Ghent Altarpiece: Van Eyck's Masterpiece of Oil Painting

The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, is a large folding altarpiece completed by Jan van Eyck in 1432 for a chapel in St John’s Church, now St Bavo’s Cathedral, in Ghent. Begun, according to its inscription, by his brother Hubert, it is a founding masterpiece of early Netherlandish painting, admired for its refined oil technique and its detailed realism. It is also famous for surviving iconoclasm, looting by two foreign powers and a theft that remains unsolved.

Origins and commission

The altarpiece was commissioned by Joos (Jodocus) Vijd, a wealthy Ghent citizen and alderman, and his wife Elisabeth Borluut, for their family chapel in St John’s Church. Wealthy donors of the period often founded chapels where Masses would be said for their souls.

A Latin verse inscription on the frame of the outer wings records that the painter Hubert van Eyck, “greater than whom none was found”, began the work and that his brother Jan, “second in art”, completed it at Vijd’s expense. The last line contains a chronogram, letters that also serve as Roman numerals, giving the date 6 May 1432.

Hubert died in 1426, and almost nothing else is known about him; no other work can be securely attributed to him. Jan van Eyck was a court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, whose lands included Flanders. Scholars continue to debate how the work was divided between the brothers.

Structure and imagery

The altarpiece is a polyptych, a work made of multiple hinged panels. When fully open it measures roughly 3.5 metres high and 4.6 metres wide. It was designed to be closed on ordinary days and opened on feast days.

When closed, the outer wings show the Annunciation, with the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary in a room overlooking a town, above life-like portraits of the two donors kneeling. Between the donors stand painted statues of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, rendered in grisaille, a technique using shades of grey to imitate sculpture.

When open, the upper register shows an enthroned figure, interpreted as God or Christ, flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, then panels of singing and music-making angels, and, at the outer edges, nearly life-size nude figures of Adam and Eve. The lower register is dominated by the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb: the Lamb of God stands on an altar in a flowering landscape, its blood flowing into a chalice, with the Fountain of Life before it. Groups of prophets, apostles, martyrs, virgins and clergy converge on the scene. The side panels show the Just Judges, the Knights of Christ, hermits and pilgrims.

The oil technique

Van Eyck did not invent oil painting, which had been described earlier, but he took it to a new level. He built up images in many thin, translucent layers of oil glaze over a white ground. Light passing through the glazes and reflecting back gave colours an intense depth and glow.

The technique allowed extraordinary detail: individual jewels and reflections on armour, distinct species of plants in the landscape, and the texture of hair, fur and cloth. The Adam and Eve panels were among the most realistic nudes painted in northern Europe at the time. The altarpiece influenced painters across the Low Countries and beyond, and oil gradually replaced egg tempera as the main medium of European painting.

Thefts, wars and survival

The altarpiece has had an unusually eventful history and is often described as one of the most frequently stolen artworks in the world.

• In 1566, during the Beeldenstorm, when Protestant crowds destroyed religious images in the Netherlands, the panels were hidden in the cathedral tower and escaped damage.
• In 1781 Emperor Joseph II was reportedly offended by the nude Adam and Eve, and those panels were removed from display. In the nineteenth century they were replaced in the church by clothed copies.
• In 1794 French revolutionary troops carried the central panels to Paris, where they were displayed in the Louvre. They were returned to Ghent in 1815, after Napoleon’s fall.
• In 1816 the side wings were sold by church authorities and passed through dealers to the King of Prussia; they ended up in Berlin. The Adam and Eve panels were sold to the Belgian state in 1861.
• After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles required Germany to return the Berlin wings, and the altarpiece was reunited in Ghent in 1920.

On the night of 10–11 April 1934 two panels were stolen from the cathedral: the Just Judges and the back of the panel showing John the Baptist. A series of ransom letters followed. The John the Baptist grisaille was returned as a sign of good faith, but the Just Judges was not. In November 1934 a Ghent stockbroker, Arsène Goedertier, said on his deathbed that he knew where the panel was but died without revealing it. It has never been found, and the panel in place today is a copy by the restorer Jef Van der Veken.

During the Second World War the altarpiece was sent to France for safekeeping but was seized by the Nazis in 1942. It was eventually stored in the Altaussee salt mine in Austria, where Allied specialists of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives programme recovered it in 1945. It was returned to Belgium later that year.

Restoration

A major conservation project began in 2012, carried out by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA). Restorers removed layers of overpaint added in the sixteenth century and later, revealing much original detail. The first phase, devoted to the outer panels seen when the altarpiece is closed, was completed in 2016 and uncovered brighter colours, sharper architecture and details hidden for centuries.

The most widely reported discovery came with the Lamb itself. Once overpaint was removed, the Lamb’s original face, with strikingly human-like, forward-facing eyes, was revealed, attracting worldwide attention when the restored lower register was unveiled in 2020. The work has continued in further phases.

Key people

• Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1441), court painter to Philip the Good and the master who completed the altarpiece.
• Hubert van Eyck (died 1426), named in the inscription as the artist who began it.
• Joos Vijd and Elisabeth Borluut, the wealthy Ghent couple who commissioned it and appear as donors.

Timeline

• 1426, 18 September: Hubert van Eyck dies.
• 1432, 6 May: Date of the chronogram marking the altarpiece’s completion and installation.
• 1566: Panels are hidden in the cathedral tower during the Beeldenstorm.
• 1794: French troops take the central panels to Paris.
• 1815: The panels are returned to Ghent.
• 1816: The side wings are sold; they later reach Berlin.
• 1920: The altarpiece is reunited in Ghent after the Treaty of Versailles.
• 1934, 10–11 April: The Just Judges panel is stolen.
• 1945: The altarpiece is recovered from the Altaussee salt mine.
• 2012: A major restoration campaign begins.

Why it matters

The Ghent Altarpiece showed what oil paint could achieve and set new standards of realism that shaped European painting for centuries. Its survival through religious upheaval, revolution, two world wars and a still-unsolved theft makes it both a landmark of art and a symbol of the fragility and resilience of cultural heritage.