They restored this 1432 artwork... and a face appeared that no one expected

[00:00:00]This is the story of a restoration that took 8 years to complete, cost more than €2 million, and when it finally revealed the original face that had been hidden for almost 5 centuries, half the world thought the restorers had destroyed it.

[00:00:15]What appeared underneath was not a mistake. It was exactly what Yan Vanke had painted in 1432. And that is the part that almost nobody understood. In this video, we are going to tell you what really happened with the Gent alterpiece, why for almost 500 years, the world was looking at a fake version of the mystic lamb, and why the face that appeared after the restoration became in January 2020, one of the most talked about viral moments in the history of art. Let us start from the beginning. Part one, the alterpiece. The Gent alterpiece, also known as the adoration of the mystic lamb, was completed in the year 1432.

[00:01:02]Its official installation was celebrated on the 6th of May of that same year in the church of St. John the Baptist in the city of Gent in present-day Belgium.

[00:01:12]Today, that church is called St. Bavos's Cathedral, and the altarpiece is still exactly there in the chapel of the sacrament. The work was commissioned from two brothers, Hubert Van and John Van. Hubert was the elder. He was born around 1385 or 1390 and died on the 18th of September 1426, 6 years before the work was completed, meaning he never saw it finished. His name appears in the municipal archives of Gent only three times, and no other painting can be attributed to him with complete certainty. For a long time, some historians even doubted that he had really existed. Yan Vanik, the younger brother, was born before 1395, probably around 1390, and died in Bruge in 1441. He was court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and his is the name we associate today with almost everything we know about the Gent alterpiece. He was the one who finished it. The two donors who paid for the work were Jose Viji Chay, a wealthy merchant and alderman of Gent, and his wife Elizabeth Borlut. They appear portrayed on the outer panels kneeling in prayer at a larger scale than the saints beside them. In 15th century art, that was a declaration of status. The alterpiece is a palyptic 12 panels painted on both sides, meaning there are actually 24 painted surfaces. When closed, it measures approximately 3 m 75x 2 m 60.

[00:02:56]When opened, it reaches 3 m 40 in height by 4 m 40 in width. It was normally displayed closed. It was only opened on major religious feast days. And here is the technical detail you need to understand. The Gent alterpiece is considered the first great oil painting in the history of western art. There is a myth spread by the Italian biographer Giorgio Vasari that the Van Ike brothers invented oil painting. That is not true.

[00:03:26]What they did do was perfect it to a level no one had achieved before. They applied semi-transparent layers of oil, one on top of another, from lightest to darkest, and with that they achieved a depth, a luminosity, and a realism that in 1432 seemed like magic. When the altar pieces closed, four figures are visible in the upper lunettes. Two Old Testament prophets, Zechariah and Micah, and two pagan syibles. In the central register appears the enunciation. In the lower register, St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist painted in grisail imitating stone sculptures alongside the donors. And when it opens, the scene changes entirely. In the upper register at the center appears a majestic figure Christ the King or God the Father depending on the interpretation wearing a papal tiara and seated on a throne. To his left the Virgin Mary to his right St. John the Baptist on the sides choirs of angels singing and playing instruments and at the extremes completely naked each in their own panel. Adam and Eve in the lower register at the center appears the scene that gives the altarpiece its name. The adoration of the mystic lamb, a white lamb on an altar, blood flowing from its chest into a golden chalice.

[00:05:00]Above it, a dove symbol of the Holy Spirit, and all around it, hundreds of figures arriving from every direction to adore it. In the foreground a fountain and on that fountain an inscription in Latin hik eston aqua vite. This is the fountain of the water of life. It is a quotation from the book of revelation.

[00:05:24]The alterpiece is a foundational work of European art. It marks the birth of the northern renaissance and over almost 600 years it has endured things that no other painting in history has survived.

[00:05:38]Part two, the most stolen artwork in the world. Before we tell you what happened with the 2012 restoration, you need to understand why this work is special. Not only for its artistic value, but also for what has happened to it over the centuries. According to historian Noah Charnie, author of the book Stealing the Mystic Lamb, published in 2010, the Gent alterpiece has been the victim of 13 separate crimes throughout history. It has been stolen in whole or in part six or seven times. That makes it officially the most stolen artwork in the world.

[00:06:19]Let us start with 1566.

[00:06:22]That year, at the height of Calvinist iconoclasm, the cathedral's custodians had to dismantle the entire altarpiece and hide it to prevent its destruction by Protestants who were smashing religious images all across Europe.

[00:06:38]Infini7th, the Calvinists themselves, now in power in the city, planned to give the alterpiece as a gift to Queen Elizabeth I 1 of England. The plan was never completed. In 1781, Emperor Joseph II visited the cathedral and considered the panels of Adam and Eve completely naked to be indecent. He ordered them removed.

[00:07:04]In 1794, the troops of Napoleon Bonapart entered Gent and took the four central panels of the alterpiece directly to the Louver Museum in Paris. They were exhibited there for 20 years. They only returned to Gent after Napoleon's fall between 1815 and 1816.

[00:07:25]But when they returned, not all of the alterpiece came back. A cathedral vicer sold several of the side panels which ended up in the hands of the king of Prussia and remained in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. In 1822, a fire damaged part of the work in the Odetsine Cicenti 1. The Belgian state agreed to purchase the original panels of Adam and Eve for 50,000 Franks to exhibit them in the Brussels Museum. In exchange, they commissioned the Belgian painter Victor Lagia to paint clothed copies dressed in animal skins to replace them in the cathedral. Those clothed copies are still in the cathedral nave today. In 1894, the panels that were in Berlin were literally sawn in half to separate the painted front face from the back. Yes, saw with a saw to be able to display them as independent paintings.

[00:08:28]During the First World War, the cathedral's custodians hid the panels again to prevent German looting. In 1920, after the end of the war, the Treaty of Versailles obliged Germany to return the Berlin panels. For the first time in more than a century, the alterpiece was complete again, though not for long. The night of the 10th to the 11th of April 1934, someone entered the VJ Chapel of St. Bavos Cathedral and removed two panels from the alterpiece. One was the just judges, the other the reverse of that same panel depicting St. John the Baptist. The thief left a note in French inside the empty space. The note said, taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, a clear reference to German humiliation after the First World War.

[00:09:23]Days later, the Gent police began receiving letters from a blackmailer who signed himself DUA and who demanded a ransom of 1 million Belgian Franks. As a show of good faith, the thief returned one of the two panels, the St. John the Baptist panel, which turned up in a luggage locker at the Gardin Nord in Brussels. But the just judges panel was never recovered. There is an absurd detail in this story that very few people know. On the same night as the theft, a cheese shop near the cathedral was also robbed and the detective Antoine Lusterborgs in charge of investigating the alterpiece theft briefly left the crime scene to go and investigate the cheese robbery, the most stolen artwork in the world. And the detective went off to find out who had taken some cheeses. Months later, on the 25th of November 1934, a stock broker and former Sacristen named Aren Godier fell ill at a public event in the city of Denderond. He called his lawyer George Devos to his deathbed and he said a phrase that has been etched into the history of art crime. Only I know where the mystic lamb is. When God tier died, his lawyer found in his office carbon copies of all the ransom notes he had sent to the bishop and one more note unent which said that the just judges panel rests in a place where neither I nor anyone else can remove it without drawing public attention. That is all that is known. The Gent police investigation remains officially open.

[00:11:04]In Dosil Ventiatro, the Flemish public broadcaster VRT made a special program for the 90th anniversary of the theft.

[00:11:13]The case remains unsolved.

[00:11:16]Since the original panel never turned up, a Belgian painter named Jeff Vandervan painted a replica in 1945.

[00:11:25]And that replica is what you see in the alterpiece today. When you visit San Boso's Cathedral and look at the lower left corner of the work, you are not looking at Yan Vanik. You are looking at a 20th century painter. Part three, the Second World War. And then came the Second World War. in Mil 9in Florenta to protect the alterpiece from the German invasion. The Belgian authorities decided to send it to the Vatican, but it never arrived. It was intercepted during the journey and ended up stored in the city of Pao in France under French custody. In Milinus foridos, the Nazis confiscated it. Adolf Hitler wanted it and Herman Guring wanted it too. The alterpiece became one of the most coveted works of the Nazi regime.

[00:12:17]First they took it to Novonstein Castle in Bavaria and from there towards the end of the war they hid it in an even safer location, the Alttowsi salt mine in Austria. That mine became the largest art repository of the Third Reich. When the Allies liberated it in 1945, the official figures of the Munich central collecting point recorded what was inside. 6,577 paintings, 230 drawings and watercolors, 954 prints, 137 sculptures, and 129 pieces of arms and armor. The Gent alterpiece was recovered by the monuments men. that allied group that dedicated the war to rescuing artworks stolen by the Nazis and which became famous decades later thanks to George Clooney's film.

[00:13:12]Clooney's character is inspired in part by George L. Stout, one of the officers who worked on the rescue. The alterpiece was one of the first major works restituted after the war. It returned to Gent in 1945 and there it stayed.

[00:13:30]Everything we have told you so far is only the context. We still have not reached the part that made half the internet start making memes about a lamb in January 2020. Part four, the restoration. In 2010s, the Getty Foundation based in Los Angeles funded an emergency study of the alterpiece's condition. The ultra highresolution documentation they produced was uploaded to a website called Closer to Van Ike and for the first time details that had never before been appreciated could be seen. The study revealed a serious problem. The alterpiece was covered by layers upon layers of yellowed varnish, old overpaintings and retouches that had been accumulating for centuries. It needed to be restored and it needed to be done properly.

[00:14:23]On the 14th of September 2012, the project officially began. It was directed by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage of Belgium known by its acronym Kika.

[00:14:36]The project leader was a restorer named Helen Dubois who had written her doctoral thesis on this very work.

[00:14:44]Working with her were Marie Postc, Griert, Kathleen Freyen, Natalie Liier, France Rosier, L Mortio, and Bart Deolder. The restoration was carried out at the Museum of Fine Arts in Gent, the MSK, in a laboratory visible to the public through a glass wall. Anyone could go and watch them work. The estimated cost, according to the art newspaper in December 2019, was €2.2 million, approximately €2.4 million. It was divided into three phases. The first between 2012 and 2016 focused on the eight outer panels, the ones visible when the alterpieces closed. And already in that first phase, strange things began to appear. Elen Dubois explained it this way to the art newspaper. around 70% of the outer panels was obscured by 16th century overpainting. And she added one very important statement that overpainting had been done so early following the forms of the original with very similar pigments that had also aged in a similar way that it was actually not visible in the technical documentation when the alterpiece first arrived for treatment. and nothing like it had ever been observed in early Flemish painting. Translated, someone in the 16th century had repainted almost the entire surface of the alterpiece, and they had done it so well, imitating the original style with such precision that for almost 500 years, nobody had noticed. The restored outer panels returned to the cathedral on the 12th of October 2016.

[00:16:35]And then the second phase began between 2016 and 2019. The Kika team worked on the lower interior register. Five panels among them the central panel of the alterpiece, the one that gives its name to the entire work, the adoration of the mystic lamb. And there they found something nobody had expected. On the 19th of June 2018, the Kika issued an official press release. And in that press release, there was a figure that changed everything. I quote directly around 45% of the paint surface of the central panel with the adoration of the mystic lamb was overpainted in the 16th century. Only around 3% of the underlying original paint layer by the Van Iikes has been lost so that all the overpainting can be removed. Almost half of the most important panel in the alterpiece was a later layer of paint and 97% of the original was intact underneath. Researching the archives, the restorers managed to date the overpainting with considerable precision. It was done around September of the year 1550. A chronicle of the city of Gent written in 1568 by Marcus von Verovvic titled Den Spiegel derator launcher Audvate mentioned that two very famous painters had washed and kissed the alterpiece. Those two painters were Lancelot Blondel and Yan von Skorl. They worked in Gent on the 15th of September 1550. And when they finished the alterpiece was no longer exactly the same. We know the overpainting was complete by 1557 because in that year the painter Mahil Kshi made a complete copy of the alterpiece on commission from King Philip II of Spain. That copy presided over the chapel of the Alcaser of Madrid between 1561 and 1661. And in that copy, the alterpiece already appears with the 16th century overpainting without the original underneath. The overpainting affected the sky, the background buildings, the hills, the garments, and the altar cloth. But above all, it affected one thing, the face of the lamb. Part five, the face. For almost five centuries, the world had seen the same image of the mystic lamb. A serene image, a lamb with a slightly averted gaze, a long, elongated, anatomically correct snout, a passive expression almost of resignation, exactly what one expects from a lamb in a religious painting. When the restorers began removing the 16th century layers, another face appeared. large round human eyes, very open pupils facing forward, looking directly at you, a much shorter snout, ears in a completely different position, a frontal, intense, almost unsettling expression. And here there is something that very few people know.

[00:20:01]That strange lamb with that humanized face had not been completely hidden for 500 years. There was a clue and it had been in plain sight all along. In the 1951 restoration directed by Paul Corman's in Brussels with Albert Filippo leading the work, part of the green overpainting around the lamb's head was removed and the original ears appeared smaller. But because not all of the overpainting was removed, only part of it, what remained was something very strange. The lamb from 1951 until 2020 had four ears, two from the 16th century overpainting and two from the original Van Ike showing through underneath.

[00:20:48]Professor Max Martins, professor of art history at Gent University and one of the greatest experts on Van Ike explained it this way. We had known since the 1950s that something was not right with the lamb. The two original ears had already been revealed during the previous round of restoration under the supervision of Albert Filippo.

[00:21:12]Suddenly, the lamb had four ears. For nearly 70 years, people looked at a lamb with four ears in the most important painting of the Northern Renaissance and paid no attention to it. Subsequent technical studies identified three distinct versions of the lamb painted over time. The first, the original by the Van Iikes with the forward- facing eyes and the intense gaze. The second made shortly afterwards, which squared off the hind quartarters slightly, and the third from the 16th century, which completely softened the face to make it passive, anatomically correct, more digestible for the eye of the time. On the 24th of January 2020, the five restored panels of the lower interior register returned to St. Bavos's Cathedral. For the first time in almost 500 years, the Gent alterpiece was once again showing the original face of the mystic lamb, the one Yan Van Ike had painted in 1432.

[00:22:21]The world lost its mind. Part six, the viral moment. On the 20th of January 2020, Twitter user Fr AJD Shrank posted an image of the restored lamb with the comment, "Uh, so apparently they restored the Gent alterpiece and the tweet went viral within hours." The media rushed to cover the story. The Guardian, Art News, Smithsonian Magazine, Hyperallergic, ArtNet, Artsy, Fox News, Euron News. All of them with the same photo. Out of them with the same tone, somewhere between mockery and bewilderment. The nicknames started appearing in English. They called it the humanoid lamb. They compared it to Monkey Christ, the damaged echomo from Borha that amateur restorer Cecilia Himenez had ruined in 2012. They compared it to Black Phillip, the goat from the film The Witch, to Derek Zoolander, to Steve Bushi. They called it Beast Jesus. Medieval historian Eleanor Khan, who runs the account going medieval, published a tweet that perfectly summed up the moment. It read, "Therapist, the uncovered face of the lamb of God in the Gent alterpiece is not real. It cannot hurt you. The uncovered face of the lamb of God in the Gent alterpiece."

[00:23:51]But here comes the important part, the part that almost none of the people making memes about the lamb ever got around to reading. May Elen Dubois, the project leader, gave an interview to the New York Times shortly after the viral moment, and she made clear what had happened. I quote her statement directly. This is Van Ike's original lamb, which was overpainted by someone else to make it look like a passive and more anatomically correct animal. But this is what Van Ike intended. It is not anything strange. It is just not what people are used to looking at and perhaps not what they expect. And she added another more direct statement.

[00:24:35]Many misunderstandings have been propagated by absolutely stupid tweets taken completely out of context. The Kika conservation team published a statement with a phrase that captures the magnitude of the discovery. There are no words to express the result.

[00:24:53]Freed from the thick layers of yellowed varnish and the coarser overpaintings, we can discover the sublime virtuosity of the van in abundance. Marie Postc, another of the restorers, explained it to Euron. The most complicated part has been removing the oldest parts. We run no risk of course and we never do while restoring and in particular with a painting like this because it takes us time to locate what is painted on top of another painting and also to see to what extent it is possible to remove all of that without causing damage to the original. And then at the end of July 2020 the definitive study was published.

[00:25:38]It appeared in the journal Science Advances, one of the most important scientific publications in the world.

[00:25:45]The article was titled Dual Mode Remote Sensing Spectroscopy Documents the Pictorial Process of the Lamb of God in the Gent Alterpiece by J and H. Vanik.

[00:25:59]The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Antworp who contributed macroax-ray fluoresence imaging and from the National Gallery of Art in Washington who contributed infrared reflectance imaging spectroscopy together with Kerpa. And the conclusion of the study I quote directly was this. The I achan face of the mystic lamb had eyes that looked forward and an effectively shorter snout than the face overpainted by the 16th century restorer. Translated, science confirmed with 21st century technology that the restoration was accurate, that the strange humanoid lamb with those eyes looking directly at you was exactly what Yan Van Ike had painted in 1432.

[00:26:49]Max Martin summed it up with a phrase that settled the debate. It is not a matter of taste. It is a matter of science. Part seven. What did Vanke intend? Here we enter the territory of interpretation. And we must be honest.

[00:27:06]Nobody knows for certain exactly what Yan Vanke intended when he painted the lamb with those forward-facing eyes and that almost human face. But there are clues. Max Martins offers a very interesting cultural explanation. He says, and I quote, "The face is also less strange when considered as part of the tradition. Lambs with anthropomorphic features can be found in early Christian mosaics in Rome and Ravena. In other words, the image of a lamb with human features was not an eccentricity of Vanik. It was part of a very ancient iconographic tradition. In the early Christian mosaics, which Van Ike certainly knew, the lamb of God was sometimes depicted with humanized features because it symbolically represents Christ. It is not an animal.

[00:27:59]It is a symbol and as a symbol, it makes sense that it looks at the viewer. Canon Ludo Colin, chairman of the administrators of St. Bavos's Cathedral, had a very revealing reaction the first time he saw the restored lamb. He said, "Christ is looking me in the eyes." In a later interview with Belga News Agency, Colin also admitted that he could no longer look at the face of the figure because its human gaze is too confrontational. Two different reactions from the same man. One devotional, the other uncomfortable. Both perhaps exactly what Van intended to provoke because that is the key. A passive lamb with an averted gaze is decorative. A lamb that looks you in the eyes face on with that intensity forces you to react forces you to think about what you are seeing. And there is another question that also remained open. Who ordered the 16th century overpainting and why? Art historian Kunra Rod Jonir, also a professor at Gent University, gave a very simple answer to Smithsonian magazine. The overpainting adapted the painting to the taste of the time. In other words, in 1550, a lamb that looked you in the face no longer fitted with the religious sensibility of the moment.

[00:29:27]It needed to be softened. It needed to be made more comfortable to look at. And so it stayed comfortable to look at for the next 470 years. Part 8, what is still missing? The restoration of the Gent alterpiece is not yet finished. In May 2023's the third and final phase began, the one covering the seven panels of the upper interior register, those showing God, the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, the singing angels, the musician angels, and Adam and Eve. And during that third phase, surprises have continued to emerge. New 16th century overpaintings have been discovered on the garments of St. John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and the central figure of God. Around half of those layers have already been removed. The Adam and Eve panels, on the other hand, were in better condition. They mainly had an accumulation of varnish. The discoveries have delayed the project. It had been planned for the complete alterpiece to return to the cathedral in spring 2026.

[00:30:40]The official date confirmed by Belga news agency and Kodart is now spring 2027. In total, the project will have lasted approximately 15 years. While the restoration continues in the alterpiece exhibited in St. Bavos's Cathedral, the seven upper panels have been replaced by highquality photographic reproductions.

[00:31:05]In 2021, a new visitor center was inaugurated in the cathedral, a 30 million euro project. It includes an augmented reality experience in the crypt available in nine languages and a climate controlled 6meter display case that opens and closes the wings of the alterpiece automatically each day imitating the lurggical rhythm with which it was exhibited in the 15th century. And in the heart of the alterpiece in the lower left corner, the 1945 replica painted by Jeff Vandervan is still there. Because the original just judges panel stolen on that April night in 1934 has never been found. More than 90 years have passed, the Gent police investigation remains officially open. In dosiliatro on the 90th anniversary of the theft, VRT broadcast a special program about the case, but nobody has yet discovered where it is. That place where, according to our sen God's last note, it rests in a place where neither I nor anyone else can remove it without drawing public attention. Part nine, the conclusion. We began this video by saying that the face that appeared in January 2020 was not a mistake. That it was exactly what Jean Vanke had painted in 1432.

[00:32:33]And now you know why. The Gent alterpiece had spent almost five centuries showing us a softened comfortable version adapted to the taste of another time. And when that layer was finally removed, what appeared underneath was a stranger work, more intense, more human, and also for many more difficult to look at, but also more honest. Because for 470 years, the world had not been looking at the Gent alterpiece. It had been looking at something else, a version filtered by later hands, made so as not to disturb.

[00:33:11]And perhaps that is the greatest lesson this story leaves us with. That very often what seems strange or ugly in a restored work is not a failure of the restorer. It is the original work. We are the ones who have spent centuries accustomed to looking at something else.

[00:33:30]Tell me in the comments which version of the lamb you find more striking. The softened 16th century version. The one we are all familiar with. Or vanek's original. with that forward-facing gaze that in 1432 was already looking you in the eyes and which in 2020 did so again for the first time in almost 5 centuries. Subscribe to the channel if you want more stories like this one. See you in the next video.