Poor Elsje
Eighteen year old Elsje Christiaens from Denmark came to Amsterdam in 1664 to try her luck. After two weeks she still had no income and her landlady, who wanted her rent, threatened to take her possessions. The landlady grabbed a broom and Elsje, cornered, grabbed an axe. In the panic she struck the landlady dead. The drama ended with Elsje’s sentence: the hangman strangled her on the Dam and the custodians hung her corpse on Volewijck, on the other side of the IJ Waterway. Rembrandt portrayed Elsje here with the murder weapon hanging by her side.
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