The Just Judges

Ghent, Belgium, the night of 10-11 April 1934. One panel of twelve, cut out of a fifteenth-century altarpiece in Saint Bavo's Cathedral. Never recovered. The single most famous unsolved art theft in northern European history.

The altarpiece is the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb — known as the Ghent Altarpiece — painted between 1426 and 1432 by Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Twelve hinged oak panels. One of the foundational works of Northern Renaissance painting. By 1934 it had already been looted by Napoleonic France (1794) and would later be looted by Nazi Germany (1940). All those have been recovered. Except this one panel: the Just Judges, the lower-left of the open polyptych, depicting mounted figures in fifteenth-century Burgundian dress.

For six months a series of typewritten ransom letters signed D.U.A. negotiated with the Bishop of Ghent. The companion John the Baptist panel was recovered as a sign of good faith from a luggage locker at Brussels North Station. The Just Judges was not surrendered. On 25 November 1934 a respected Belgian businessman named Arsène Goedertier had a heart attack at a public event, called for his lawyer, and confessed before he died that he was the only person who knew where the panel was hidden — and that the location was identified in his desk drawer. The drawer contained carbon copies of the ransom letters and a single line: "the Just Judges rest in a place where neither I nor anyone can fetch it without attracting public attention."

That line has been studied for ninety years. The cathedral itself has been searched repeatedly with ground-penetrating radar. No retrieval. The panel is now replaced by a 1945 reproduction.

Maren and Ellis on the deathbed and the desk drawer.