Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we are going to May 6, 1432.

We are going to Ghent, to the cathedral at Ghent, and we are going to be talking about of all things a painting

actually it's a very complex painting to be more specific it is a polyptych. Now the last word there is tick

P T Y C. It's a word that simply means to fold and it was very common in medieval cathedrals to have what is called a tri-fold painting and

you've seen these before there are the three panels and the center is a rather large panel and then two panels on the end and

those two panels on the end were actually made to fold in so that it could be

closed and artists actually usually even painted the outside so that when it was folded in

there would be a painting and then when it was opened up you would see the

masterpiece. This particular painting is called a polypick because it has far more than three panels. In fact, it has two levels to it and in total it has 12 panels.

It's an absolutely fascinating piece of art.

It was begun by Hubert Van Dyke,

and it was finished by his brother, Jan.

So we typically credit it to Jan Van Aik.

And this painting has a fascinating history.

We'll talk about it in a moment,

but we need to understand its history. It was taken out of the

Ghent Cathedral by none other than Napoleon and then it was returned only to be

taken again during World War I by the Germans and again to be returned.

And then it was taken in 1942, it was taken by the Nazis, and it spent three years from

1942 to 1945,

spent three years being buried and hidden in a salt mine.

It actually made its way into the recent movie

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