The Righteous Judges...

The story:

In 1934, part of one of the largest and most important paintings in the world was stolen from the Belgium town of Gent. The stolen painting, known as The Righteous Judges by the Flemish master Jan Van Eyck, was worth a staggering ten million pounds in today's money. It has never been seen again.

Here's a detailed BBC-story on the facts.

Here's what the entire painting looks like. It's estimated to be worth more than ten times the value of the Mona Lisa, even without the missing panel.

I ain't no christian dude, but standing in front of that painting takes your breath away...

Here's a reproduction of the missing panel.

The dénouement?

Quote:

---

Arsène Goedertier
I was not alone ... the circumstances, my entourage and finally the hiding place of The Righteous Judges will be revealed here.

---

Next Monday, at midnight Belgian time, Arsène is going to reveal the hiding place of the lost panel...

There's been a lot of criticism on this, but all critics have to agree that he probably actually WILL reveal the hiding place.

The site will probably go down on Sunday or Monday, but I'll try to keep you updated.

Fascinating! I wonder why they have chosen now to reveal the location of the missing panel, and I wonder if their intention is to return the panel, or show that it has been destroyed. I wonder why law enforcement in Belgium hasn't discovered the identity of the webmaster for the dua.sphosting.com website to compel them to reveal the location immediately?

Great mystery, though. I love great mysteries!

I bet World War II has made the finding and recovery of the painting even more difficult.
If I'm right a lot of artwork got lost during that time.

To answer your questions: the guy (actually, it's a father and his son) owning the site has nothing to do with the theft. Their identity is a public secret...

They assure us that the panel is intact. It's not in their possession though, and they don't have access to it. It's in a public place, and can't be reached without drawing heavy attention.

Belgian law can't do anything about it: the crime is 70 years old, and there's no law that forbids you from doing some research.

Perhaps a crime of this magnitude would have been an appropriate casefile for the Vidocq Society. Too bad they weren't queried on this.

Public place, heavy attention ... Do they need to tear open a building or something? "Heh, we've hidden it under the pavement of the Belgian Parlement" ...

So what happened to the site? http://dua.sphosting.com is gone. WHERE'S THE MISSING PANEL?!!

Seems I misread some things the first time... The date I mentioned (October 1st) is the day the guy starts giving away hints. The panel should be found by October 4rd...

Included is an animation that should give away something about how the panel's been hid...

Dammit Neg....

The animation appears to be a series of shelves which continue around an inside corner. The text, figures, calculations appears to be part of the non-moving background i've seen on some website that i can't remember right now. Maybe the shelves are mounted on a wall that was added to a public building somewhere in Belgium (?) and is hiding the panel inside............ Sounds like a case for Hercule Parrot................. ?

Here is the URL for the background mentioned above. If i had time, i'd go harvest it (the background) and see what it meant while not encumbered with the overlaying text... besides a lot of confusing, apparently related figures, calculations and such, but some of them do actually match the figures in "hint-number-one"....
http://dua.host4all.be/

welp, i got that pic off his site and i'm looking at it. what i did was to sharpen it up a bit and blow it up to 200%. you can get the edited and unedited versions HERE.

what it looks like to me is that the gif is a 3D rendering of the immage in the middle on the left transitioning into the one on the botom left. the gif isnt much more legable than the blown up sharpened jpg, but you can definatly tell that the scribles inside the shelves near A and B are both "25". the x4 next to each letter i assume is to mean "four shelves".

now, what ISNT in the gif is where it shows what is labled as "Cx6". its the small rectangle between the two drawings of the shelves..it looks like its got "105" up at the top(a length?) and either "553" or "558" inside it(maybe thats suposed to be the area?).

i think two points of interest are the little squigly lines in both of the pictures of the shelves. in the first there is one(kinda shaped like a backwards C) and annother is more of the right half of a "U", and its got something written in it...kinda like a messed up 4 or something. not sure.

take a look at the blown up sharpend one and see what you think...a lot of it is still pretty un-readable.

I have to run in a few, but here's the explanation of the last hint... Haven't had a change to look into it further yet... Especially the animation at the bottom of that page is fascinating (click the 'Opnieuw'-button to start it over)....

PS: after the national television-news did a story on the site yesterday, the site went down...

um, neg, if you get a chance can you post up the gist of what that link says? i'm pretty sure most of us cant read it ourselves :-P

OK, i gotta get back to the boat, but i was telling my wife about this mystery. She listened quietly, then said; "That's easy!". I says; "Oh yeah, it's been the crime of the century for a lot of people and there is a lot of money at stake". She says; "Well, all you have to do is think about it and you got the answer: Goedertier was an accomplished, technical artist. He painted another picture over the Righteous Judges... probably the one he did of an important portrait or another significant piece. Anyway, it's under one of his paintings that remains on display somewhere and is worth a lot of money by itself."
:D Gotta run.

In a little over two hours, the hiding place will be revealed (don't shoot me though if it all turns out to be one big joke ;) ).

For those of you still wondering about how the painting was hidden, I translated some stuff to English and mirrored it here .
This clearly explains how the panel has been hidden.

Now the only question left is: where? Belgian police will be informed about the hiding place a couple of minutes before 7pm...

Here are the original hints (in Dutch).

It's also the site where the real hiding place will be revealed...

If it turns out to be one big joke... welp, at least I enjoyed myself.

Edit/Update: The hiding place has just been revealed... There's no update on the actual finding of the painting yet though...

Final update: Belgian police searched a little church where, according to 'Arséne Goedertier', the lost panel could be found...

They indeed found a hidden place... They found a hole in the wall with the exact same measurements as the panel... It was all there like Arséne had predicted... The only missing thing was the panel... Experts are unanymous: the painting has been there at one time...

Let the search go on! Without me this time, though ;)