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| 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.
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| Iconoclasts demolishing a large wooden cross. |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| Art treasures stored in the Altausee Salt Mine during WW2. |
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| 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.
