The Ghent Altarpiece: A Masterpiece Scattered

How the Ghent Altarpiece Was Broken Apart

When the Ghent Altarpiece returned home after Napoleon's defeat, it seemed as though justice had prevailed. The masterpiece was back in St. Bavo's Cathedral, where it had inspired worshippers and visitors for centuries. After surviving religious unrest and becoming a trophy of war, one might have expected its turbulent journey to finally be over.

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

Instead, one of the strangest chapters in its history was just beginning.

This time, the threat wouldn't come from invading armies or revolutionary governments. It would come from decisions made much closer to home.

To understand what happened, it's important to remember that the Ghent Altarpiece is not a single canvas. It is a polyptych or a large altarpiece composed of multiple hinged panels that can be opened and closed to reveal different scenes. While we admire it today as one unified masterpiece, each panel is its own work of art.

That detail would prove to be both a blessing and a curse.

Adoration of the mystic lamb panel (source: By Hubert van Eyck - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150661)

In the early nineteenth century, several of the outer panels were removed from the cathedral and eventually sold through a series of transactions that remain controversial to this day. Some accounts suggest the church's administrators believed they were making a practical financial decision. Others argue the sales were never intended to permanently separate the work. Whatever the motivations, the result was the same.

The Ghent Altarpiece was no longer whole.

As the panels changed hands, they eventually found their way into the collection of the King of Prussia and later into Berlin's museums. For the first time in its history, one of Europe's greatest masterpieces was divided between two countries.

Imagine visiting a museum to see the Mona Lisa, only to learn that half of it was displayed hundreds of miles away in another nation.

As unbelievable as that sounds, this was essentially the reality facing anyone who wished to experience the Ghent Altarpiece during the nineteenth century.

Its central panels remained in Ghent, while several of its outer wings resided in Berlin.

The masterpiece had become an artistic jigsaw puzzle scattered across Europe.

The separation wasn't merely inconvenient. It fundamentally changed how people experienced the work. Jan van Eyck had designed every panel to work together, each contributing to a carefully orchestrated theological and visual narrative. Removing individual sections was like tearing chapters from the middle of a novel. The surviving pages were still extraordinary, but the complete story could no longer be read as its creators intended.

Ironically, the panels were well cared for in their new homes. Museums recognized their immense artistic value, preserving them for future generations. Yet their careful preservation raised an uncomfortable question that still echoes in debates over cultural heritage today.

Is it enough to protect a work of art if it has been separated from the place and context for which it was created?

For decades, the Ghent Altarpiece remained divided, its pieces admired by different audiences in different countries. It was no longer simply a religious masterpiece. It had become an international object of ownership, diplomacy, and cultural prestige.

Then the First World War changed everything.

cover of English version of Treaty of Versailles (source: By David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau - Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5309908.

As Europe emerged from one of the deadliest conflicts in history, the victorious Allied powers imposed harsh terms on Germany through the Treaty of Versailles. Among those terms was an unusual demand: Germany would return the Ghent Altarpiece's missing panels to Belgium.

Unlike Napoleon's plunder, these panels had not all been seized by force. Some had entered German collections through purchases and exchanges that, while debated, had long since become part of museum holdings. Their return was intended not only to restore a masterpiece, but also to symbolize justice after years of devastation.

When the panels were reunited in Ghent in 1920, it marked the first time in generations that the altarpiece stood nearly complete once again.

Nearly.

Because history had not finished writing its story.

Only fourteen years later, someone would quietly enter St. Bavo's Cathedral under the cover of darkness and remove one of its most famous panels.

(source: By Mylius - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7413463)

Unlike the upheavals of war or the ambitions of emperors, this theft had no army behind it.

Just one missing panel.

One anonymous thief.

And a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.