The 'Three Maries' is in many respects the most attractive of the
pictures ascribed to Hubert, but his most famous work was a larger
picture, or assemblage of pictures framed together, the 'Adoration
of the Lamb,' in St. Bavon's Church at Ghent. It is an altar-piece--a
painting set up over an altar in a church or chapel to aid the devotions
of those worshipping there. Many of the panels of the Ghent altar-piece
are now in the Museums of Berlin and Brussels. They belonged to the
wings or shutters which were made to close over the central parts,
and which used also to be painted outside and inside with devotional
or related subjects. The four great central panels on which these
shutters used to close are still at Ghent. The subject of the 'Adoration
of the Lamb' was taken from Revelations, where before the Lamb has
opened the seals of the book, St. John says:

And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under
the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard
I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

Hubert has figured this verse by assembling, as in one time and place,
representatives of Christendom. They who worship are the prophets,
apostles, popes, martyrs, and virgins. On each side of the central
panel the just judges, the soldiers of Christ, the hermits, and the
pilgrims, advance to join the throng around the Lamb. Most beautiful
of all is the crowd of virgin martyrs bearing palms, moving over the
green grass carpeted with flowers, to adore the Lamb of God, the
Redeemer of the World. Above, God the Father, the Virgin Mother, and
St. John the Baptist, with crowns of wonderful workmanship, are throned
amid choirs of singing and playing angels on either hand.