Stealing the Mystic Lamb:The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece - Noah Charney

Written by Noah Charney
Read by John Allen Nelson
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc.
Release date: December 14, 2010
Duration: 10:27:55

Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece is on any art historian’s list of the ten most important paintings ever made. Often referred to by the subject of its central panel, the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, it represents the fulcrum between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also the most frequently stolen artwork of all time. Since its completion in 1432, this twelve-panel oil painting has been looted in three different wars, burned, dismembered, forged, smuggled, illegally sold, censored, hidden, attacked by iconoclasts, hunted by the Nazis and Napoleon, used as a diplomatic tool, ransomed, rescued by Austrian double-agents, and stolen a total of thirteen times.

In this fast-paced, real-life thriller, art historian Noah Charney unravels the stories of each of these thefts. In the process, he illuminates the whole fascinating history of art crime and the psychological, ideological, religious, political, and social motivations that have led many men to covet this one masterpiece above all others.

A seventeenth-century Flemish painting so beautiful it cursed itself forever was the Ghent Altarpiece, or the Mystic Lamb. Painted in innovative detail onto 12 wooden panels by Jan van Eyck, the masterpiece earned uncommon fame throughout its peripatetic life. …..” Narrator John Allen Nelson sounds comfortable with the challenging vocabulary prevalent in central Europe from the Renaissance to the present. Nelson’s forceful delivery demands attention to every word, taking on the format of a history lecture for those wearing earphones…. AudioFile

Cover picture is the open altarpiece