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GUY RAZ, host: In the small chapel in Saint Bavo's Cathedral in the Belgian city of Ghent, you can find one of the world's most famous and sought-after paintings. It's called the "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb," but it's better known as the "Ghent Altarpiece."

Mr. NOAH CHARNEY (Author, "Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece"): It's an absolutely enormous monumental triptych（三聯(lián)畫） consisting of 12 painted open panels, many of them painted on both sides.

RAZ: That's art historian Noah Charney. And it's safe to say, like many before him, he's obsessed with this painting. It consists of 24 scenes that depict a pilgrimage through heaven.

Mr. CHARNEY: You can see individual hairs of varying colors on the beard of John the Baptist, for instance. You can see dirt under fingernails. You can see soil and grass stains on the soles of the feet of pilgrims.

RAZ: The painting is attributed to the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck（楊范艾克）. He finished it in 1432. But parts of it may also have been painted by his brother Hubert. And unlike any other painting in the world, the "Ghent Altarpiece" has been stolen, vandalized or held for ransom at least seven times; most recently during the Second World War. And a part of it is still missing.

Noah Charney tells the story of the altarpiece in his new book. It's called "Stealing the Mystic Lamb."

Mr. CHARNEY: This painting is arguably the single, most influential painting ever made, and that may sound like a very big statement.

RAZ: Right.

Mr. CHARNEY: But because it's the first great oil painting（油畫）, it influenced oil painting for centuries to come, the first great panel painting of the Renaissance. The monumentality of it and the complexity of it fascinated people from the moment it was painted. But there's also this sense that I would call cumulative desire. The very fact that it was coveted by so many people - the number one target of Denon, the first director of Louvre Museum, the number one target of Hitler - all these reasons bound up together to render this quite possibly the single most coveted artwork in history.

RAZ: For the first of 150 years of its existence, it sits in a church in Ghent, in relative peace and quiet. And then towards the end of the 16th century, the real story of what starts to happen to this painting begins. It's eventually stolen by soldiers during the French Revolution. It's taken parts of it or taken to pairs, and displayed at the Louvre, then repatriated after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

In the early 19th century, some of the panels are effectively stolen by a vicar at the church and sold to a German collector. They go back to the church in Ghent after the First World War, under the Treaty of Versailles. And then in 1934, one of the panels is stolen and it's never been found. Do you think it's out there?

Mr. CHARNEY: I do. This is the enduring mystery that really is part of the popular cultural awareness of the people of Ghent still to this day. In 1934, this one panel was stolen in the night and was first thought that this was a political theft because the thief or thieves left a note, pins to the altarpiece where the panel had been, saying: Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

It was thought that this was a pro-German nationalistic act of retribution. But then, the first of 13 ransom notes came to the bishop's office at Ghent, and the bishop would not comply. The police took over the negotiations. And after 13 ransom letters were sent back and forth, the police gave up. They had no leads. They had a very strange investigation that smacked too many of conspiracy or cover-up.

For instance, when the police first arrived at the crime scene in 1934, they got there late because they had been investigating the theft of cheese from a local cheese shop. And after, they took everything in, looked for clues, which by this time had been obliterated by crowds of people flocking to see the missing panel. They returned to the cheese shop, deeming the theft of the cheese of more urgency than the theft of this piece of their national patrimony.

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