It was a copy.
The original had been stolen on April 10, 1934.
Sometime during that night the twelfth panel was removed from its oak frame. A note was left in its place, written in French. Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. A clear reference to its plunder by German forces during World War I. It was only returned to Belgium in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. The subsequent police investigations were inept, the only serious search for its whereabouts occurring years later. Twenty days after the theft, the bishop of Ghent received a ransom demand for one million Belgian francs, which authorities refused to pay. A second note arrived in May. Negotiations ensued from then until October over the course of eleven more letters. At one point, the twelfth panel抯 back side, a grisaille painting of St. John the Baptist, was returned in a supposed act of good faith. But the main panel, known as Justi Ivdices, Just Judges, was never seen again.
On November 25, 1934, a man named Ars鑞e Goedertier梐 discount broker, artist, inventor, and politician梥uffered a heart attack. On his deathbed he confessed to knowing where the masterpiece had been hidden. He told his lawyer, 揑 alone know where the Mystic Lamb is. The information is in the drawer on the right of my writing table, in an envelope marked 憁utualit?挃 The envelope was found, along with carbon copies of the ransom notes and an unsent note that said the panel 搑ests in a place where neither I, nor anybody else, can take it away without arousing the attention of the public.?Goedertier died without revealing anything further.
But had he worked alone?
Speculation ran rampant, many believing that Goedertier had to have had inside help. Eventually, the whole cathedral was searched and even x-rayed to a height of ten feet. The war memorial at Melle, erected in 1934, was broken into on the theory that it might have been the hiding place. But nothing was ever found and the theft remained an unsolved mystery.
The missing twelfth panel was replaced in 1945 by a copy painted by a Belgian named Jef Van der Veken. The copy was based on another copy that had been painted in the mid-sixteenth century for Philip II of Spain, kept at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. To blend his copy, painted on a two-hundred-year-old cupboard shelf, Van der Veken applied a layer of wax that generated a similar aged patina. Kelsey had been working to remove that layer of wax when she made a remarkable discovery. Beneath the reproduction was another painting.
The original Just Judges.
All of the panels had been created the same. A hard, ivory-colored layer, an emulsion of chalk powder and glue, had been first applied to the wood. Next came an underdrawing, outlines made of figures. Then thin layers of paint were applied one atop the other. Each layer allowed for different hues of light to pass through, reflecting off one another, creating a luminosity of color. Most experts thought Hubert van Eyck completed the underdrawing, with Jan painting atop what his brother created. Van der Veken had simply painted over the van Eycks?original, and his 揷opy?had stood inside Saint Bavo抯 since 1945, taking its place with the original eleven other panels resting, as the thief had proclaimed, 搃n a place where neither I, nor anybody else, can take it away without arousing the attention of the public.?
But how had that happened?
Impossible to say. Especially considering everyone associated with the theft and its aftermath was dead.
And why destroy it now?
An even better question.
She抎 first reported the find to the cathedral抯 curator, then to her prioress, and finally to Monsieur de Foix. All of them had urged that nothing be said until her removal of the overpaint had been completed. Thankfully, the panel was small and she was working alone in a workshop blocks away from the cathedral, an easy measure to ensure total privacy. The fact that the panel was a reproduction, of little to no artistic value, there simply for completeness of the work, made secrecy that much easier. No one cared about the twelfth panel. Except some woman who set it on fire.
Prior to tonight Kelsey had removed nearly all of the wax and overpaint, revealing the original fifteenth-century Just Judges in all its glory, her eyes the first to see it in a long time.
揇o not fret over this,?de Foix said to her through the phone, bringing her thoughts back to reality. 揂s I said before, no one holds you responsible. But Sister Deal, I must ask. Your records, were they destroyed in the fire??
She knew what he meant. She抎 carefully recorded high-resolution digital images of the panel from every angle after the overpaint removal. Similar to what had been done with the other eleven in years past. Those images were publicly available on the internet on a site known as Closer to Van Eyck for anyone to study. She抎 hoped hers would join that cache. She noticed how Monsieur de Foix had phrased his question cleverly, careful not to reveal anything about the original抯 resurrection, a fact that only four people in the world should know. So she chose her words carefully too.