The Protestant Reformation triggered one of the most violent and dramatic events in the history of art. In the 1520s, violent anti-Catholic crowds raided churches in England, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, pillaging and destroying all artworks and decorations. The iconoclasm of the Reformation gave birth to an era-specific painting genre that represented church interiors stripped of their treasures, often with hooks and nails used to support works of art still attached to the barren walls. In 1566, a wave of iconoclastic attacks led to a full-blown revolution that freed a large part of the present-day Netherlands from Spanish Catholic...