Ghent Robbed

A candle flickered, there was a shriek of torn wood that echoed through the 13th Century choir, and a dark shape hunched through a side door of the Cathedral of St. Bavon. Ghent and its canals slept on. Next morning it woke to find a panel of one of the world's most famed religious paintings wrenched away--the most sensational art robbery since the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Nobody today remembers Jodocus Vijdts, Lord of Pamele, but every art connoisseur knows the polyptich which it is said Hubert van Eyck painted for him in the 15th Century and Jan van Eyck, the painter's brother, finished. The brilliant, realistic twelve-paneled Adoration of the Lamb remained Ghent's and Belgium's pride, lost only partial glory in 1816 when two panels were sold to Prussia. By the Treaty of Versailles these two were returned to Ghent. But last week there were only eleven in all. Gone was the 54-by-22-inch The Virtuous Judges (red and blue-cloaked riders backgrounded by crags and castles) and the grey John the Baptist painted on the other side. Because where once hung the panel in the Flemish galleries of the Berlin Museum there was tacked a placard reading, TAKEN FROM GERMANY BY THE VERSAILLES TREATY, the Belgian Press bellowed, "Nazis!" Authorities, however, suspected a crank, hoped to retrieve the painting soon, for so well is it known no man could sell it, only a feudal baron could hang it with safety.

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