Crimes Behind the Canvas presents Ghent Altarpiece Part III: Napoleon & the Looting of Europe

By the end of the eighteenth century, the Ghent Altarpiece had already survived more than three hundred years of religious upheaval. Hidden from iconoclasts and preserved through periods of uncertainty, it seemed as though the masterpiece had weathered its greatest storms.

Europe, however, was about to enter a new era of conquest.

(source: By Jan van Eyck / Presumably Hubert van Eyck - Google Arts & Culture — 7QERA2CqwU1bcQ, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=192762536)

The French Revolution had upended the political landscape, and from its chaos emerged one of history's most ambitious military leaders: Napoleon Bonaparte. As French armies swept across Europe, they carried more than muskets and cannons. They also carried orders to collect the continent's greatest works of art. To Napoleon, masterpieces were more than beautiful objects. They were symbols of power.

Every conquered city offered another opportunity to demonstrate France's dominance. Paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, and antiquities were carefully selected and shipped back to Paris, where they would fill the galleries of the Louvre. The museum was intended to become the cultural heart of Europe, a place where the greatest artistic achievements of conquered nations would stand as monuments to French victory.

The Ghent Altarpiece was too important to escape notice.

When French forces occupied the Southern Netherlands in 1794, they seized the central panels of the altarpiece and transported them to Paris. Removed from the cathedral that had housed them for centuries, the painting became another prize in Napoleon's growing collection of wartime trophies.

For visitors to the Louvre, the arrival of the Ghent Altarpiece was a marvel. Here was one of the defining masterpieces of the Northern Renaissance, displayed alongside treasures gathered from across Europe. To many in France, this wasn't a theft, it was progress. Revolutionary leaders argued that these works belonged where they could be appreciated by the widest possible audience, rather than hidden away in churches or private collections.

French Army arriving in Rome 1798. (source: Entrée de l'armée française dans Rome en 1798, Musée de la Révolution française - Vizille.jpg).

The nations that had lost their cultural treasures saw the situation very differently.

To them, these masterpieces were not simply valuable works of art. They were pieces of their own history, identity, and heritage. Their removal was a reminder that military conquest could strip a nation of far more than territory or wealth. It could also erase the physical symbols of its culture. The Ghent Altarpiece had become one of the earliest examples of what we now recognize as cultural plunder.

Napoleon's reign, however, would not last forever.

After his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the victorious Allied powers faced an unprecedented question. What should happen to the thousands of works of art France had taken during years of conquest?

Battle of Waterloo 1815 (source: Battle of Waterloo | National Army Museum).

The answer was far from simple. Some argued that the collections assembled in Paris had become part of a great public museum and should remain there. Others insisted that every stolen masterpiece should be returned to the place from which it had been taken.

In the end, many of the looted works which included the central panels of the Ghent Altarpiece, were returned to their rightful homes. For the citizens of Ghent, the homecoming was cause for celebration. Their beloved masterpiece had survived another chapter in its remarkable history and once again stood within St. Bavo's Cathedral.

St. Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent (source: By Demeester - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19553178).

It would have been easy to believe that the ordeal was finally over.

But while the central panels had returned, the Ghent Altarpiece's story was becoming increasingly complicated. In the years that followed, some of its outer panels would leave Ghent not through conquest, but through a series of decisions that historians still debate today. Some were sold, others exchanged hands under questionable circumstances, and before long, one of the world's greatest masterpieces would no longer exist as a single work of art.

It had survived being stolen.

Its next challenge would be something even stranger. It would be taken apart.

Stay tuned for Part IV...