The Execution by Gunpowder of Hendrik Eemkens in 1562 in Utrecht, design for illustration in T.J. van Bragt, "Het bloedig tooneel, of Martelaers spiegel der doopsgesinde of weereloose christenen (The Mirror of Martyrs), 1685.

About this artwork

Research in Progress

Art Historical Context

Jan Luyken’s design captures a harrowing moment from the Dutch Reformation: the 1562 execution of Hendrik Eemkens in Utrecht. Eemkens, an Anabaptist martyr, was put to death by gunpowder, one of the brutal methods used against religious dissenters in the sixteenth-century Netherlands. Created between 1683 and 1685, the drawing served as a preparatory illustration for T. J. van Braght’s *Het bloedig tooneel* (The Mirror of Martyrs), a widely read martyrology that preserved the stories of Anabaptist and Mennonite victims of persecution. Luyken, a Dutch poet and engraver active in the late seventeenth century, specialized in vivid historical and religious imagery. His preparatory studies often combined dramatic composition with careful attention to period costume and setting, helping readers visualize events that had occurred more than a century earlier. Although the exact medium of this sheet remains unrecorded, its purpose as a book illustration highlights Luyken’s skill in translating complex narratives into clear, emotionally resonant images. Today the drawing resides in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a reminder of how printed martyrologies shaped collective memory and religious identity in the Dutch Republic. Through Luyken’s work, visitors glimpse both the violence of the Reformation era and the enduring power of illustration to keep those stories alive.