Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece

by Noah Charney

Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece is on any art historian’s list of the ten most important paintings ever made. Often referred to by the subject of its central panel, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, it represents the fulcrum between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also the most frequently stolen artwork of all time.Since its completion in 1432, this twelve-panel oil painting has been looted in three different wars, burned, dismembered, forged, smuggled, illegally sold, censored, hidden, attacked by iconoclasts, hunted by the Nazis and Napoleon, used as a diplomatic tool, ransomed, rescued by Austrian double-agents, and stolen a total of thirteen times.In this fast-paced, real-life thriller, art historian Noah Charney unravels the stories of each of these thefts. In the process, he illuminates the whole fascinating history of art crime, and the psychological, ideological, religious, political, and social motivations that have led many men to covet this one masterpiece above all others.

Genres: History, Art, Nonfiction, Art History, True Crime, Crime, Mystery

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 11, 2010

About the author

Noah Charney holds degrees in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and Cambridge University. He is the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), the first international think tank on art crime. He divides his time between New Haven, Connecticut; Cambridge, England; and Rome, Italy.

Reviews

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 3 out of 5]

STEALING THE MYSTIC LAMB is a scholarly work wrapped in sheep's clothing. Even the opening chapter might well serve as the précis to a grant application. The book is dense with details and judiciously presents numerous contradictory hypotheses surrounding a succession of thefts in the long history of the eponymous “Mystic Lamb,” a barn-sized folding set of painted oak panels also know as the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck.

Charney is at his best, however, in the role of art historian. He explains in detail the construction and iconography of Van Eyck's masterpiece, and he succeeds where many an entire semester of classroom lectures frequently fail: Imbuing an appreciation for both van Eyck's aesthetic achievement and the historical significance of the work.

The altarpiece is awe-inspiring both in size and detail. It consists of 20 oak panels painted on both sides during the years between 1426 and 1432. It was normally displayed closed; and opened only for special occasions, further engendering a sense of reverence in the viewer. The medieval iconography is combined with a humanist interest in realistic form, perspective, and portraiture. Its execution in oil paint rather than egg tempera allowed a translucent depth of color and filigree of detail which were augmented rather than superseded by the medieval technique of gold leaf. “The result is a visual feast, a galaxy of painterly special effects that at once dazzle and provide days of viewing interest, prompting viewers to examine the painting from afar and up close, to decipher as well as to bask in its beauty.” Readers should examine the website http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-ghent... as they read the initial chapters of the book. The website displays individual panels of the altarpiece in the detail needed to follow Charney's descriptions. Charney is a gifted writer able to conjure a sense of the waning medieval world of the Ghent Altarpiece with its aura of religious miracle in the midst of reconciliation with a world of burgeoning Renaissance scholasticism. So great is his ability to captivate the reader that we feel a soul-piercing anguish as he relates the turmoil of the Reformation which repeatedly threatened the masterpiece's destruction. In 1566, only a little over a century after the altarpiece's completion, Calvinist rioters attempted to destroy the work – in their eyes an example of Catholic “idolatry.” Only the quick-thinking initiative of some anonymous guards who hid the work saved it from destruction.

The second story told here is one of art crime. How many of you knew the Louvre owed its founding to Napoleon's sweep across Europe? Artwork from his European conquests were channeled back to Paris. Successive wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II, dictated the flow of pillaged artwork between France and Germany, with much of it being bought by British and American collectors. Charney's historical research on World War II is of particular note. He mentions the Mystic Lamb's abduction to Alt Aussee, by the Germans. Alt Aussee was a salt mine converted into a state-of-the-art warehouse for much of the artwork seized by the Nazis. The military commander of the region, August Eigruber, was determined to destroy the mine and its contents should the Nazis be forced to retreat by the Allied forces. Charney details the Lamb's miraculous rescue due to the efforts of two separate groups, the Monuments Men attached to Patton's 3rd Army, and a confederacy of Austrian freedom fighters, civilian miners led by Alois Raudaschl and Emmerich Pöchmuller and Hermann Michel, and a British double agent named Albrecht Gaiswinkler. A movie called Monuments Men will be released in 2014, and I will be interested in seeing if any of the Alt Aussee events or Americans George Stout and Lincoln Kirstein (both described in Charney's book) are portrayed in the movie.

Anyone interested in art history will be both enlightened and dismayed by the details of this book.

NOTES: This work continues to reveal hidden surprises. This article describes on-going restoration work that revises our interpretation of the iconography. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018...

This website is a detailed visual examination of the panels. http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/ghe...

This article from 2020 updates the restoration effort with a startling effect: https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...?

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankly, if you are interested in art history than this is a fantastic work. You don’t get much more fantastical than the story of the Mystic Lamb, the most stolen piece of art in the world.

I felt that the pacing was correct for the work. The author spent a good amount of time detailing the creation and important of the Mystic Lamb, the mystery shrouding its painting/signature, and then proceeded to tell as much of the story as he could. Naturally the largest section was that of WWII, when there was more going on, so many different people in so many different roles, and it’s the most easily identifiable journey that the Lamb took.

I don’t know if I would recommend it to just anyone, but anyone with an interest in art history shouldn’t pass this book up!

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this historical narrative. It reads like a novel and explains in fascinating terms, the history of the Ghent Alterpiece (The Mystic Lamb), along with the fate of the multitudes of artworks plundered and looted by the Nazi's during WWII. The role of the Monuments Men, along with Resistance fighters is made even clearer, even though there is doubt about who the real heroes were. The fact that so much art was preserved is the important fact. I'll never look at art in a museum again without wondering who plundered and looted it from who resulted in me being able to view it at that particular moment. If you love art, history, war strategy and mystery you should read this book!

[Mads · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate gatekeeping.

It is the insecure, "intellectual" attempt at controlling the spread or use of information. It mandates who has the right to knowledge, which smacks of classicism, elitism, and, frankly, fascism. It suggests that some people aren't worthy of learning—that deeply human act which remains a crucial part of being alive in the world. I am also convinced that gatekeeping belongs at the "Peak of Mount Stupid" on the Dunning Kruger cognitive bias graph, the point at which a learner believes they are the smartest and most capable in a subject, unaware that have not yet learned just how much they *don't* know. Gatekeeping is also rampant in the Art History field, which has been tightly determined by white, European men for centuries—those fallible assholes who are hell bent on being "tastemakers" and controlling the dissemination of art-related knowledge.

I want no part in it.

It is for precisely these reasons that I've held off writing a review on Stealing the Mystic Lamb for what feels like a long time (time itself makes less sense than it used to). I finished the the book three weeks ago and have been back-brain ruminating on it ever since. Ignoring for a moment this pathetic use of my time and energy (though in a world as deeply flawed as this one, who can blame me for concentrating on the few things I do, even partly, understand?), I think this time away from Charney's strange exultation of the Ghent Altarpiece has given me the opportunity to check my own gatekeeping biases. Upon closing the book for the last time, I was ready to write a scathing analysis centered on source work and the shameful lack of foot- or endnotes in non-academic art historical works. This review was going to be some kind of self-righteous drivel about digressions and authors who, despite understanding a great deal about their field, can't write for shit. And though I can't claim to have changed my mind about many of my conclusions (I am still convinced that sensationalism is the devil's handiwork), I realized that I could write an honest review without being one of those gatekeeping assholes who makes academia an unconquerable ivory tower—moat full of white male crocodiles and all.

So here goes:

I didn't love Stealing the Mystic Lamb. Anyone who has reached this point in a review that reads more like a wannabe woke introduction to a recipe blog post will undoubtedly discern that I didn't like the book. I felt like Charney got lost in the weeds more often than he travelled the main road, and it took some real effort for me to keep slogging through endless introductions of names, dates, and amusing but irrelevant anecdotes. This is not, as my injunctions against gatekeeping might suggest, because I already knew everything Charney was writing about. My own scholarship centers on 20th century modern American art and the history of disability art, not 15th century Dutch masterpieces. I read this book because it was in my field but out of the range of my expertise in the hopes that it would yield an interesting but new narrative about a beautiful piece of art I've wanted to see in person my whole life. And while I *did* learn things I had never before known about the Ghent Altarpiece, it felt like too much work to uncover the tiny few morsels hidden in the weeds.

Charney's attempt, at least, is admirable. Books like this are valuable for readers of all expertise levels; if the only readable work on any given topic was specialized and replete with field-specific jargon, we'd all be far less open and curious than we are even now. Introductory texts are what get people curious. They are what spur the imagination, inspire travel, expose people to new ideas without overwhelming them with information. And Charney's book is even more in-depth than a simple introductory text: it functions as a six-century historical overview of a single piece of art, which is really great if you're often curious about that sort of thing (and you had best believe I am).

But Charney still falls short of that admirable goal, much to my dismay. Instead of providing readers with a captivating portrait of a truly fascinating history, he regales the reader with story after story, a large chunk of which aren't directly related to the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. I often beg for more context, but Charney overwhelmed me with it. The bulk of the book is also devoted to descriptions of the group more popularly known as the WWII "Monuments Men", which are a valuable topic on their own. But it felt like Charney was trying to hide this massive digression in a book about a single artwork, and Nazi looted art is simply too fascinating a history to be forced into the 94 pages of Chapters Eight and Nine. If you want to write a book about the Monuments Men, write a book about the Monuments Men! But don't couch them in a popular history about something else. It's just too damn confusing, and everyone loses. Including Jan van Eyck.

In the end, however, what I found most frustrating were Charney's grandiose claims. It fries me when people use hyperbole unironically and get away with it—in news, in academia, everything. So when an author writes an ostensibly non-academic but well-researched popular overview (and it is fairly well-researched), but instead makes ridiculously large claims he couldn't possibly hope to back up, he loses his credibility and also the thread of the story. At the end of the Prologue, Charney argues that "This is the story of the most desired and victimized object of all time." Why not simply say that this is the story of an artwork subject to six centuries of intrigue and controversy? It means much the same thing, but doesn't sensationalize and instead intrigues the reader. In Chapter Eight, he asserts that the search for Nazi looted art was "the greatest treasure hunt in history." Why not say it is *one* of the greatest treasure hunts? A single word change takes the pressure off but maintains the excitement.

And throughout the book, Charney pokes holes in his own arguments by using sensational wording. This does a disservice to the reader by suggesting that the average reader of a popular art history narrative isn't smart enough to understand what is important and what is not unless hyperbole is used overtly and repeatedly. It indicates that sensationalist wording ("greatest...in history," "only," "single-handedly," "most desired," "of all time," etc.) is REQUIRED to get people interested, which I find difficult to believe. It also indicates a bottom-line approach, that the sale of the book is more important than its integrity.

My own bottom line (ha! punny. I'm not selling anything except skepticism), is that Charney has great material to work with but the resulting book doesn't measure up. The lack of footnotes in StML is not a true weakness, it's just my personal preference, and I know that editors often intentionally leave out foot- and end-notes because they overwhelm or put off some readers. That's a legitimate concern. The fact that Charney uses more secondary sources than primary is also a personal preference and not a fatal flaw for the piece itself. I'm even grateful that Charney included a description of his source material at the end for those interested, especially because it wasn't a requirement. But leading readers down the rabbit hole of sensationalism and impossible claims just reduces the efficacy of the narrative and makes everyone look bad.

tl;dr —

I think any number of other books on the Ghent Altarpiece would be better worth a reader's time. History and Art History are really too interesting on their own to need any kind of histrionics. If nothing else, though, Charney unintentionally gave me the great opportunity to reassess my own gatekeeping tendencies and my thoughts on popular histories. I've come away with a renewed sense that non-academic non-fiction is incredibly worthwhile; it just needs to be written well.

[Reya (Andrea) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I'm a little obsessed with art theft, but this is a great read for any history or art lover. Concise, interesting, fast-moving. The Ghent Altarpiece has had quite the life.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ghent Altarpiece -- the masterpiece of Jan Van Eyck, possibly the first major oil painting in history, the most influential artwork of its day. It's been seen as the last great work of the Middle Ages and the first great work of the Renaissance. It is packed with symbolism enough to engage scholars for centuries, and it has. It's reputed to conceal vast mysteries, if they could only be decoded. Hitler, always a fan of the occult, believed it contained clues to the location of the Arma Christi, which included the Crown of Thorns and could confer supernatural powers on whoever possessed it.

Open, it's more than 14 feet wide and 11 feet tall. It weighs about as much as two elephants.

And despite that, it's one of the most-frequently stolen artworks in the world. Even now, one of its panels is missing, replaced in the 1940s with a replica. Noah Charney's book is a dazzler, both for what it tells us about the Altarpiece and also for what it tells us about the determination of the people who have stolen all or part of it.

This book works on many levels, including the way it tosses off insights (portraiture as an expression of Humanism's stress on the importance of individual life?); it's a handbook of iconography, of trends in painting, of Biblical history and Christian myth; and it's also a study of obsession and greed. In all, a terrifically entertaining piece of work.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure I would like this book. When I visit art museums, I enter rooms of medieval art more from a sense of duty than from love.
I picked it up anyway, because of the compelling list on the dust jacket, of torments the Ghent Altarpiece has endured and survived: it's been stolen 13 times, and that's the least of the dangers it has faced.
I'm so glad I read this book. Charney's enthusiasm for art and history is infectious. I used to think the paintings hanging on museum walls had, somehow, always been right where they were, there to be learned from and enjoyed by all. But the book showed me that many of the works of art we see today are hardy survivors. He opened my eyes to the stories of art and gave me a whole new way to appreciate what I see, not just for its beauty or how it speaks to my soul, but for its story as a physical object that has stood the test of time.

[Quiltmom14 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only made it to 25% and barely that. This is an amazing story - a painting the size of a barn wall that endured 13 attempts to harm it throughout history - and the abysmal writing makes that boooooorrrrrrriiiiiinnnnnnggggg. The amount of research here, presented in the most basic, unedited, slog-prose, completely overwhelmed me with its deep dives in to absolute minutiae. I tried for a week to “get into” this book, I read (fascinating) news stories about the current attempts at restoration, looked up photos of the work etc and enjoyed all my side-forays in to the story....but not the one on paper before me. Very disappointing across the board. Don’t bother.

[Patricia Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent look at the history of art theft told by looking at the incredible history of one monumental painting, Jan Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, also knowns as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. Charney must be a wonderful professor; he makes this story read like a novel and keeps you riveted up until the very end. I read this as a "train book" and nearly missed my stop one night when I was totally engrossed. Charney's first book was a novel, The Art Thief. I liked it, but I hope he writes more non-fiction like this one as he really shines in this arena.

[Ian Hrabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun romp through art history. I put this one on my reading list when the Ghent Altarpiece was recently restored and the lamb’s restored humanoid face proved…divisive to say the least. Even as a layperson I look at that painting and can feel it’s importance and power, so it makes sense that it has been stolen over and over again over the course of the last 600+ years. The centerpiece is the Monuments Men recovering it from the Nazi cache of looted art, but my favorite part of the book was when one of the panels was stolen and held for ransom, the ransomer’s facade started to crack in his correspondence with police, and then the panel was NEVER SEEN AGAIN. I for one will pop if it is eventually uncovered but it sort of seems like the sort of thing where it got destroyed in WWII but anything could happen!

[Tex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is quite a treatise of the history of this artwork. The first two chapter are about the symbols and icons depicted there and how it was painted and the life of Van Eyck himself.
Each of the thefts and recover would make a captivating thriller but combined together it was too much to consume…for me. And I’m all about learning about art fraud!

[Violeta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am obsessed with the history of this artwork - and its missing panel! I’ll devour anything about it in any form. This one is top notch, filled with interesting stories about art and the history of looting for the past 600 years.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about the misadventures of the Ghent Altarpiece, the "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb", completed by Jan van Eyck in 1432. With its realistic depiction of the Lamb and its adorers, it links Medieval and Renaissance art and is the national treasure of Belgium. Not surprisingly, it's been stolen and recovered a number of times.

Charney starts with a detailed description of the 24 panels that make up the polyptych panel painting: a main panel showing the adoration of Christ depicted as a lamb, with smaller panels on each side, and two outer wings of multiple panels that can be folded over the main scene, with more paintings on the outside. The paintings contain religious symbology that would have been designed by some church official, not the painter. Over the years scholars have found all kinds of coded messages about the painter and the subject. But it's the realism and beauty of the panels that make them such treasures.

The rest of the book is about the thefts and damage the painting has undergone. It was taken by Napoleon's troops, it was broken up and the outer wings exhibited in Berlin for some time, it was united as part of Germany's reparations after the second world war. A panel was stolen in 1934 and that crime has never been solved. Charney says the crime has the same status in Belgium as the Kennedy assassination here, with new books and theories every year. He goes into it in detail but it was really more than I cared about. I'm uninterested in unsolved mysteries - I'm bored to tears by theories about Kennedy or Jack the Ripper. Perhaps readers who enjoy such things will be more delighted by this material than I was.

Along the way Charney describes how plunder of a nation's art work was once standard procedure in war, but at the start of WWI art scholars implored the world's great powers to end this. Most complied.

During WWII, England and the US set up military units to list and protect archeological and art treasures, and to educate soldiers so that they'd respect these things. The Nazis acknowledged that defeated nations should keep their artworks... unless they were in the hands of Jews or other non citizens. Hitler and Goering were each trying to grab as many pieces as possible, Hitler for a museum he envisioned in his home town of Linz, Austria, that would make it the center of the art world. The number of pieces is staggering, and it included The Lamb. The Reich converted a salt mine in Austria into a storehouse. But when the end was in sight, Hitler gave orders to bomb the mine and destroy everything. If the Reich couldn't have them, nobody could. By this time, American intelligence knew about the salt mine storage, but could they prevent the art from being destroyed? That's the main story of this book.

Well, we know how it comes out, so there's not too much suspense, though that part's interesting. All told, it's another of those books that would have been a good magazine article but has been stretched to book length. The references at the end are kind of cursory; I'd have preferred footnotes and more details about sources. The published version will include color pictures of the painting, which my advance copy lacked.

[Lee Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Ghent altarpiece is my favorite painting, and I will see it in person someday.

This book, while interesting in theory, can be repetitive, too bogged down in digression, and just plain dull at times. Author Charney spends too much time with and repeats too many details of the Nazi looting and, more specifically, who did or did not find/protect/save the underground salt mine-turned-art warehouse which housed the altarpiece, as well as thousands of other artworks. There was already an entire book about the Monuments Men (as well as a movie); if I wanted to read over 80 pages on their antics, I would have read that book. The earlier chapters, which focus on the history of the painting, and its previous adventures, are much more interesting.

[Scott Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charney does a marvelous job describing the creation and survival of what I consider to be the finest painting in Western Civilization. Describing how such a large and heavy masterpiece could be stolen, forged, hidden, threatened with destruction and ransomed was a fascinating eye opener to me. (The piece has been stolen 13 times; nothing else even comes close.)
I thought the book dragged a bit before it reached the climax of the Nazis attempt to loot the piece - it was discovered in a salt mine in Austria near the end of the war - but all in all it is a great introduction to the role fine art plays in cultural, national, and spiritual history.

[AAR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but Uneven

Although the subject matter is very interesting, it seems more like a compilation of articles than cohesive book. The repetitive prose & copious (unnecessary) detail make for an ultimately tedious read.

[Guido Bergmans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charney, Amerikaanse kunsthistoricus, beschrijft het wel en wee van het altaarstuk sinds zijn ontstaan in de jaren 1420-1430. Achtereenvolgens gaat het over het weinige wat bekend is van Jan Van Eyck, het nog veel mindere over zijn hypothetische broer Hubert, het gevaar van de Beeldenstorm door de protestanten in de 16de eeuw, de bedreiging door de Franse revolutionairen eind 18de eeuw, de diefstal door Napoleon, de diefstal en verkoop van een deel der panelen in 1816 door vicaris-generaal Le Surre voor een belachelijk bedrag aan de beruchte Brusselse kunsthandelaar Nieuwenhuys, die ze doorverkocht voor een veelvoud daarvan aan Edward Solly, een Engelse collectioneur die zich nadien in Berlijn vestigde. Zijn collectie werd dan weer legitiem overgekocht door de koning van Pruisen. Dan zijn er nog boeiende episodes voor en tijdens WO I, uiteraard de diefstal van de Rechtvaardige Rechters en de vaudeville van 1934 waarin een hoofdrol gespeeld wordt door Arsène Goedertier, de vermeende dader. De meest spannende episode is die van de “Monument’s Men”, die op het eind van WO II het retabel op het nippertje redden van de vernietiging door de nazi’s. Allemaal heel degelijk geresearched en heel boeiend verteld. Charney beperkt zich tot historische feiten, zonder af en toe wat speculatie uit de weg te gaan, wanneer de feiten te vaag blijven. Hij houdt zich intussen ver van alle esoterische flauwekul, waarin het retabel eeuwenlang betrokken is geweest. Goed boek!

[Heep · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best popular histories, "Krakatoa" and "Devil in the White City", frequently employ a divergent approach - using different threads and a variety of personalities to reconstruct an event immersed in its zeitgeist. Done well, the reader is given a credible version of events while feeling some of the drama and urgency of events - you may get a sense of actually being there.
"Stealing the Mystic Lamb" does not succeed in this way. The material is sufficient to hold one's interest, but was generally a disappointment for me. Many of its conclusions are speculative or seem driven by conspiracy theory. Several aspects of the painting's history might have succumbed to a more rigorous investigation.
Some 'popular' histories try to be just that: popular - echoing conventional sentiment and uncritically applying convention. WWII is a minefield in this respect as a hugely complex set of events is often reduced to a Churhillian framework. It can allow lazy scholarship that, in this book, relies on heroic Austrian miners to save the day. It is a scenario for a good fable, but is it masquerading as the truth?

[Roberta Westwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic!

An absolutely fantastic account of a particular work of art (or several, it turns out) and art history in general. The book begins with a description of The Ghent Altarpiece, and it’s importance (it is among one of the first known oil paintings), and the panel referred to as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. As there are so many panels, and thefts result in it being frequently broken up, this does take some time, but it is absolutely fascinating. From this, one is able to understand why missing pieces were so significant. As the history of the work is laid out, it is within the context of world events impacting art history. This is done very thoroughly, as, for example, I learned more about securing and rescuing art works from the Altaussee salt mine than I have after reading many books on this subject. There is an interesting twist at the very end, that will keep me listening to art news for the final word. Highly recommended.

[Johan D'Haenen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dit werk behandelt niet enkel de bewogen geschiedenis van De Aanbidding van het Lam Gods, neen, Noah Charney schrijft een interessante geschiedenis van de oorlogen die de Nederlanden geteisterd hebben, de opeenvolging van heersers en territoriale verwikkelingen in een continent waar vrede niets anders was dan een adempauze tussen twee oorlogen, al dan niet godsdienstoorlogen. Kunstroof, plunderingen, moedwillige vernietiging van kunstwerken, megalomane plannen van egoïstische heersers en bevelhebbers, tot aan de ultieme grootheidswaanzin van Hitler met de plannen van het museum in Linz, gecounterd door de Amerikaanse Monuments Men en de ontdekking van talloze opslagplaatsen van kunstwerken in mijnen... dat alles zorgt voor een relaas dat blijft boeien tot de laatste bladzijde.
Een werk dat ik ten zeerste kan aanbevelen, dat blijft nazinderen en dat uitnodigt tot verdere lectuur.

[Stella · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s really 2.5 stars. Listened to the audiobook. First, the narrator was awful - read in a flat, even tone. Second, this book is WAY too long for what it purports to cover. The first third is dedicated to the art history evaluation of the Lamb, the qualities of the painter, and the impact the painting has had on the art world since it’s been created. Had I wanted an art history lesson, I would have picked a definitive authority on the subject. Also, I found there was a good deal of overlap with the Monuments Men story, but I guess that cannot be avoided, considering the topic. The book had its moments, and I did learn a lot. But I cannot recommend this as a good read.

[Marijean Miyar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book less than I did Charney's The Art Thief, but I read that one a while ago. In the interim I read The Monuments Men which was riveting. I may have been the only person to enjoy George Clooney's movie, so much did I enjoy the book. I found some annoyances in Charney's style: repetitions, imprecissions (why does he say in page 235 that Kirstein had passable German when in 237 he says that he barely spoke the language?)...
First I gave the book 3* then came back to give it a 4. It's a good read on a marvelous subject.

[Alarie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book covers the importance of The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck to the world of art and its many adventures as the most coveted, most often stolen art in the world. They hype says it reads like a thriller, but it reads more like an academic treatise. A mystery writer would have chosen which details matter to keep the book moving. Instead we get bogged down in the confusing maze of who did what and the many false leads detectives have to deal with all the time.

I did enjoy the photographs and some of the art discussion. Less would have been more for me.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story about the long history of the Ghent Altarpiece and the many attempts to steal it over the centuries. Has lengthy background-setting about art as wartime booty. The most recent theft of the Mystic Lamb was by the Nazis during World War II, and it figures prominently in the 2014 film, The Monuments Men.

I did find a few passages less than riveting. And more seriously, Charney isn't as fluent with Church matters as someone writing about sacred art housed in a cathedral should be.

Still, it's a good story and not many other people are telling it!

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many riveting stories about this major art work, the Ghent altarpiece, that has been stolen and plundered by armies numerous times in the last 500 years. The author, however, goes into detail about many other things, including a history of the work and its artist, the meanings in its many panels, timelines of the massive art plunders of Napoleon’s army, Germany’s plunders in WWI and WWII, etc.

Most of it was interesting, well told and clearly well researched. It went on a bit long for me…my head was spinning from all the details..

[Ella · Rating 1 out of 5]

For something written by someone with a doctorate in a subject adjacent to what he writes about, this book is shamefully bad, and full of extremely reductive takes and what I can only refer to as plain old errors. Also his Latin isn’t great.

I was also hoping this would be more about the Righteous Judges theft and less about the Monuments Men, but alas, disorganisation robbed me of my hopes and dreams.

[Raine Baushke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book didn't hold my interest, although it is well-written. The author is a professor of art history and this reads like a rather dry lecture. The high-quality research is the backbone of this non-fiction book detailing the true story of Jan van Eyck's stolen Ghent Altarpiece. Apparently it has disappeared thirteen times.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 *s

‘The Altarpiece of Ghent’ is both a visual retelling and a source of awe at the possibility and even hope that it contains elements of mysticism and the occult.

Art...is and always has been, the visible evidence of the activity of free minds. Ch. 8

Notes: Taschen Jan van Eyck by ill-Holger Borchert

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was full of interesting information and stories, but what a slog! It seems that the author is not one to say a thing once when five or six times will do. And he gets into minute detail just because he has it, not to advance the story. I was able to tough it out, but better there had been some good editing to take out about 20% of the contents and convey the essentials better.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit plodding. I struggled to remain interested in it. The topic was certainly fascinating but I felt that too much focus was on the characters and their backgrounds instead of the artwork itself. There was way more information than necessary in the chapters on WWII. Overall a fascinating history but the way it was written left something to be desired.