The Execution by Gunpowder of Hendrik Eemkens in 1562 in Utrecht, design for illustration in T.J. van Bragt, "Het bloedig tooneel, of Martelaers spiegel der doopsgesinde of weereloose christenen (The Mirror of Martyrs), 1685.
1683-1685
Classification
figures
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Gift of Hugh Cassel
Accession Number
1958-143-2
About this artwork
Research in Progress
Art Historical Context
Jan Luyken’s design captures a harrowing moment from the Dutch Reformation: the 1562 execution of Hendrik Eemkens in Utrecht. Eemkens, an Anabaptist martyr, was put to death by gunpowder, one of the brutal methods used against religious dissenters in the sixteenth-century Netherlands. Created between 1683 and 1685, the drawing served as a preparatory illustration for T. J. van Braght’s *Het bloedig tooneel* (The Mirror of Martyrs), a widely read martyrology that preserved the stories of Anabaptist and Mennonite victims of persecution. Luyken, a Dutch poet and engraver active in the late seven...