Lot 108: JACQUES DE GHEYN THE YOUNGER

JACQUES DE GHEYN THE YOUNGER ANTWERP 1565 - 1629 THE HAGUE "TRAYLE YOUR PIKE" Pen and brown ink and grey wash, within brown ink framing lines; numbered in brown ink, lower right (partially cut): 2.. 267 by 176mm

I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn. Three Generations, The Hague/Boston/London 1983, vol. II, p. 77, cat. 451 (as 'the lost design for the 21st pikeman').

This is the design for the 21st plate of the series of pikemen from the famous manual of arms, Wapen handelinghe van Roers Musquetten ende Spiessen... (The Hague 1607), designed by de Gheyn and engraved by members of his studio, probably C. Drebbel and R. de Baudous. This manual explains in extraordinary detail the drilling of three different infantry corps: matchlockmen, musketeers and pikemen. It was apparently commissioned in 1597 by Count Johann II von Nassau-Siegen, cousin of Prince Maurits, but was not actually published until a decade later. Van Regteren Altena has shownυ1 that Maurits and another cousin, Willem Lodewijk, Stadhouder of Friesland, delayed its publication to prevent any information concerning the training and fighting methods of the Stadholder's army from falling into the hands of the Spaniards. Only in 1607, at the end of the war, was De Gheyn authorised to engrave and publish the book.

The first edition, in Dutch, proved so popular that it was soon followed by another incorporating texts in French, German, English and Danish, as well as Dutch. There followed several further editions, and the book achieved considerable international influence, both artistic and military. Most of the surviving drawings for the series are in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam.

The English text accompanying this image in the book shows how astonishingly precise the instructions in the manual actually were:

"In the 21 how he (trayling the Pike) shall hold the same close at the point + set the right hand above the hippe fast to the bodye, + if he will charge or other wayes carrye the same, then he must (as it were) measure the Pike by palmes, handling it with convenient distance, like as the two next following figures shall shew"

1. Op.cit. vol. I, p. 54