Musketeer, from the cycle The Exercise of Arms

De Gheyn depicted military motifs throughout his career. This handbook for soldier training was issued in connection with the reforms of Maurice of Orange, the governor of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and their main army commander. Maurice turned the undisciplined mercenary troops into a well-trained and well-functioning army which managed to defeat Spain in several important battles. Between 1597 and 1607, de Gheyn’s assistants made a set of 117 engravings after his designs as illustrations for this handbook. These illustrations depict the individual phases of the process of shooting with an arquebus and a musket, as well as the training of a lancer. Comparison between this sheet and the depiction of a lancer from 1587 shows the dramatic change in Dutch art at the turn of the 16th century: the transition from Mannerism to the down-to-earth realism of the Dutch Baroque.