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Lot Essay
In 1597 de Gheyn was approached by Count Jan van Nassau-Siegen (1561-1623), the cousin of Maurits of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1567-1625), Stadtholder of the United Provinces and a celebrated military strategist. He was commissioned to execute a series of drawings demonstrating the correct handling of the pike, the musket and the caliver, which would form the core of the Wapenhandelinghe van Roers, Masquetten ende Spiessen, better known in English as The Exercise of Armes: a handbook to standardise arms drill in the newly-formed Dutch standing army. The completed drawings were then engraved by de Gheyn’s pupils, among them probably Robert de Baudous (1574/75-1659), the completed prints showing the figures in the same direction as the preparatory studies. The series was granted a printing licence in 1606, although its publication was delayed for some months until negotiations had been opened for a truce with Spain, as the Dutch commanders feared the book would give the Spanish too much information about their military procedures. The final work, published in 1607 with a dedication to Maurits, contained 117 engravings, accompanied with explanatory texts and directions for the instruction to be given to the soldiers at each stage of the drill. The influence of the work on 17th-Century military manoeuvres was phenomenal: it was immediately translated into English and Danish, with French and German editions being published in 1608, and it became the defining military handbook of the age.
More than half of de Gheyn’s drawings for the series survive, all of which are in the same direction as the final prints (van Regteren Altena, 1983, nos. 342-464): the largest collections are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, which possesses 25 drawings for the series, and the National Maritime Museum, London, which owns twenty. The present sheet is one of twenty surviving drawings for the pikeman sequence (van Regteren Altena, op. cit., nos. 431-64) and the paper has the same watermark as that of the drawings marked 13 and 14 in the series, which allows a dating of circa 1603 (both Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; van Regteren Altena, op. cit., nos. 443-4). A drawing in the Kunstsammlungen, Weimar, appears to be a first study from life upon which the present highly-finished drawing was based (van Regteren Altena, op. cit., no. 455).
More than half of de Gheyn’s drawings for the series survive, all of which are in the same direction as the final prints (van Regteren Altena, 1983, nos. 342-464): the largest collections are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, which possesses 25 drawings for the series, and the National Maritime Museum, London, which owns twenty. The present sheet is one of twenty surviving drawings for the pikeman sequence (van Regteren Altena, op. cit., nos. 431-64) and the paper has the same watermark as that of the drawings marked 13 and 14 in the series, which allows a dating of circa 1603 (both Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; van Regteren Altena, op. cit., nos. 443-4). A drawing in the Kunstsammlungen, Weimar, appears to be a first study from life upon which the present highly-finished drawing was based (van Regteren Altena, op. cit., no. 455).