Art nicked by Napoleon
QUESTION What is the most stolen painting?
The Ghent Altarpiece or The Adoration Of The Mystic Lamb has been the victim of 13 crimes and four thefts.
Flemish painter brothers Jan and hubert Van eyck’s masterpiece was completed in 1432. It was a key work of art marking the transition from the Middle Ages to Renaissance art, making it dangerous and desirable.
The work was put on display in St Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, where it can still be seen today.
The enormous work, 14.5ft by 11.5ft and weighing more than two tons, has 12 panels that depict in great detail and vivid colour, biblical figures and events.
The central panel of the lower tier shows saints, sinners, clergy and soldiers at an adoration of the Lamb of God. The external panels feature stunning, natural portraits of Adam and eve.
In 1566, Calvinist mobs targeted religious imagery in churches. Mercifully, the altarpiece had been winched panel by panel into the bell tower for safekeeping.
In 1794, Napoleon’s invading troops stole four panels, which were put on display in the Louvre. After the Battle of Waterloo, Louis XVIII returned the panels in gratitude at having been sheltered by the people of Ghent.
In 1816, the side panels were pawned to art trader L. J. Nieuwenhuys for 3,000 guilders. They were sold to Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia in 1821.
he handed them to the KaiserFriedrich-Museum in Berlin, where they were cut in half vertically. As a condition of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the panels were returned to Ghent.
In 1934, a panel featuring the Just Judges was stolen and a ransom was demanded. It was never returned.
Adolf hitler and hermann Goring wanted the artwork. Conspiracy theorists believe hitler thought the work was a coded map to lost Christian relics that would give him supernatural powers. The Nazis captured the altarpiece en route to the Vatican for safekeeping.
hidden in a salt mine with other looted works, it was rescued by the Monuments Men, the U.S. army force tasked with saving art looted by the Nazis.
Ali Taylor, Epsom, Surrey.
QUESTION What is a drawingroom comedy?
DRAWING-ROOM comedy has its roots in Restoration comedy of the 17th century.
The formula is an elegant townhouse or country mansion. The inhabitants are assured of their social importance, private incomes and titles. Love is their principal preoccupation. In the 17th century, French playwright JeanBaptiste Poquelin, better known as Moliere, revolutionised theatre.
his comedy of manners, such as The School For Wives, The Imposter and The Misanthrope, satirised the hypocrisies and pretensions of the ancien regime.
The British version was Restoration comedy, including William Wycherley’s The Country Wife and William Congreve’s The Way Of The World.
The society or problem play became popular in the late 19th century, tackling issues such as women’s rights, prostitution and provincial greed. The master of the form was Norwegian playwright henrik Ibsen.
These forms were combined, complete with jokes and comic detail, in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman Of No Importance and The Importance Of Being earnest. Other great examples are Arthur Wing Pinero’s Gay Lord Quex, W. Somerset Maugham’s Lady Frederick and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit and Relative Values.
Patricia Campbell, Bracknell, Berks.
QUESTION What is imposter syndrome?
IMPOSTER syndrome, also known as imposter phenomenon and imposter experience, is when we simply can’t escape the nagging doubt that we haven’t truly earned our accomplishments. Feelings of fraudulence are common.
U.S. psychologist Pauline Rose Clance was the first to study this unwarranted sense of insecurity during the 1970s.
She noticed many of her undergraduate patients shared the concern that though they had high grades, they didn’t believe they deserved their place at university.
While Clance knew such fears were unfounded, she could remember feeling the same way as a young woman.
With her colleague Suzanne Imes, she studied imposterism in female students. Their work established pervasive feelings of fraudulence in this group.
The same issue has been established across gender, race, age and a huge range of occupations, though it may disproportionately affect under-represented or disadvantaged groups.
Clance published The Impostor Phenomenon: Overcoming The Fear That haunts Your Success in 1985.
To call it a syndrome is to downplay how universal it is. It’s not a disease or abnormality. Pluralistic ignorance is where we doubt ourselves privately, but believe we’re alone in thinking that way.
Since it’s tricky to judge how hard our peers work, how difficult they find tasks or how much they doubt themselves, it’s not easy to dismiss feelings that we’re less capable than those around us.
Emilie McRae, Trowbridge, Wilts.
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