This article draws attention to the frequent presence of women with children among the audience of John the Baptist's sermon as it is depicted in sixteenth- and seventeenth century prints and paintings. Rather than as genre-like additions, it is argued that they were included as allegories of Charity. According to the gospel of Luke, John the Baptist advised those who had two coats to give away one, and people who had an abundance of food to share it with others. In other words, he exhorted people to be charitable. A literal visualization of one of the acts of charity in the Baptist's sermon is seen on a print published by Nicholas de Mathonniere, in which a man gives away a coat to another person in the audience (note 6). The allegorical approach was much more common though. Examples come from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. In a woodcut by Cranach, three women in the audience are suckling babies (fig. 2); in a painting by Bacchiacca, a woman with three young children frollicking on her lap is positioned prominently in the foreground (note 4); similar groups are visible in Bloemaert's version of the subject in the Rijksmuseum (fig. 1), and in Philips Galle's engraving (fig. 3). A special case is Jacob Backer's Family group with John the Baptist preaching, as it includes a portrait of the mater familias with one bare breast (fig. 4). That again points to an allegorical interpretation, because such a display of nudity in a common portrait would have been deemed improper. Since it concerns a Mennonite family - the artist, who was a Mennonite preacher himself, included a self portrait with his finger raised in warning - this picture is also a reminder that the subject of the Sermon of John the Baptist was not a typical Calvinist subject referring to open air sermons ('hagepreken'), as is often assumed (note 16). In a country like the young Republic, the sermon was an important instrument for all denominations and a suitable subject for decoration on any wall.

Iconoclasm in a glass? Wouter Crabeths of and Dirck Crabeths of the in Gouda's Sint Janskerk. Two monumental stained-glass Windows, The Scourging of Heliodorus (1566) by Wouter Crabeth (ca.1535-1585) and the Cleansing of the Temple (1567) by his older brother Dirck Crabeth (ca.1525-1574), occupy the eastern walls of the transept of Gouda's Sint Janskerk, to the left and right of the ambulatory. They were part of the ambitious decoration campaign that started after the church was gutted by a fire in 1552. By the time the Sea Beggars took Gouda in 1572, twenty monumental windows had been realized. Although heavily restored, the ensemble survives until today. Clearly, the Heliodorus and the Cleansing of the Temple form a typological pair. The former tells the apocryphal story of general Heliodorus who comes to claim the treasures of the Temple, upon which the priest Onias prays to God, who sends an angel and a heavenly horseman to whip the general out (2 Maccabees 3, : 24-26). The composition is based on Raphaels version, which the glass painter knew through a print by Coornhert after Maerten van Heemskerck. It was donated by Erick of Brunswick II, a German count brought up in the Lutheran faith. He converted to Catholicism as an adult and became a staunch defender of that religion and a close ally of Philip II. Among his greatest achievements was the capture of the highest ranking generals of the French army at the battle of St. Quentin in 1557. The King then made him Lord of Woerden, a town next to gouda, where Eric started to live with his mistress, far from his estranged wife in Germany. The donation of this window in Gouda confirmed his newfound prominence in Holland and his closeness to Philip II, who in 1557 had donated the magnificent window in the North Wall of the transept, right next to Erick's. The donor's border included a portrait of the donor in full formal dress, plus his family arms going back four generations, and a patron saint - in this case St. Lawrence, whose death was celebrated at the 10th of August, the day of the battle of St. Quentin. It also bears a striking incription : CATHOLICAE RELIGIONIS ERGO, ('because of the Catholic religion'). It is the first time that the words 'Catholic religion' appear on a church monument in the Netherland. Ironically but understandably, it happened at a moment when the supremacy of this faith was waning. The Scourging of Heliodorus, dated 1566, was put in place in the spring of 1567. As Lord of Woerden, Erick of Brunswick's mercenaries had chased the Lutherans out of the town's parish church after they occupied it during the iconoclasm of 1566. No wonder that later authors like local historian Walvis (1713) and Conrad busquen Huet (1882-1884) explained the Windows as a memorial to the victory over the iconoclasts. It was only at the end of the twientieth century that this interpretation was refuted. Documents in the church archive show that production of the window started in 1564, which means that the design was long finished by then. We don't need the Iconoclasm to explain it - the iconography elaborates on the other windows in the transept, notably the ones donated by King Philip II and Margaret of Parma, which are also about the integrity of the church and its defence. The figure of Heliodorus was already seen as a symbol of the threat of the reformation before 1566. This is borne out by the poetry of Anna Bijns, an Antwerp school teacher and the foremost lay spokesperson against the reformation of her time. The pendant on the other side of the choir, Dirck Crabeth's Cleansing of the Temple, follows the text of John 2 : 13-22. Arriving at the Temple, Christ saw money changers and people selling cattle, sheep and dogs. He then made a whip out of cords and drove them all away, scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tablets. the groups of men standing around arguing refer to the Jews who ask christ to give a sign that shows he has the authority to do this, to which Christ answers that they can even destroy the temple and he will raise it again in three days. The genesis of this Windows was complicated by the political events of the time. It carries the date 1567 but by then it was already five years in the making. In 1562 Wouter Crabeth travelled to The Hague to draw William of Orange' s portrait, which his brother Dirck intended to use for the donor's border. At the time of his portrait sesion, Orange still belonged to Philip II' s immediate circle. but in 1567 when the window was near completion, he had become the leader of the Dutch Revolt againstthat same king. William ended up not paying for the window and when it was finally placed in 1569, his portrait was not included - no doubt because of his breach with the Habsburg house. the design for the donor's border remained unexecuted so the lower part of the window had to be bricked up but the main scene was placed anyway, which shows the determination of the churchwardens to complete the glazing. After the protestantization of the church (1573), as William of Orange's reputation as the founder of the protestant Republic grew, people started to see the subject of his window as an 'answer' to Erick of Brunswick's - where The scourging of Heliodorus protested against iconoclasm, the Cleansing of the Temple supposedly applauded the removal of Catholic clergy, rites and abuse. When the city councilmen decided in 1656 to have the bricked-up part of the window opened up again to create a newly designed donor's border with their own family arms, they had an anti-Catholic poem inscribed on it framed in branches of the orange tree, an obvious reference to William of Orange, whose failed donation was hereby definitively cast in a protestant light. In hindsight we must conclude that such a Reading is unhistorical, as both windows formed part of a Catholic decorative program and were both designed before the events they were supposed to refer to had happened. Originally, the subject of the Cleansing of the Temple must also have been intended to evoke associations with the battle against the reformation. The creation and execution of the decorative program were overseen by the powerful humanist Viblius van Aytta, president of the Secret Council and personal councillor to Charles V, Philip II and Margaret of Parma. Apparently advised by theologians from the university of Louvain he saw to it that the Windows contained a devotional message as well as a political one. Whereas medieval typology stressed the parallels between Old- and New Testament stories, the creators of the Gouda decoration programme re-oriented themselves on the writings of St Augustine, who time and again stressed the superiority of the New Testament over the Old Testament. This way of thinking is exemplified in the two windows discussed here: A Godly intervention in the Old Testament is contrasted with an act of Christ, who tells doubters that with His coming, a new era has started. Mankind will need no more signs apart from what He Himself says and does.

The Roman Catholic Parish of Heiloo, a village near Alkmaar, possesses a painting dated 1631 combining three scenes. The top part shows St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena receiving the Rosary from Mary and the Christ child (fig. 1). This occurrence takes place on what seems to be the roof of a gallery, under which the two other scenes are located. To the right St. Dominic is seen performing a miracle: while in Toulouse, the heretic Albigenses challenged him to throw his writings in the fire, but they bounced back unscathed three times, causing the Albigenses to repent. A print by Theodoor Galle (fig. 2) was the basis for the composition. At the left St. Willibrord, who converted large parts of the Netherlands to Christianity in the eight century and became the first bishop of Utrecht, is shown praying next to a well in Heiloo, his followers standing by. The well as it looked in 1631 and the medieval church that still stands in the center of the village (fig. 5) are both portrayed in this scene. The painting was most probably commissioned as an altarpiece for a clandestine catholic church not far from the place where it is currently kept. In the first decades of the seventeenth century Heiloo was administered by Dominican missionaries, which explains the prominence of Dominican saints in two of the three scenes. The most prominent Dominican priest was Hyacintus Hermanni (fig. 6), a native of Alkmaar, who is here identified as the patron for this altarpiece. It is not signed, but there are strong similarities with the style of Alkmaar's leading figure painter at the time, Nicolaes van der Heck (fig. 8). Hermanni's portrait can be found to the right of the pillar dividing the two scenes, looking at the viewer and wearing liturgical clothing. The 'Well of Willibrord' had been a destination for pilgrims since late Medieval times, and on closer inspection the theme of pilgrimage pervades the whole painting. One of the followers of St. Willibrord was St. Adalbert (fig. 11), who was buried in the neighbouring village of Egmond, close to the famous Egmond Abbey. According to the legend he was a deacon and in the picture he is identifiable by the colourful cope he is wearing - the rest of Willibrord's followers are characterized as Benedictine monks. Behind Adalbert a heavenly ray of light is seen, going in the direction of a building on the horizon which, by its silhouette, can be recognized as Egmond Abbey, partly destroyed by the sea beggars in 1573 (figs. 9, 10). This building and the nearby well which had formed at Adalberts grave were also visited by pilgrims from all over the Republic. An even greater attraction for pilgrims coming to Heiloo was the site known as Our Lady of Solace (Onze Lieve Vrouw ter Nood) in the hamlet of Oesdom. It consisted of the ruins of a chapel that used to house a miraculous statue of Mary. The chapel had been partially torn down by the protestants in 1573 and the miraculous statue disappeared as well, but these misfortunes made the place only more holy to the catholics living in the protestant country. There were also new miracles: in a picture of a family on pilgrimage from 1630 an apparition of the Virgin is vaguely indicated in the walls of the ruin, in a pose reminiscent of the apparition of the Virgin in our altarpiece (figs. 12, 13). It was not only in this painting that the three abovementioned sites were united - a printed map dated 1704, entitled 'Hyloo-er ryskaartje' ('Heiloo travel map') was specifically produced to show pilgrims the way to the sanctuaries of Willibrord, Adalbert and Mary (fig. 15). The complicated iconography of this altarpiece can thus be explained as an attempt by the dominican friars administering the Heiloo parish, to merge the specific devotions of their order with local devotions connected to nearby pilgrimage sites. The pilgrimage theme is reinforced by the relief figure of a pilgrim above the central column (fig. 17).

The writer identifies the artist of three drawings as Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II. Two of the drawings, in the British Museum, are signed “WCrabeth” and were previously attributed to Wouter Crabeth, a famous glass painter from Gouda. While the works have some features that initially seem to date to the 16th century, they reveal a draftsman who is closer to somewhat later artists. Another logical candidate of the same name as the glass painter Crabeth is his grandson, Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II, the foremost painter in Gouda in the first half of the 17th century. Many elements in the latter's paintings support the hypothesis that the London drawings are indeed his, and any remaining doubts can be expelled by a drawing in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig, which, marked “WPC,” shares various features with the London works, and with which Crabeth's grandfather could not have been involved.

A discussion of issues relating to Margaretha van der Marck's donation of Dirck Crabeth's Judith and Holofernes to the Sint Janskerk (Church of St John) in Gouda. This 1571 window was both Crabeth's last creation and the last monumental work given to the church before Dutch rebels captured Gouda. It depicts the Biblical story of Judith's beheading of the general Holofernes during the siege of Bethulia. The writer goes on to show that each of the principal characters from the biblical stories in the surrounding windows serves as a role model for the donors, to argue that Van der Marck identified with Judith, and to explain the aptness of this scene in the context of Van der Marck's life and role in society.