The Massacre of the Innocents: infanticide and solace in the seventeenth-century Low Countries

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In this chapter a specific body will take centre-stage: the body of the child. Focusing on both theatre and visual arts in the Dutch Republic this contribution will discuss the most cruel and loathsome form of violence, i.e. violence inflicted on innocent children. For this, one passage from the Bible was often used, the massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem from the Gospel of Matthew. This contribution concentrates on the popularity of this biblical passage in the visual arts of the early modern Netherlands and will clarify how diverse the solace can be. Therefore, this chapter will focus on the thirties of the seventeenth century, when the Dutch Republic had consolidated itself as a crucial economic and cultural player and when the Spanish Netherlands were dominated by counter-reformational discourses. Daniel Heinsius’s Latin tragedy Herodes infanticida (1632), an illustration from Jacob Cats’ Trov-ringh (1637), Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents (1637) and Joost van de Vondel’s history play Gysbrecht van Aemstel (1638) will be discussed. A detailed comparative analysis of these examples will reveal how artists, writers, painters and actors, used hurt bodies on stage, page or canvas as a means to feature the most profound fears and doubts of an era.