In the nineteenth century, the armory became a wedding hall. This huge altar came from the great St. John's Cathedral in Den Bosch. In the nineteenth century, St. John's was refurnished entirely in medieval style, so the church council sold the black and white high altar from the Baroque period to squire Louis.
On the screen, a painting shows what it was like when the altar was still in the church. A beautiful sight, with those images of saints and angels on top.
But at Heeswijk castle, no room was big enough to put the whole altar down. When the armory was finished, parts were bricked in here, and four columns ended up outside in the grass, as benches.
The painting that belonged to the altar went to Paris and now hangs in the Louvre. The statues and the two angels that sat in the empty spaces at the front were sold to an art dealer. No one knew where the angels had gone until they resurfaced in Belgium in 2007. They were restored and returned to St. John's Cathedral. Only digitally are they here again éven together with the altar they once belonged to.
