NEW YORK, NY.- Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece is, without any question, one of the most important paintings ever made. Finished in 1432, it was the first piece to demonstrate the astounding versatility of oil painting, which would become the preferred medium by painters for 500 years. Astonishingly, it is also the most desired artwork of all time. Since its completion in 1432, this twelve-panel oil painting has been the victim of thirteen separate crimes, including seven separate thefts; it has been looted in three different wars, burned, forged, smuggled, illegally sold, hidden, hunted by Napoleon and then the Nazis, ransomed, and rescued by Austrian double-agents. (The runner-up, a portrait by Rembrandt, has been stolen only four times.) In STEALING THE MYSTIC LAMB, leading art crime expert Noah Charney chronicles the larger-than-life story of The Ghent Altarpiece’s 600 years of near constant movement and explores what drove so many to desire this artwork above all