The Righteous Judges...

[Negative]

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?

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.

[roswell1329]

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!

[Leviatan]

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.

[Negative]

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.

[roswell1329]

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

[Guus]

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" ...

[roswell1329]

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

[Negative]

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...

[debwalin]

Dammit Neg....

[The Old Man]

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/