Stealing the Mystic Lamb, Noah Charney
Stealing the Mystic Lamb, Noah Charney
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Stealing the Mystic Lamb
The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece

Author: Noah Charney

Narrator: John Allen Nelson

Unabridged: 10 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/14/2010

Categories: Nonfiction, Art


Synopsis

Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece is on any art historian's list of the ten most important paintings ever made. Often referred to by the subject of its central panel, the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, it represents the fulcrum between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also the most frequently stolen artwork of all time.

Since its completion in 1432, this twelve-panel oil painting has been looted in three different wars, burned, dismembered, forged, smuggled, illegally sold, censored, hidden, attacked by iconoclasts, hunted by the Nazis and Napoleon, used as a diplomatic tool, ransomed, rescued by Austrian double-agents, and stolen a total of thirteen times.

In this fast-paced, real-life thriller, art historian Noah Charney unravels the stories of each of these thefts. In the process, he illuminates the whole fascinating history of art crime and the psychological, ideological, religious, political, and social motivations that have led many men to covet this one masterpiece above all others.

About Noah Charney

Noah Charney is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Art Thief and the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, an international nonprofit think tank. His work in the field of art crime has been praised in such forums as the New York Times Magazine, Time, Vanity Fair, Vogue, BBC Radio, and NPR. Currently a professor of art history at the American University of Rome, he lives in Italy with his wife.


Reviews

STEALING THE MYSTIC LAMB is a scholarly work wrapped in sheep's clothing. Even the opening chapter might well serve as the précis to a grant application. The book is dense with details and judiciously presents numerous contradictory hypotheses surrounding a succession of thefts in the long history o......more

Goodreads review by Marie

I loved this historical narrative. It reads like a novel and explains in fascinating terms, the history of the Ghent Alterpiece (The Mystic Lamb), along with the fate of the multitudes of artworks plundered and looted by the Nazi's during WWII. The role of the Monuments Men, along with Resistance fi......more