Keywords: Jacques de Poindre - Portrait of Abbot Nicholas à Spira - Walters 37258.jpg Walters Art Museum artwork Q18749479 Creator Jacob de Punder en In 1543 Nicholas à Spira 1510-1568 was elected abbot of the abbey of the Norbertine Order at Grimbergen in the southern Netherlands In 1566 the abbey like many Catholic churches and institutions in the Netherlands was set on fire by bands of Protestant reformers bent on purging the land of idolatrous images However the altarpiece survived until the anticlerical campaigns of the 1790s that swept through much of western Europe with the reverberations of the French Revolution The altarpiece was apparently dismantled then probably in order to separate the portraits from the central panel which was very likely destroyed 1563 Renaissance oil on panel cm 86 4 60 accession number 37 258 11636 Abbey of Grimbergen Brabant 1563-late 18th century de Malherbe Collection Valenciennes Sale October 17-18 1883 no 46 Comte Jacques de Béraudière Paris Sale Cabinet Foucart October 10-12 1898 no 65 de Somzée Collection Sale Brussels May 24 1904 no 565 Henry Walters Baltimore ca 1905 mode of acquisition unknown Walters Art Museum Henry Walters Acquired by Henry Walters ca 1905 J ABOBVS D EPUNDER FECIT left signature SPIRTVM RECTV INSPIRA / ANNO ETATIS SUE 53 / ANNO 1563 text / date Salute to Belgium place of origin Mechelen Belgium <gallery>File Jacques de Poindre - Portrait of St Nicholas - Walters 372615 jpg</gallery> Walters Art Museum license 2D Salute to Belgium Renaissance paintings in the Walters Art Museum Jacob de Punder 16th-century portrait paintings of bishops Portraits with praying hands Grimbergen Abbey Portraits with patron saints 16th-century oil portraits of men at half length |