Stealing the Mystic Lamb

Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece, by Noah Charney, Public Affairs £27.95, 318 pages

There is nothing like a good art mystery, and Jan van Eyck’s 15th-century Ghent Altarpiece, also known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, has that in spades.

Hugely influential for its revolutionary use of oil paint, this massive work has had a tumultuous history, falling prey to Napoleon and Hitler, theft both mercenary and ideological, institutional cover-up and ransom. Carved up and carted across Europe over 200 years, it is today back in Ghent’s Saint Bavo Cathedral, albeit missing one of its 24 original panels.

All of which makes for a rich story, but Noah Charney approaches his material over-excitedly, repeatedly trumpeting the painting’s “wild ride” and his tale’s “Homeric twists and turns”. It’s no discredit to him that the book doesn’t fill in the story’s many gaps, but to paper over the cracks with thriller-like scene setting and melodramatic rhetorical questions lowers the tone.