Mystery of stolen panel from Ghent altarpiece still baffles 80 years on

Just about everything bad that can happen to a painting has happened to brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, also known as the Ghent Altarpiece.

It's almost been destroyed in a fire, was nearly burned by rioting Calvinists, it's been forged, pillaged, dismembered, censored, stolen by Napoleon, hunted in the first world war, sold by a renegade cleric, then stolen repeatedly during the second world war, before being rescued by The Monuments Men, miners and a team of commando double-agents.

The fact that it was the work the Nazis were most desperate to steal - Hermann Goring wanted it for his private collection, Adolf Hitler as the centrepiece of his super-museum - only increased its renown.

It's easy to argue the artwork is the most influential painting ever made: it's the world's first major oil painting, and is laced with Catholic mysticism. It's almost an A to Z of Christianity - from the annunciation to the symbolic sacrifice of Christ, with the "mystic lamb" on an altar, bleeding into the holy grail.

On April 11, 1934, one of its 12 panels - depicting The Just (or Righteous) Judges - was stolen from the St Bavo Cathedral in a heist that has never been solved, although the case is still open and new leads are followed regularly.

The theft was followed by a ransom demand for one million Belgian francs. As a show of good faith, the ransomer returned one of the panel's two parts (a grisaille painting of St John the Baptist). But police remained baffled.

Then a stockbroker, Arsene Goedertier, had a heart attack at a Catholic political rally. His lawyer, Georges de Vos, claimed that just before he died, Goedertier whispered: "I alone know where the Mystic Lamb is. The information is in the drawer on the right of my writing table."