Gevecht tussen vier tegen vijf koningen c. 1645 - 1740

This is Christoffel van Sichem II’s “Battle between Four against Five Kings,” an engraving printed sometime before the artist’s death in 1658. Sichem was a prolific printmaker in the Northern Netherlands, a region then undergoing a period of intense economic growth and solidifying its identity through the relatively new medium of print. The image shows the clash of two warring factions in hand-to-hand combat. This conflict appears in the book of Genesis, which is referenced in the Dutch text printed just below the illustration. Here, the artist condenses the sweeping narrative of the Bible into a single dramatic scene. The composition teems with figures arranged in a relatively shallow space. The architecture in the background indicates a city, giving us some sense of the location of this battle. To understand the importance of this image, one might compare it to other Dutch engravings of its time, many of which can be found in the Rijksmuseum's collection. We might also consider the cultural role of biblical illustration in the Protestant Netherlands.