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Stealing The Mystic Lamb: The True Story Of The World's Most Coveted Masterpiece (2010)

by Noah Charney(Favorite Author)

3.73 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1586488007 (ISBN13: 9781586488000)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

PublicAffairs

review 1: Charney takes a long look at the history of the Van Eyck masterpiece (Altarpiece of Ghent) and devotes much of his attention to the looting of the work by the Nazis. This isn't quite an art crime piece, but there is definitely a storyline concerning one panel of the altarpiece that may or may not have been a theft. There's lots to learn here about Van Eyck, his altarpiece, and the abuse taken by major works of art.
review 2: Mona Lisa, Shmona Lisa. The most important oil painting in art history is not the smiling seductress from the Louvre, but a monumental altarpiece painted by Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck, whose rightful place is a chapel in a Gothic cathedral in the Beglian city of Ghent. The painting has had a tormented history that will fascinate anyone w... moreith an interest in art history or the history of Western Europe. Some of the other reviewers have commented that the author digresses on numerous occasions. That is true, but I personally found these digressions interesting. A too focused narrative would have failed to situate the painting in its proper artistic, religious or historical context. I actually found the changes in pace refreshing. We start out with a thorough discussion of the significance of the painting. I knew that the painting was considered to mark the transition from the stylized Medieval way of painting to Renaissance realism, but I had not appreciated, for instance, that it contained numerous religious allegories,symbols and other coded references that only an erudite scholar could interpret. Then the author discusses the circumstances in which the painting came into being. The political and religious climate of the day, the life of the painter, even the life of the wealthy merchant who commissioned the painting. And then the roller coaster begins. The painting comes close to being destroyed by Protestants during the reformation. Napoleon's troops steal it. It ends up in Berlin, and is later restituted to the Belgian people. On several occasions it is hidden by the populace of Gent, or by individual clerics. During WWII, it is looted by the Nazis and ends up in a salt mine in Austria. As the days of the Third Reich come to a close, a fanatical gauleiter wants to blow up the mine with all the priceless art treasures in it. This is prevented, though it is not clear who can claim credit for saving the art. It was a toothache that ultimately led the Allies to the stash, in the sense that the dentist took his American patient to see his son-in-law, who babbled freely about Nazi art looting. But my favorite episode in this rocambolesque narrative is the 1934 theft of two of the panels of the painting. This has stuff you would sneer at if you encountered it in a novel. A stealthy removal of two quite sizable pieces of wood. Ransom letters that become increasingly emotional. A police inspector who decides to focus on a theft of cheese from a nearby shop rather than on the disappearance of the painting from the Cathedral. A deathbed confession by an apparently solid citizen, overheard only by his lawyer, whose subsequent behavior was odd to say the least. The secret of the confessional. Threats to the Belgian royal family. All good lip-smacking stuff, the equivalent of the JFK assassination for Belgium. Or perhaps a better analogy would be the diseappearsance of Jimmy Hoffa, since the missing panel has never been found, despite hints that it might be hidden in the cathedral itself. It is a terrible pity that no funds have been found to apply modern technology to the church interior in an effort to find the panel.This is a great book that combines scholarly discussions about art history with faster-paced adventures. less

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