Spaanse picador te paard 1577

Abraham de Bruyn made this engraving of a Spanish picador on horseback sometime between 1560 and 1587. Here we see the spectacle of bullfighting, a cultural practice deeply embedded in Spanish identity. But what does it mean to see this image circulating in the Netherlands at this time? The Low Countries were in open revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs, and images like this provided the Dutch with ways of characterizing their oppressors. The very act of depicting the Spanish as cruel might have served as a form of political resistance. We can look to contemporary news pamphlets, political tracts, and popular songs to better understand the meanings and uses of images such as this. Art history helps us understand the place of images in the struggles for political power.