 Some images were sold rather than destroyed, but most seem to have been lost.By the summer of 1584 Antwerp was besieged by the Duke of Parma's Spanish army, falling a year later.<ref>Freedberg, 133</ref>

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.<ref>Montias, 4</ref>

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.