
Nicolaas Pieneman · PD
L'arresto di Diponegoro da parte del tenente generale barone De Kock
Dettagli
La storia
This shows the moment the Java War ended, in 1830, when the Dutch finally stopped a five-year uprising across central Java led by Prince Diponegoro. Invited to talks under a promise of safe passage, he was arrested instead and sent into exile for the rest of his life. Pieneman painted it for the Dutch general who took him, Baron de Kock, and it shows exactly the story that general wanted told. Diponegoro stands with his arms lowered, calm and resigned beside the upright Dutchman. Pieneman never went to Java and worked entirely from imagination and reports. Nearly 30 years later a Javanese painter, Raden Saleh, painted the same scene from the other side, giving Diponegoro a face full of contained fury. The prince himself was shipped far away to Makassar on Sulawesi, where he lived out his days as a prisoner and died in 1855.