The Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace

This crowded, complex composition illustrates an Old Testament story: three youths in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). A golden image towers over the scene. On the left a crowd kneels in worship before it, apart from three young Hebrew men who are consequently taken prisoner. In the foreground they are led away in manacles behind a chariot in which the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar rides in triumph. On the right is a fiery furnace in which the youths are to be burned to death. However, ‘the fire had no power over the men and they suffered nothing. Then the three men glorified and praised God from the furnace’. This awakened in Nebuchadnezzar great respect for the God of the Jews. Pieter Pietersz made this painting, in which an oven features prominently, for the Haarlem Guild of Bakers. It originally hung above the guild altar in the Church of St Bavo.