- Publisher : Notoir Books (December 6, 2020)
- Language: : English
- Paperback : 114 pages
- ISBN-13 : 979-8576954537
- Item Weight : 10.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 8.5 x 0.26 x 8.5 inches
In this series of Medieval Ultra-Violence engravings Jan Luyken depicts the public tortures and executions of martyrs, heathens, witches, anabaptists and other opinionated folks who didn’t toe the partyline and refused to comply to the groupthink of those days.
The intro and accompanying essays are by J-K Huysmans, James Anson Farrer, John Asheton, Thomas Bedworth, Howard Williams and George Ivens.
J-K Huysmans, using protagonist Des Esseintes (from the famous decadent novel ‘Against The Grain’) as a mouthpiece, had this to say about the engravings:
“He possessed of the work of this artist, who was fantastic and melancholy, vehement and wild, the series of his Religious Persecutions, horrible prints depicting all the agonies invented by the madness of religions: prints pregnant with human sufferings, showing bodies roasting on fires, skulls slit open with swords, trepaned with nails and gashed with saws, intestines separated from the abdomen and twisted on spools, finger nails slowly extracted with pincers, eyes gouged, limbs dislocated and deliberately broken, and bones bared of flesh and agonizingly scraped by sheets of metal.”
This coffee-table conversation-starter comes with 83 engravings by the famous Dutch poet, artist and engraver Jan Luyken (1649-1712). (Vrede zij met hem)