La Pêche aux âmes

In 1614 the Dutch and the Spanish were five years into an uneasy ceasefire, the Twelve Years' Truce, a pause in a long war of independence. With the fighting stopped, the fight for souls heated up instead, and that is what Adriaen van de Venne painted. A broad river splits the scene. On the left bank stand the Protestant leaders of the northern Republic, Prince Maurice among them, and on the right the Catholic archdukes who ruled the south with their crowds of clergy. In the water between them, boats from both sides haul at naked figures, literally fishing people out of the flood for their own church. Van de Venne stacks the argument in paint. Over the Protestant north the sun breaks through and the trees are in full leaf, while the Catholic south sits under a duller sky.