Stealing the Mystic Lamb (24 page)

After the treaty, when the Kaiser Friedrich Museum had finally returned the six wing panels, along with the Dirk Bouts triptych taken from Louvain, the museum staff found a way to express their resentment. Where the panels had once been displayed, a placard was placed in the gallery that read: “Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.”

Years later, in the wake of the post-World War II reparations, discussion of Article 247 continued. Charles de Visscher, a distinguished Belgian lawyer and member of the International Court of Justice, wrote an article called “International Protection of Works of Art and Historic
Monuments,” published by the U.S. State Department in 1949. In it, he explores the reparation of the Ghent panels in the Treaty of Versailles.

The restitution required of Germany did not mean the recovery of works of art taken away by force, or appropriated by treaty. The Belgian government refrained from contesting the regularity of these transactions. When the works were returned to Belgium, the Minister of Science and Fine Arts, in an address delivered on the occasion of a Van Eyck/Bouts exhibition in Brussels acknowledged that the paintings had been acquired [by Berlin] in the proper manner. Their cession to Belgium, therefore, in no way represented restitution or recovery, properly speaking. In principle, it was justified by Belgium’s right to compensation for the works of art destroyed by the German armies during the war. As for the choice of the works claimed, it carried out the thought, as expressly stated in the text, of restoring the integrity of two great artistic works. Since the return of the works of art specified in Article 247 was required of Germany as reparation, it was of course to be without recompense. However, Germany later put forward a claim to have placed on her credit a total amount of their value, which is set at 11,500,000 gold marks, and which [Germany] proposed to charge against the annual payment obligated as [monetary] reparation. This claim was unanimously rejected by the Reparation Commission.

The return of the six wing panels from Berlin was triumphant, the panels borne like a wounded war hero. A special railcar decked with Belgian flags was fitted to transport the panels safely. The train stopped at each Belgian town along the trail from Berlin to Brussels, where crowds gathered to welcome the return of the kidnapped wings of their national treasure, singing the Belgian national anthem and waving flags.

The entire altarpiece would be reunited for the first time in over a century. After two weeks of display alongside the Dirk Bouts
Last Supper
at
the Royal Museum in Brussels, the entire
Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
was returned by rail to Ghent. Receptions were held. Officials gave speeches to crowds of thousands. Every church bell in the city’s skyline tolled in unison, ringing the reunion of Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece, a painting that symbolized, to the Belgian people, the survival of their nation.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Thieves in the Cathedral

P
lump and disheveled Beadle van Volsem made his final rounds of the day at Saint Bavo Cathedral, ushering the last of the parishioners and sightseers out the door. He checked the clock. He was due for dinner at the bishop’s residence.

The sun dipped behind the chimneys and gabled roofs on the horizon, as the beadle stepped out into the mild April air. He fiddled with his cumbersome set of keys until he found the right one, which he fit into the lock on the cathedral door. The cathedral was closed for the evening.

The staff swept, emptied the coin box offerings beneath the bank of votive candles, dusted the niches behind stone sculptures. The last of the maintenance crew exited out a side door, which they locked behind them.

Darkness fell. Inside the sleeping cathedral, a figure climbed down from the shadows of the rood loft.

At five the next morning, 11 April 1934, Beadle van Volsem made his first rounds. He went about his morning routine, unlocking doors, straightening draperies, checking the maintenance staff’s handiwork. He noticed that a side door to the church had been left open. Curious, he thought, but it had been accidentally left open on a number of occasions in the past.

It was not until 7:30 AM that he saw the broken padlock on the door to the Joos Vijd Chapel.

No, he thought, his heart rate rising. Not that door.

The door swung open with a squeal on aged hinges. There was
The Ghent Altarpiece
on display inside the chapel, its wings closed. And yet the beadle could see the panel depicting the Lamb of God—which could only be seen when the altar wings were open.

One of the panels was missing.

The beadle ran to the office of Canon van den Gheyn, the man who had so valiantly defended the altarpiece during the First World War. It was 8:35. They summoned the police, but not before word got out. A crowd gathered inside the cathedral to see the scene of the disappearance, erasing any clues that might have been present. The police arrived in the wake of the crowds.

Pushing through the throng of people that had gathered to gawk at the gaping hole in the bottom left-hand corner of
The Ghent Altarpiece
, police investigator Patijn saw a note pinned to the frame. It read, in French, “Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.”

Had this been a retributive crime, revenge for
The Lamb
’s wings having been forcibly repatriated from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin? The stolen panel was too famous to be shopped to buyers and sold. Or was it? Nieuwenhuys had found a buyer for six stolen panels just a generation before. Might a collector want only one panel of the twelve-panel masterpiece?

The missing oak panel was from one of the wings of the altarpiece. It was one of the panels that had been split vertically for display in Berlin. It contained a painted front and back, recto and verso, both of which had been taken. When the altarpiece was closed, on weekdays, the recto of the panel displayed the painted sculpture of Saint John the Baptist, in grisaille. When the altarpiece was opened, on weekends and holidays, the verso of the panel showed the so-called Righteous Judges on horseback, traveling to see the sacrificial Lamb at the center of the painting. It was said that several portraits were hidden among the painted judges, including that of Duke Philip, Hubert van Eyck, and a self-portrait of Jan.

Antique iron hinges that had held the panel in place had been removed, and then the panel had been pried from its frame, possibly with a large screwdriver. The removal of the hinges required some carpentry skill. The frame around the now-empty space was splintered, but there was no damage to the other panels. There were no fingerprints, footprints, or other telltale clues. Had there been any, the curious crowd ruined them.

Why this panel in particular? Both sides of the panel had a special resonance with the city of Ghent, more so than any of the other panels of the altarpiece. As the patron saint of Ghent, John the Baptist adorned the city seal, and, until 1540, the cathedral of Saint Bavo had been called the Church of Saint John. The Righteous Judges panel may have been a choice barbed with irony, the judgment of the Reparations Commission of the Treaty of Versailles having forced Germany to return that very panel. There were other potential reasons why the thief chose the Righteous Judges. In 1826, an engraving of that panel alone by British artist John Linnell began to circulate, increasing the fame of the Judges in particular. And if in fact the Judges panel contains portraits of not only Jan, but Hubert and Philip the Good, then that particular panel was of further historical and regional resonance.

From the outset, the theft was investigated in a strange and surprisingly unprofessional manner, one that led conspiracy theorists to assume that there was a cover-up involved.

First, Chief of Police Patijn arrived late to the crime scene. He had been investigating, of all things, a report on the theft of cheeses from a Ghent cheese monger, and was delayed because of it. After having arrived at the cathedral, he neglected to evacuate and seal the premises, and the mass of people milling about erased any clues that might have been left. He ordered no investigation of the surrounding area, took no fingerprints nor any photographs. He did not call the federal police, and yet they came anyway. Inspector Antoon Luysterborgh arrived at the scene soon after Patijn himself. Most bizarre and ridiculous of all, after a cursory look around the crime scene, Patijn excused himself to resume the investigation of the stolen cheese.

Luysterborgh was left to investigate, but he was no more thorough. The official police report only mentioned the theft of one panel, neglecting to include the information that the panel had been split vertically and, therefore, there were effectively two panels that had gone missing, the recto and the verso.

Van Eyck’s altarpiece had been back in its home, whole, and intact, only since 1921, barely more than a decade. In July 1930, for the centenary celebration of Belgian independence,
The Lamb
had been triumphantly displayed out-of-doors, symbolizing a united and independent Belgium. And now this.

The theft of the Righteous Judges occurred during a difficult period for the newly formed country of Belgium. In the wake of a national recession, triggered by the Depression in the United States, unemployment was rampant. As the recession grew progressively worse, religious fervor rose. Between 1932 and 1933 multiple visions of the Virgin Mary were reported in the area of Beauraing. The site suddenly became a pilgrimage point.

The first three months of 1934 were plagued by national crises. On 18 February 1934 the Belgian populace was horrified to learn of the strange death of their monarch, King Albert I. The king had been hiking in a desolate location called Marche-les-Dames when he slipped and fell to his death. Many suspected that this was no accident. Then on 28 March, the Socialist Bank of Labor declared bankruptcy. Thousands of small investors lost all their savings. Only weeks later Belgium’s largest bank, the General Bank Union, announced losses of millions, nearly going bankrupt itself. After the theft of the Righteous Judges was discovered on 11 April, national and local newspapers picked up the story, expressing outrage at the lack of security in the cathedral and the chapel itself. No guard had been posted, nor was there any barrier between visitors and
The Lamb
.
Visitors could easily touch the painting, if they didn’t know better than to do so. Belgian columnists wondered in print: Is this how we protect our national treasure?

This was the most prominent theft since Leonardo’s
Mona Lisa
had been stolen from the Louvre in 1911, and international newspapers printed their share of recrimination. After the tribulations of
The Lamb
, how could the Belgians let it slip away?

Though the thief’s calling card suggested a nationalistic motivation in its reference to the Treaty of Versailles, it was unimaginable that the German government should sponsor such a crude, aggressive act as this. Perhaps the Righteous Judges panel had been stolen by an angry vigilante who planned to take it as a trophy back to Germany?

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