Many Actively Investigating Belgian Case : 50-Year-Old Art Theft Still Confounds Experts

For the discerning viewer, “The Adoration of the Lamb,” one of Western art’s greatest paintings, holds a surprise. Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s medieval polyptych shows a 20th-Century Belgian king.

Leopold III, the monarch who died in 1983, is painted in among the 10 Just Judges who are en route to venerate the Holy Lamb on one of the panels, a 1942 copy of an original that was stolen and is still missing in one of history’s most enduring art-theft mysteries.

When the remaining 20 panels of the 554-year-old painting were moved in September from its original chapel setting to another part of Ghent’s St. Bavo Cathedral, it stirred new controversy and fresh interest in a detective story unresolved after half a century.

The investigations have been both ingenious and bizarre. Recently, a bridge in rural Belgium was demolished when a retired village priest said his dowsing rod showed that the panel was encased in the concrete.

It was yet another fruitless attempt to find the 2-by-5-foot artwork, stolen April 11, 1934, a day “when the artistic values and the mystical theme no longer sufficed to keep thieves and vandals at bay,” as Ghent’s mayor, Jacques Monsaert, said recently.

When news of the theft got out, hundreds of excited and curious people filled the cathedral, rendering an initial police investigation impossible for many hours.

“You can imagine what was left” of the evidence, Ghent Police Officer Karel Mortier wrote 15 years ago in a lengthy study on the theft. “No fingerprints were found.”

Three weeks later, the bishop of Ghent received an extortion letter saying that the Just Judges would be returned for 1 million francs--worth $25,000 then.

More Extortion Letters

To prove he had the piece, the extortionist returned a minor back panel, showing John the Baptist, which had also been taken. But the bishop produced only a fraction of the ransom, the panel was not returned and more extortion letters followed.

The draft of a 14th letter was found later in 1934 in the possession of Arseen Goedertier, a financially troubled stockbroker who died of a stroke after making a political speech.

Records show that as Goedertier breathed his last, he gasped, “Only I know where the Adoration is.” Through the years, investigators have named Goedertier, an avid reader of detective stories, as the probable thief.

The draft of the 14th extortion letter read: “The Just Judges are in a place where neither I nor anyone else can take it without drawing the public’s attention.”

Through the years many investigators, from Nazi leaders who wanted it for an exhibit on captured art in Germany to the village priest with his dowsing rod, have searched in vain for the missing panel.

The entire polyptych, completed in 1432, measures 21 feet by 17 feet when fully opened. The stolen panel was at the bottom left corner of the polyptych’s left wing.

The altarpiece’s main panels depict the Adoration of Christ--the Lamb--set in a magnificent landscape. An upper row of panels shows God the Father flanked by the Virgin Mary, music-making angels and Adam and Eve.

About 200,000 visitors a year admire the monumental work “for its artistic value and the mysterious circumstances” of the theft, said Lucien Huyghe, 49, a computer specialist who for 20 years has made an avocation of searching for the missing panel.

“Once you get engrossed in the story, it never lets you out of its grip,” said Huyghe, one of a dozen people actively investigating the case.

Two years ago, he helped dismantle a war monument but came up empty-handed. He was not deterred, however, and continues to check buildings erected at the time of the theft.

Huyghe is confident that the stolen work still exists undamaged, mainly “because Goedertier was an art lover who probably would not have destroyed the panel.”

The recent decision to move the Adoration panels has angered some of today’s art lovers.

The Van Eyck brothers painted the polyptych especially for St. Bavo Cathedral’s Vijdt chapel. But in September it was shifted from that longtime setting to another area in the church, where it now stands behind reinforced glass.

Critics argue that the glass obscures the painting’s fine details and delicate colors.

Meanwhile, until the original turns up, the whimsy of an adept copyist--who painted King Leopold in among the 10 men to show that the 1942 version was just a copy--will remain a silent reminder of an unsolved crime.