Mulcahy Conway Associates

Stealing The Mystic Lamb: The Incredible True Story Of The World's Most Stolen Masterpiece

Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The Incredible True Story of the World's Most Stolen Masterpiece by Noah Charney is the true story of Jan van Eyck's masterpiece, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. Hailed as the first great work of the Renaissance and one of the most pivotal works of all art history, it has been stolen no less than 13 times.

In uncovering the crimes and misdemeanours surrounding this artwork, Charney gallops through a fascinating history - including major episodes like the Calvinists' vitriol towards craven images, which led to mob attacks on the Mystic Lamb; to Napoleon's art-looting for Empire; to Hitler's designs on it as the crowning symbol of Aryan supremacy and centre-piece of his vaunted "Supermuseum". Told with all the pace of an adventure mystery, this extraordinary series of episodes reflects our enduring desire to possess monumental, beautiful objects, for grand and often unpredictable motives.

Noah Charney is a writer and renowned expert in the field of art crime. He holds Art History degrees from Cambridge and the Courtauld. He is the founder director of ARCA (www.artcrime.info).

Charney is also the author of a novel, The Art Thief, published by Atria in the USA and Simon & Schuster in the UK in March 2008. Rights were sold to Longanesi (Italy), Civilizcao Editora (Portugal) Luitingh Sijthoff (Holland), Ast Publishers (Russia), Hayakawa Shobo (Japan), Random House Korea, Editora Intrinseca Ltda (Brazil), Eurasian Publishing Group (China - complex), Sareni Ducan (Croatia), Vale-Novak (Slovenia).

Other books by this author

• 
  Museums Of Spain Guidebooks

  more info >