What happened to the ‘Cortewalle’ castle ?

Dirk Huyghe, former arts editor of the journal De Standaard, had alerted some people in 2021 to the disappearance of a castle, the so called ‘Cortewalle’ castle in Beveren (Land Van Waas). The castle was considered by some the property of Joos Vijd and Isabelle Borluut who had commissioned the altarpiece to Hubert Van Eyck.

Fig.: left, before r.: the ‘Cortewalle’ castle in the far distance. The blue color suggested the distance (here the detail is still covered with yellow varnish, giving the detail a green shade; without the varnish, the blue color is very pronounced).
During r.: the surface has been scraped off with a scalpel. The white dots correspond with the damage by the scalpel. The mountains are different. On the right: the meadow is now blue and extensively retouched. The restorers explain (Steyaert et al., 2021, p. 25): “…and the house [‘Cortewalle’] painted in the left upper landscape, below the palm tree. These elements were also removed in order to restore the coherence and the luminosity of the original landscape.”