According to the Dutch scholar and artist Peter Voorn, the famous Ghent Altarpiece – also known as the Mystic Lamb – painted by Flemish Primitives Jan and Hubert Van Eyck is filled with crypto-iconography. Instead of Catholic mysticism, the panels of the Ghent Altarpiece have been encoded with the going-ons of the Council of Constance (1414-1418), which was meant to end the Papal Schism that divided Western Christianity.

The Ghent Altarpiece is one of the most famous pieces of art in the world. Despite its fame, we know very little about it. It is assumed to be the work of Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, based on an inscription found on the work itself. It reads that Hubertus is called “the greatest” and Johannes “the second” in arts. With the exception of the Ghent Altarpiece, we know virtually nothing about Hubert, thought to have been Jan’s elder brother. Only four archive documents bear the name of a painter called Hubrecht or Lubrecht, who supposedly died in 1426. A brass tablet stolen by the Calvinists had a poem engraved whose 7th line read: “Hubrecht Van Eyck was ick ghenant”, or “I was called Hubrecht Van Eyck”. Though often taken as it reads, Voorn wonders whether Hubert was called as such by some – but by another name by others.

The work of art is known to have been commissioned by Joos Vyd and his wife, who are prominently depicted on the piece itself. “The strange thing was that the experts always wondered why two noble citizens of Ghent ordered such a huge altarpiece with a surface of more than 25 square meters,” Peter Voorn says. “Consequently, I am not the first to ask the question whether there was not another, more prominent person who originally ordered this work.”

When the painting was commissioned precisely is something of a mystery, but a date has been found in the hat of a Jewish man on the middle section of the Mystic Lamb: June 6, 1417. Peter Voorn started to look at the popes depicted on the painting and drew a timeline of the pontiffs who reigned between 1414 and 1432. There were five of them: the Avignon Pope, Benedict XIII; the Roman Pope Gregory XII; the new Pope elected at the council of Pisa to end the Schism: Alexander V; Pope John XXIII, who replaced Alexander after his sudden death... and Otto Colonna, who was elected sole pontiff of the West, and took the name of Martin V at the Council of Constance. With his election the Great Schism that divided Western Christianity since 1378 finally came to an end.

“Bearing these historical facts in mind,” says Voorn, “I wondered whether we were not looking at an altarpiece about the Council of Constance. ‘Colonna’ means column or pillar, and one of the outer panels explicitly shows a pillar with a view onto a street. The St. Martin’s tower of Utrecht in the central panel also had St Martin of Tours as patron, just like Pope Martin V. Beneath the tower we see that the Holy Lance is pointing towards it. This relic was once kept in that church by the German Emperor Conrad II, whose heart is still buried there. During the Council, the Holy Lance belonged to Sigismund.”

The German king Sigismund of Luxembourg was a famous for fighting against heathens and heretics. Het was regarded as the worldly leader of Western Christianity and had the authority to summon a council in order to elect a new pope, to unify the divided Church and to overcome her inner and outer enemies.

The Council not only had to restore unity to the Church, it also wanted to stop the heresy that was a result of the writings of the Englishman John Wycliffe, who died in 1384, as well as the teachings of the “reformist” Jan Huss, burned at the stake in 1415.

Sigismund had ordered a safe conduct for every one attending the council, but when Huss arrived, his enemies made a list of all his heresies and blasphemies and imprisoned him. Sigismund was furious, but if he protected a heretic, he himself would not be free of sin... and so, Huss was burned at the stake on July 6, 1415, on a meadow outside Constance.

Peter Voorn adds that “his bones were broken and thrown into the River Rhine, together with his ashes. His ‘judges’ intended to eliminate every single trace of Huss that could testify to his martyrdom and that could create a place of worship and pilgrimage. What an irony if we look at the monument the altar is, and at history itself!”

With the help of other paintings, Voorn has actually succeeded in identifying both John Wycliff and Jan Huss, the latter wearing a “heretic’s cap” – but with precious stones on it – on the painting. Amongst the popes and bishops, Voorn has identified a man on the right as Pierre Cauchon, one of the judges of Joan of Arc.

On the day that Huss was burned, another infamous trial came to an end. In 1390, Charles VI finally took over the rule of France from his uncles. Two years later, he began to suffer from mental illness and in the struggle for the succession to the semi-vacant throne, Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy hatched a plot to assassinate Duke Louis of Orleans, the brother of the French king. John hired men who in November 1407 caught Louis in the streets of Paris and stabbed him to death. John said that he had only done what had to be done, because Louis had been a tyrant. The case provoked a series of debates and John the Fearless chose a theologian of the Sorbonne University to defend his case. Master Jean Petit turned every argument in his client’s favour, as such provoking another scandal. The university reacted strongly and a chancellor, the theologian Jean Gerson, condemned the thesis of Jean Petit.

A few months later, the case was re-opened at the Council of Constance, but the Duke of Burgundy didn’t appear and sent two bishops, Pierre Cauchon en Martin Porée, to defend him. Pierre Cauchon succeeded in arguing that Jean Gerson was not right when he condemned the thesis of Jean Petit; he declared “that Jean Gerson should forever be sentenced to shut his mouth, so that he can never again make malicious remarks about Burgundy with his false words”.

Gerson lost the case, John the Fearless was judged not guilty and got away with murder. The debates belonged to the most controversial issues of the Council. Later, Pierre Cauchon would act as one of the judges of Joan of Arc, which suggests that we need to interpret the name of the panel as “the Just Judges” with some if not great irony. But most importantly for Voorn’s thesis is that another leading light of the Council, is present on the painting.

On this evidence, Voorn has concluded that some “crypto-portraits” reflect the debates on the assassination of Louis of Orleans: in the scene showing bishops, Jean Gerson is depicted as St Stephanus, dressed with the regalia of his martyrdom. Similar to Huss, Stephanus/Gerson is portrayed with precious stones on his collar. And St Lieven is in fact Pierre Cauchon, holding the tongue of Jean Gerson in a pair of pincers. On the (original) panel of the Just Judges, the fur hat of Jean Petit covers the mouth of John the Fearless.

The most valuable document regarding the Council of Constance is the Chronicle written by Ulrich Richental, completed between 1420 and 1430 – also the timeframe when the altar piece is believed to have been created – and illustrated by two artists who lived in his neighbourhood. Historians observed that there were similarities between the illustrations of Richental’s Chronicle and Flemish paintings of the 15th century. Certain details, like the horse drawings or the features of the singers, seem specifically related to the style of the Ghent Altarpiece.

Art historian Hans Rott has succeeded in identifying the names of the painters who illustrated the Chronicle of Constance: Hans Stürmli and Hans Krütli, who both lived near Richental. In his days, Krütli was very famous. He was praised as “the most learned and intelligent in painting, writing, rhetoric and in all fine arts.”

“This praise resembles very much the high esteem documented in the quatrain for the painter Hubert,” Voorn says. “So I began to ask myself whether Hans Krütli and Hubert Van Eyck could be one and the same, only at different times. If this were the case, we would have an explanation for the inscription of the tiles on the panels with the musicians. On one of these tiles are the initials J H K f. If this is the signature of the painter, then it could be read as Johannes (= Hans) Hubert(us?) Krütli fecit (= made this). The problem is that the initial H is split, therefore it can also be read as an E combined with an I. In this case, the initials would refer to J(an) van EIK, though we cannot distinguish a dot on the I. Besides, Van Eyck’s name was mostly spelled with an Y and C.”

“In 1418, the council of Constance was brought to an end,” concludes Peter Voorn. “This might have been the moment that Hubert left the city for Ghent, for reasons that we have yet to discover. It is possible but equally not proven that Jan Van Eyck had already joined Hubert in Constance, in the function of either a disciple or a young associate.” Either way, once in Ghent, it seems he completed the mission for Vijd, and became the Ghent Altarpiece.

Vroon also believes that the painting has references to the Kabbalah and the ten emanations of the Jewish Sephirot, or Tree of Life. He argues that when opened, the painting actually could be seen as a Tarot deck, the panel of the Just Judges – famously stolen and never recovered in 1934 – referring to Justice. Such thinking should not be dismissed out of hand, as the painting has several references to Jewish and Arabic literature. The Lamb God of, Voorn concludes, is clearly a cryptogram, and is there to be deciphered.

Bio

Patrick Bernauw is a Flemish author, with several successful non-fiction and fiction books to his name. His 2006 novel “The Blood of the Lamb” was reviewed as being the Flemish “The Da Vinci Code”. His works have been translated in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Polish. He is also a playwright, performer and producer of music theatre, murder mystery and city games. His English website is http://hubpages.com/profile/The+Lost+Dutchman.