Johannes van Wijckersloot
1687 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age, Baroque
The story
In June 1672 French troops entered Utrecht, and the city stayed occupied for more than a year. The Dutch call 1672 the Rampjaar, the disaster year, when France, England and the bishops of Münster and Cologne attacked the Republic at once. Johannes van Wijckersloot, a painter of that city, responded the same year with a small allegory now in the Rijksmuseum.
Two men study a drawing. In it the Dutch lion lies defeated in its fenced garden, the old emblem of Holland, its weapons broken and the gate smashed, while the French rooster crows above. The standing man wears an orange feather in his cap, which marks him as a supporter of William III of Orange, the young prince who became stadholder that summer and led the fight against France.
Van Wijckersloot was born in Utrecht, probably between 1625 and 1630, and rose through the city's painters' guild to become one of its headmen in 1658. He painted mostly portraits and allegories. Later he moved to Amsterdam, where he died in 1687.
