Jonge vaandeldrager 1658 - 1706

Wallerant Vaillant made this mezzotint, called 'Young Standard Bearer', in the Netherlands sometime in the mid-17th century. The image depicts a boy dressed in what looks like military garb, holding a flag pole. In the Dutch Republic, standard bearers were soldiers who carried the flag of their military unit into battle. Flags were not only practical tools for identifying and coordinating troops on the battlefield, but also important symbols of national identity and pride, especially after the Treaty of Münster in 1648 which formally recognised the Dutch Republic as a sovereign nation and marked the end of the Eighty Years' War. This print shows a boy, not an adult, posing as a standard bearer, perhaps indicating how national identity was being forged in the young. We can research period fashion, military history, and Dutch nationalism in libraries and archives, coming to a fuller understanding of the image and its cultural setting.