The Peace of Westphalia.

Wenceslaus (or Wenzel) Hollar (1607-77) was an Anglo-Czech artist, and one of the greatest and most prolific printmakers of the 17th century. His art  reveals his immensely wide subject range, and reflects the priorities of his time: religious prints, mythology, satire, landscapes, geography and maps, portraits, women, costumes, sports, natural history (including caterpillars, moths and snails), architecture, heraldry, numismatics, ornaments, title-pages and initials. 

This large etching shows Hollar at his most floridly baroque. It is based on a painting by the Flemish artist Cornelius Schut (1597-1655), which celebrates the Peace of Westphalia (1648) which brought both the Eighty Years' War (between Spain and the Dutch Republic) and the Thirty Years' War to an end. The latter remains one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, which uprooted Hollar himself from his native Bohemia; in the 1630s he had recorded devastation in the war zone. Here, the dominant figure on the right is the nude seated female Peace, holding a huge cornucopia. Another nude woman in the centre of the composition looks into a mirror held by a female angel. The somewhat subdued figure of Bellona, Roman goddess of war, stands behind her, surrounded by cherubs and nymphs. A river god figure crouches in the right foregound. In the left foreground, a figure representing war lies prostrate and appears to be tormented by a cherub.

The French verse below the image can be translated as follows: 'Thus Peace sends forth her horn of plenty, her favours from the [Holy Roman] Empire, Spain and France. The kings stand united, and the people are obedient under you, o great Philip [Philip V, King of Spain], and your flourishing race. Soon war will perish and the old century will shake off all evils, and give way to a golden age.'

The etching was published in Antwerp by Jan Galle; Hollar was based there for several years in the mid-17th century to escape the unrest produced by the English Civil War; Antwerp was also Europe's leading centre for book and print publication.

See:

http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/

Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 69 (no. 1467).

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   June 2017