Musizierende Engel

These angels spent close to 100 years in Berlin. In 1816 the cathedral sold off the wing panels of the altarpiece, and by 1821 they had passed into the Prussian royal collection, where in 1894 they were sawn in half through their thickness so that the paintings on both faces could be shown at once. Belgium got them back in 1920, written into the Treaty of Versailles as compensation for wartime damage. An angel works the keys of a small positive organ while others play a harp and a viol, and the instruments are painted precisely enough that organ builders and music historians have used them as evidence of what was played in the Low Countries in the 1430s. The panel is not in the cathedral at the moment. It is in the restoration studio in Ghent with the rest of the upper row, where the removal of later overpaint is due to finish in 2027.