Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Bust of Piet Heyn
Also titled Borstbeeld van Piet Heyn
Hendrick de Keyser (II) (Amsterdam, 1613–1665)
1636
- Medium
- terracotta (clay material)
- Classification
- figure
- Dimensions
- height 80 cm x width 38 cm x depth 34 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
About this work
Piet Heyn became a seaman at a young age. When he was fifteen years old, he was taken prisoner by the Spanish and made to serve two years as a galley slave. After his release, Heyn pursued a career in the merchant marine: he held high-ranking positions in the Dutch West India Company. In 1628 he captured a Spanish treasure fleet (known as the ‘Silver Fleet’) off the coast of Cuba. A year later he perished at sea.
