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The art of the Netherlands (Dutch and Flemish) is unique in Early Modern Europe in its concern for military cruelty against civilians, principally the peasantry. Decimated by time and changes in taste, this popular iconography proves varied and extensive, stretching from Bruegel to and past Rubens. 'Massacres of the Innocents' continue to be a favourite subject through the Eighty Years War, in contrast to ruling-class glorifications of war.
Dutch patriotic siege prints lay claim to 'scientific' precision in landscapes free of military terror, while the idea of military conquest is presented as generous rather than cruel in the ever-popular figure of Scipio Africanus. Most of the pictorial material is unfamiliar, some of it even to specialists and never before published; new light is shed on the more familiar phenomena of the civic guard groups and Ter Borch courtier-officers, 'good soldiers' overcoming a bad image.
Dutch patriotic siege prints lay claim to 'scientific' precision in landscapes free of military terror, while the idea of military conquest is presented as generous rather than cruel in the ever-popular figure of Scipio Africanus. Most of the pictorial material is unfamiliar, some of it even to specialists and never before published; new light is shed on the more familiar phenomena of the civic guard groups and Ter Borch courtier-officers, 'good soldiers' overcoming a bad image.
Price: $384.00
Pages: 664
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: History of Warfare
Publication Date:
27 September 2002
ISBN: 9789004123694
Format: Hardcover
"...this quirky but important book addresses questions about art and history that have been too long overlooked."
Suzanne J. Walker, Sixteenth Century Journal, 2004.
Suzanne J. Walker, Sixteenth Century Journal, 2004.
David Kunzle, B.A., Cambridge University, Ph.D., London University, is Professor of the History of Art, UCSB, UCLA 1965 to present. He has published books on the History of the Comic Strip (15th through 19th century, two volumes), Posters of Protest, Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua, Fashion and Fetishism, Corset and Iconography of Che Guevara.