Het tweede kwartier van het wapen van M.A. de Ruyter after 1677

This is the second quarter of the coat of arms of M.A. de Ruyter, made by an anonymous artist. Heraldry was a visual language of power and identity that the Dutch Golden Age inherited from the feudal past. The prominence of the coat of arms is inseparable from the rise of the Dutch Republic and its attendant naval power, embodied here by Lieutenant Admiral de Ruyter. Yet, who was entitled to bear a coat of arms, and how was nobility defined in the mercantile Dutch Republic? The answers to these questions lay at the intersection of gender, class, and politics. This piece made for the Admiral foregrounds both nobility and the man, while failing to identify the maker. Consider the experience of those excluded from the narrative, in a society built on trade and conquest. Here, in miniature, are some of the tensions between the individual and the state, between personal identity and cultural symbols, in the early modern world.