"On Aug. 20, 1672, the brothers Cornelis and Johannes de Witt were brutally murdered in The Hague. They fell victim to a political and populist hate campaign engendered by their deliberately anti-Orangeist stance .... de Baen’s allegorical portrait of Cornelis de Witt, created for the Dordrecht town hall after the victorious Dutch raid on the Medway of 1667, appears to have sparked emotions in 1672 and later...."
http://www.jhna.org/index.php/vol-7-1-2015/306-frans-grijzenhout