QUARANTINE BLOG # 453

June 26, 2021

The story of the most stolen artwork in history continues.

NAPOLEON AND THE LAMB

With the French Revolution came a new attitude towards art collection and looting.  The scale of art theft – systemized looting – was unprecedented.

The execution of Louis XVI sparked the Reign of Terror, spearheaded by the director of the Committee for Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre. Archives record the deaths of 16,594 people, most by guillotine, though some historians place the total at nearer 40,000.

The revolutionaries stripped France of those art treasures owned by the former oppressors – the church and the aristocracy – and brought the plunder back to Paris. It was an art-looting spree, the scale of which had never before been seen. Public museums were established displaying art to anyone who cared to see it.  The Louvre opened on August 10, 1793, and was popular from its inception.

In 1794, the French Republican army conquered the city of Ghent, and the central panels of The Lamb fell into their hands. It is not known why the French did not take the entire altarpiece, but it would take a team of European military superpowers to stop the spread of the French army and Napoleon Bonaparte and ultimately lead to the return home of the central panels of The Ghent Altarpiece.

In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed by Napoleon on April 13, 1814, much of the looted art was returned to its countries of origin, but more than half of the art looted by Napoleon and by the revolutionaries remain in the Louvre today. Here are just 3 looted pieces from that collection.

Royalist factions reinstated the French monarchy, in the person of Louis XVIII. Louis returned the stolen central panels of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb to the city of Ghent, and The Ghent Altarpiece was whole once more, proudly displayed in the cathedral of Saint Bavo. It would remain there – for barely a year.

PRUSSIANS AND THE LAMB

On December 19, 1816, barely a year after the restitution of the central panels, The Lamb was dismembered again. While the bishop of Ghent was out of the city, the vicar-general of Saint Bavo Cathedral, Jacques-Joseph Le Surre stole 6 of wings of the altarpiece.

Le Surre was hired by Lambert-Jean Nieuwenhuys, a wealthy and influential pirate among art dealers, and a notorious profiteer. For his theft, Le Surre received the paltry sum of $3,600 in 21st century money. Nieuwenhuys found a buyer in Edward Solly, an English collector, who bought the wing panels of The Lamb for $120,000. Nieuwenhuys made a profit of $116,400.

In 1821 the Prussian king, Frederick William III, bought Edward Solly’s entire collection of over 3,000 paintings, and the six wing panels of The Ghent Altarpiece would remain on display in Berlin until 1920.

THE LAMB AND THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

The onset of the First World War saw a change in how art would be handled in wartime. Previously, the conqueror plundered the conquered. Then with the rise of the Roman empire, artwork became trophies to be seized by conquest. The First World War was the first war in which both sides at least claimed that monuments should be preserved, and that plunder of artworks should never occur.

When Germany invaded Belgium, the officials of Ghent and Brussels feared that their respective panels from The Lamb would become targets. An unlikely hero stepped forward to protect the altarpiece during the Great War: Canon Gabriel van den Gheyn of Saint Bavo Cathedral.

With genuine concerns about the safety of the altarpiece, The Lamb was smuggled out of Ghent and hidden until the war ended. To conceal the four enormous cases containing a painting the size of a barn wall and the weight of an elephant, they hired a junk merchant. Nothing would look suspicious on a portable flea market on wheels, as it wheeled its way through town.

The Canon and his friends drove it through town by night, its contents clattering along the cobbled streets with no one paying any attention. The cart stopped at two private homes. At each stop, two of the cases were pulled out from under the junk heap and hidden inside the houses.

When the German army arrived, polite inquiries were made regarding the location of The Lamb. The Germans claimed to want to ensure its safety – if they didn’t know its location, it might be bombed inadvertently. 

The Canon presented forged a document stating that The Lamb had been shipped to England for safekeeping. When the Germans read it, they laughed aloud. Of all the stupid plans to safeguard artwork, what could be worse than sending it to the English, who would certainly never give it back? The Germans had a point. 

England had gathered and retained a significant quantity of art not their own. In 1816, for instance, the Parthenon Marbles were purchased by Lord Elgin from the hostile Turks occupying Athens. When Greece regained sovereignty of its capital city and  requested the return of their national treasures, England refused. The sculptures remain in the British Museum to this day and will almost certainly never be returned, even though there is evidence to suggest that the documents used to remove them from Greece were fraudulent.

With the war nearing its end, the outcome in little doubt, Germany announced that they would blow up the entire city of Ghent as they withdrew. But they withdrew, leaving the city intact. The Lamb was safe. 

On November 11, 1918, the war ended. Nine days after the Armistice, the panels were brought out of hiding and displayed once again in Saint Bavo Cathedral.

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles laid out the final terms of surrender. Article 247 dictated that the reparations would include return The Lamb to Ghent. 

The return of the six wing panels from Berlin was triumphant, the panels borne like a wounded war hero. A special railcar decked with Belgian flags was fitted to transport the panels safely. The train stopped at each Belgian town along the trail from Berlin to Brussels. The entire altarpiece was reunited for the first time in over a century.

And that reunion would cause, in 20 years, a call for retribution. But first, there would be a curious, and still unsolved theft. That story, next week.

👉  Our close today is the backstory of “America the Beautiful.”

The lyrics to “American the Beautiful” were written by Katharine Lee Bates, and the music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward.  

In 1893, at the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College.  Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings; the wheat fields of America’s heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon’s Pikes Peak.   On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her. 

The poem was initially published two years later to commemorate the Fourth of July. Samuel A. Ward composed the music.  Ward’s music combined with Bates’s poem were first published together in 1910 and titled “America the Beautiful.”  At various times there have been efforts to give “America the Beautiful” legal status either as a national hymn or as a national anthem equal to, or in place of, “The Star-Spangled Banner” – but with its unabashedly Christian words and message, it will take a national revival to Jesus Christ for that to happen.

The prayer in the second verse, “God mend thine every flaw” is powerful because God’s mending is needed now more than ever.  As a country, we have sinned and strayed from obeying God’s precepts.  As a nation we have forgotten that God did shed His grace on us in the past.  May we return to Godly principles and recognize His grace on us.

Here is “America the Beautiful” performed by Hillsdale College Choir, Hillsdale, Michigan, under the direction of James A. Holleman.  Expand the video to full screen and enjoy the beauty of the amber waves of grain and the purple mountain majesties.  

And keep a Kleenex handy.

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