23. Pieter Jansz Post
(1608-1669)
Public Executions (Spanish-Dutch Wars)

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Post, Public Executions

Public Executions (Spanish-Dutch Wars)

Original drawing in pen and brown ink and grey wash on laid paper, 100 x 134 mm. Pieter Post was a distinguished and famous Dutch architect, the co-designer of the Mauritshuis and founder of the Dutch style of Baroque architecture. He was, however, also a painter and draughtsman. The attribution of this drawing to him is based on an almost identical composition (though different subject) in a print by Jan Visscher after a design by Post, with a platform in the rear, a horseman at rest at the left, another seen from the rear at right, and at the rightmost edge, boys climbing, the intervening spaces filled with standing figures. The individual figures strongly appear to be by the same hand and the overall resemblance is far too great to be coincidental. The print shows the appearance of William of Orange to the crowd; the drawing shows a garroting, a beheading and a hanging, also with the attendance of a crowd. And unusual attention is paid in the drawing to the architectural ornaments of the buildings. No similar drawing by Post seems to be known, but there is no reason why he could not have done it. It is, as well and not least, a fine work of art and a historical document of the time.

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