Published 2014-03-22 — Updated on 2014-03-30
Keywords
- Fernando Álvarez de Toledo,
- Duke of Alba,
- Visual Propaganda,
- Dutch Revolt,
- Eighty Year's War
- Spanish Stereotypes ...More
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2014 Daniel R. Horst
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Abstract
In this article I will show how the image of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, III Duke of Alba (1507-1582) portrayed by Netherlandish propagandists during the Dutch Revolt, corresponds with older existing Netherlandish stereotypes of the Spanish people in general. The Duke of Alba is widely criticized for his Pride, a sin which most clearly visible in the statue of himself which the duke erected in Antwerp in 1571. The connection between Alba and the vice of Pride is used over and over again in Dutch anti-Spanish propaganda during Alba’s reign in the Netherlands but also remains a popular theme well into the seventeenth, eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries. I will illustrate this popularity with some examples of less well-known Dutch prints from these periods dealing with the duke of Alba. Finally I will show how the Duke of Alba’s name still lives on in modern day Dutch language.