ABSTRACT
On September 8, 1585, the Antwerp town council endorsed a “General Pardon”
for Protestant citizens living within the city walls. All non-adherents of “de oude, Catholi-
jcke, Apostolijcke, Roomische Religie” (the Old Apostolic Roman Catholic Religion) were
granted four years to leave Antwerp or convert.2 Now 60 years old, Hans Vredeman
de Vries did nothing. Soon afterwards, name was checked off as a practicing Catholic in
a neighborhood census document.3 He was paid the sum of eight stuivers and six
grosschen for re-housing a guild altarpiece dismantled by iconoclasts, and, in August
1586, he successfully petitioned the town council-now actively promulgating the
Inquisition-for back salary as a fortification engineer.4 Yet that autumn Vredeman left
Antwerp quietly and for good. That his flight may have been for religious reasons has
been suggested by the fact that he was joined by two militantly Lutheran painters from
his neighborhood, Lucas and Maarten van Valkenborch. The group left for Frankfurt am
Main, where Vredeman stopped en route at the Protestant court of Duke Julius of
Braunschweig-Lüneburg, moving on to Hamburg in October 1592, and then to the
port of Danzig, an officially Protestant free city. Only two years before, Danzig had
seen iconoclastic activity similar to that in Antwerp of 1566.5 There, Vredeman was
commissioned by the town council to decorate a meeting room in the town hall.
