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Ghent Altarpiece (The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb)
Hubert and Jan van Eyck · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Jan van Eyck (c. 1395–1441)
- Date
- 1432
- Dimensions
- 350 x 470 cm (open)
- Medium
- Oil on oak panels
- Location
- St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium
The Ghent Altarpiece is a huge folding altarpiece of twelve painted panels, completed in 1432 for a chapel in what is now St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent. It is one of the founding works of Early Netherlandish painting and one of the most admired paintings in Europe.
A closer look
When opened, the upper row shows God enthroned between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, flanked by angel musicians and the nude figures of Adam and Eve, painted with startling realism. Below, in a vast flowering meadow, crowds of saints, prophets, martyrs and pilgrims converge on the Lamb of God standing on an altar, its blood flowing into a chalice. Every jewel, plant and strand of hair is rendered in luminous oil glazes. An inscription says the work was begun by Hubert van Eyck and completed by his brother Jan.
History of the painting
Few paintings have travelled so much against their will. In 1566 the panels were hidden from Protestant iconoclasts in the cathedral tower; in 1794 French revolutionary troops took the central panels to Paris, and they returned only after Napoleon’s fall in 1815. The next year the wings were sold and ended up in the royal collection in Berlin; they came back to Ghent in 1920 under the Treaty of Versailles. During the Second World War the Nazis seized the altarpiece and stored it in the salt mine at Altaussee in Austria, where Allied “Monuments Men” recovered it in 1945. A major restoration begun in 2012 has removed later overpaint and revealed van Eyck’s original surface.
