Plundering Soldiers near a Cottage, Adriaen van de Velde, 1669

pen, h 189mm × w 234mm More details

The world we enter here is quite different from Adriaen van de Velde’s sunny, carefree Dutch Arcadia. This is the world of military mayhem, death, and plundering. In Van de Velde’s time this world was always close by: throughout most of the 17th century parts of Europe were stricken by seemingly neverending acts of war.