St Bavo's Cathedral
— — the room the Mystic Lamb has stood in for six centuries.
Not only on a wall.
“The cathedral the Ghent Altarpiece was painted for. Hubert and Jan van Eyck finished the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in 1432, and apart from theft, war, and a long French detour, it has lived in this building ever since. The nave is high Brabantine Gothic on a Romanesque crypt that still reads as the older church underneath. Pilgrims, art students, and locals come through the side door at all hours. The altarpiece sits behind glass in its own chapel now, the panels lit one by one.
St Bavo's Cathedral, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Saint Bavo's Cathedral, Sint-Baafskathedraal, stands on Sint-Baafsplein in the centre of Ghent in East Flanders. It began as the Romanesque parish church of Saint John the Baptist around 942, was rebuilt in Scheldt Gothic and then Brabantine Gothic between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and became a cathedral in 1559 when the bishopric of Ghent was created. The crypt of the older Romanesque church survives intact under the choir. Charles V was baptised here in 1500, and the building has been the seat of the diocese ever since the Counter-Reformation reordering of the Low Countries.
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, begun by Hubert van Eyck and completed by his brother Jan in 1432, has lived in this cathedral for almost six centuries. It is a polyptych of twelve panels, painted on both sides, considered a foundational work of Northern Renaissance oil painting. The altarpiece has been stolen seven times in its history, dismantled by Calvinists, carted off to Paris by Napoleon, and to Germany by both World Wars. The Just Judges panel, taken in 1934, has never been recovered. After a thirteen-year restoration completed in 2020, the work is shown in the Villa Chapel under controlled conditions.
The cathedral itself is open to visitors most days, with viewing of the Ghent Altarpiece ticketed separately through the Villa Chapel entrance on Sint-Baafsplein. Audio guides and timed entry are standard. The crypt and treasury are usually included in the altarpiece ticket. The cathedral is a five-minute walk from Saint Nicholas's Church and the Belfry along the Korenmarkt axis, and about twenty minutes on foot from Gent-Sint-Pieters station; tram 1 stops at Korenmarkt, two minutes away. Photography of the altarpiece without flash is generally permitted in the chapel.