The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, was completed in 1432 and has lived a life closer to an action franchise than a museum relic: victim of 13 crimes, stolen seven times, survivor of fire, censored by an emperor, and hidden in an Austrian salt mine by the Nazis. This episode begins with the wealthy, childless mayor of Ghent who commissioned it to secure his legacy, and with the family mystery of Hubert and Jan van Eyck, which tree-ring dating of the oak panels has helped to settle.

We unpack the technological leap of Jan van Eyck's translucent oil glazes, the more than 70 identifiable plant species in the central panel, the singing angels whose mouths reveal their vocal parts, and the unidealized Adam and Eve that so offended Emperor Joseph II in 1781. Then we follow the panels through pawning, the Treaty o ...