Protest tegen de instemming van graaf de Quarre met het besluit om Luxemburg en Limburg te verdelen tussen België en Nederland, penning geslagen door de inwoners van Arlon

About this artwork

Gift of J.M. van Gelder-Nijhoff

Art Historical Context

Step into 1838, a tense year in the aftermath of the Belgian Revolution, when the fate of Luxembourg and Limburg hung in the balance. This small bronze medal, struck anonymously by the residents of Arlon—a town in what is now Belgian Luxembourg—voices a fierce local protest. It denounces Count de Quarre's controversial consent to the international decision dividing these territories between the newly independent Belgium and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. As diplomatic negotiations, like the Treaty of London's Twenty-Four Articles, reshaped borders, ordinary citizens used such medallions to ra...

About the Artist

anonymous

In the vast tapestry of art history, "Anonymous" stands not as a singular individual but as a collective designation for countless unidentified creators whose works have endured across millennia. These artists, spanning prehistoric cave painters to medieval illuminators and folk craftsmen, produced the foundational layers of human visual culture. Prior to the Renaissance, when individual fame emer...