The similarities are striking: Inferno, Notre Dame does remember Jean Steeman that works of art saved from the burning St. paul's Church

Dendermonde The terrible fire in the Notre-Dame of Paris in Dendermonde involuntarily think back to the artist, Jean Steeman from Baasrode. The man is now deceased, but the conflagration in Paris certainly reminisce to his own heroism in the late sixties in a burning Sint-Pauluskerk in Antwerp. “The parallel is striking,” says son Hendrik-Jan.

The inferno at the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris shocked about the whole world. In 1968, looked at the Baasroodse artist Jean Steeman, meanwhile, have died since the beginning of 2017, at a similar inferno in the Sint-Pauluskerk in Antwerp. All his life long he told everyone who wanted to hear about what he endured, and how his life was to be a painting of Rubens to the rescue. He made even a giant painting, the showpiece of his collection.

“That painting now hangs in the apartment of mama in Baasrode,” says Hendrik-Jan Steeman, son of artist Jean. “Some time ago, papa still works in the Court of Peene during a retrospective. He was enormously proud. Also what he that night in front of the burning church in Antwerp did. The parallel between the fire in the Notre-Dame in the Saint paul Church is striking: there also burned the roof and the tower. If you now hear about the conflagration in the Notre-Dame cathedral and art treasures that were saved, the parable is as good as complete.”