page_title: Beeldenstorm
section_title: Artistic losses
hierarchical_section_title: Beeldenstorm / Artistic losses
context_page_description: Beeldenstorm in Dutch, and Bildersturm in German are terms used for outbreaks of destruction of religious images that occurred in Europe in the 16th century, known in English as the Great Iconoclasm or Iconoclastic Fury. During these spates of iconoclasm, Catholic art and many forms of church fittings and decoration were destroyed in unofficial or mob actions by Calvinist Protestant crowds as part of the Protestant Reformation. Most of the destruction was of art in churches and public places.
  The Dutch term usually specifically refers to the wave of disorderly attacks in the summer of 1566 that spread rapidly through the Low Countries from south to north. Similar outbreaks of iconoclasm took place in other parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and the Holy Roman Empire in the period between 1522 and 1566, notably Zürich, Copenhagen, Münster, Geneva, and Augsburg.
  In England there was both government-sponsored removal of images and also spontaneous attacks from 1535 onwards, and in Scotland from 1559. In France there were several outbreaks as part of the French Wars of Religion from 1560 onwards.
context_section_description: Rarely was any thought given to the artistic heritage of these cities in 1566, though families were sometimes able to protect the church monuments of their ancestors, and in Delft the syndics of the painters' Guild of Saint Luke were able to rescue the altarpiece by Maarten van Heemskerck, which the guild had commissioned only 15 years earlier.
  The van Eycks' Ghent Altarpiece, then as now famous as a supreme example of Early Netherlandish painting and already a major tourist attraction, just restored in 1550, was saved by dismantling it and hiding it in the cathedral tower. A first attack on August 19 was deterred by a small number of guards. When a larger attack was made at night two days later the iconoclasts had provided themselves with a tree trunk as a battering ram, and succeeded in breaking through the doors.
  By then the panels had been removed from the frame and hidden, with the guards, on the narrow spiral staircase up the tower, with a locked door at ground level. They were not detected and the crowd left after destroying what else they could find. The panels were then moved to the town hall, and only returned to view in 1569, by which time the elaborate frame had disappeared. The artistic and literary losses were elaborately described by Marcus van Vaernewyck in his journal Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt 1566-1568. The original manuscript of his journal is still preserved in the Ghent University Library.
  Despite militia guards, two of the three main churches in Leiden were attacked; in the Pieterskerk the choirbooks and altarpiece by Lucas van Leyden were preserved. In the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam an altarpiece with a central panel by Jan van Scorel and side panels painted on both sides by Maarten van Heemskerck was lost. The most important works of several painters, especially those like Pieter Aertsen who worked in Antwerp, were all destroyed, leading to a somewhat distorted view of the art history of the period. An altarpiece in Culemborg had been commissioned in 1557 from the painter Jan Dey, was then destroyed in 1566 and in 1570 recommissioned from Dey, apparently as a copy of the first. However the new work was only in place for five years before it was removed when the town went officially Calvinist.
caption: The looting of the Churches of Lyon by Calvinists in 1562.
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