Massacre of the Innocents 1680 - 1747

Willem van Mieris made this drawing of the Massacre of the Innocents with pen and brown ink in the Netherlands sometime around the turn of the eighteenth century. The biblical story of King Herod's infanticide was a popular subject for artists in the period. We can read Mieris’s drawing as a commentary on state violence and its impact on the family. The cultural context of the Dutch Republic, marked by both commercial prosperity and near-constant warfare, is crucial to the meaning of this work. The artist uses the visual codes of classical antiquity to lend the scene a sense of timelessness and universality, connecting the biblical narrative with the political realities of his own time. To fully understand this drawing, we have to explore the complex interplay of artistic tradition, religious belief, and political ideology. Examining period sources, such as sermons, political pamphlets, and other artworks on the same subject, we can learn much more about the social conditions that shaped Mieris's artistic production. In this way the meaning of art is contingent on social and institutional context.