The Hidden Face

In 2020, conservators cleaning the Ghent lamb removed layers of later overpaint — and the face underneath made headlines. The Van Eycks' original lamb had a startlingly human face: large, forward-facing eyes with a direct, almost confronting stare, nothing like the meek animal painted on top of it.

A later hand had clearly repainted that face into a softer, more ordinary lamb, hiding the Van Eycks' unsettling version for centuries. Cleaning it off gave the altarpiece's strangest detail back.