joyous entry of then crown prince Philip II in Brussels in 1549 and a series of portraits of the Habsburg rulers. When in 1555 king Charles V stepped down from the throne in favor of his son Philip II, the new ruler maintained the royal support for Coxie. Philip tasked Coxie with making a true-to-life copy of the Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers. As the altarpiece was located in the St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, Coxie temporarily moved to Ghent to execute this commission. He resided there from 1557 to 1559. After completing his copy in 1559, he moved to Mechelen where he acquired a house on the Bruul by swopping it for one of his Brussels homes. He continued to live in this city and became a member of the local chamber of rhetoric de Peoene and the guild of musketeers. At the time Mechelen had gained importance as a religious centre in Flanders because of the founding in 1559 of the Archbischopric of Mechelen, which from 1561 was led by the powerful cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle who was also the king's chancellor. Philip II of Spain commissioned two copies of Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross from Coxie. Also for King Philip, Coxcie painted St. Cecilia at the Virginal (1569). Now in the Prado, this is one of several related paintings of Cecilia by Coxcie and/or his workshop, showing the saint performing identifiable music by Coxcie's Flemish contemporaries Jacobus Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crecquillon. When in 1566 the Beeldenstorm caused the destruction of many religious objects he is said to have attempted to defend Mechelen against the iconoclasts. This shows that he was at heart a devout Catholic and a loyalist of the Habsburg court. This attitude earned him the strong support of the king as well as the protection of the Duke of Alba, governor of the Habsburg Netherlands between 1567 and 1573. The Beeldenstorm caused the loss of a large portion of Coxcie's existing works. This era of religious turmoil saw the painter facing many other setbacks. His son Willem who had travelled to Rome in 1567 to study art was arrested in Italy on suspicion of heresy as he had travelled with a group of Dutch and German Protestants. He was convicted to the galleys for 10 years. After the king's chancellor de Granvelle, who was then living in Rome,