Het onset van Kameryk door den Hartogh van Anjou (The Relief of Kamerik (Cambrai) by the Duke of Anjou)
Jan Luyken Dutch
Not on view
Jan Luyken produced this etching for the 1679–84 edition of Pieter Bor's Oorsprongk, begin, en vervolgh der Nederlandsche Oorlogen (volume 2, Amsterdam, 1680, between pp. 286 and 287). It depicts the siege of Kamerik (Cambrai) by Spanish forces under the command of the Duke of Parma and the subsequent relief, or liberation, of the city by the French duke of Anjou. The image conforms to well-established pictorial tropes for battle scenes, with figures on horseback in the immediate foreground looking out over an extensive landscape filled with activity--all rendered with deft flecks of the etching needle. Particularly evocative is the treatment of the sky. Completely uninked areas of the plate at left give way to rolling clouds rendered in long horizontal lines, yielding a sense of shifting light on the land below.
