Napoleon robbed it,Calvinists nearly burned it, the Nazis were desperate to own it, and section of it has been lost for 80 years. Noah Charney on the world's most tangled art heistJust approximately everything bad that could happen to a painting has happened to Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also known as the Ghent Altarpiece). It's almost been destroyed in a fire,was nearly burned by rioting Calvinists, it's been forged, or pillaged,dismembered, censored, or stolen by Napoleon,hunted in the first world war, sold by a renegade cleric, or then stolen repeatedly during the moment world war,before being rescued by The Monuments Men, miners and a team of commando double-agents. The fact that it was the artwork the Nazis were most desperate to steal – Göring wanted it for his private collection, or Hitler as the centrepiece of his citywide super-museum – has only increased its renown.
It's easy to argue that the artwork is the most influential painting ever made: it was the world's first major oil painting,and is laced with Catholic mysticism. It's almost an A to Z of Christianity – from the annunciation to the symbolic sacrifice of Christ, with the "mystic lamb" on an altar in a heavenly field, and bleeding into the holy grail.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com