should not claim ‘his’ art collection. At the end of the war, it was repatriated though with the final flourish of extraordinary had weather which necessitated the rescuing aeroplane making an emergency landing in a small military outpost before eventually reaching home, first, briefly, in Brussels, and finally in Ghent, in its rightful place.

 Art treasures stored in the
 Altausee Salt Mine
during WW2.

 1934

Between the two World Wars, in 1934, thieves broke into the Cathedral and removed the bottom left segment showing John the Baptist on one side and the Last Judgement on the reverse. They left a note saying: 'Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles’. They were seen leaving the Cathedral by another man robbing a nearby cheese shop! The thieves, meanwhile, sawed the panel in two and left the John the Baptist section in the left luggage area of Ghent station as proof of their possession while demanding one million Belgian francs for the return of the missing side of the panel. The ransom was never paid and police enquiries centred on a stockbroker, Arsene Goedertier who worked as a volunteer at the Cathedral. He never confessed but after his death, copies of the 12 ransom notes sent and a 13th, never sent, were found in his home. Sadly, the missing section has never been located despite police investigating a variety of rumours and suggestions over the last hundred years. However, this loss in no way demeans the majority of the original work of art and part of it is on view at the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition, An Optical Revolution at MSK Ghent after undergoing extensive and skilled renovation since 2012. The main panels remain on view in St Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent.