Haeckel was not just a nineteenth-century biologist, he was the most important propagator of evolution, even more influential than Darwin. It was Haeckel who popularized evolution, he reached the masses, with an incredible success. He was an artist, a philosopher but often not a strictly empirically working unbiased scientist. A strong motivation was his hatred against Christianity which he attacked heavily. His desire to prove evolution was so great that he even did not refrain from fakes.

I think it would be a worthy effort to create something similar to Haeckel's drawing, but with recent photos of various embryos. Has anyone attempted to make such an illustration?

Michael K. Richardson, who has written on Haeckel's embryo drawings, used to have a page of photographs, but it's currently unavailable. See this abstract:

Haeckel's much-criticized embryo drawings are important as phylogenetic hypotheses, teaching aids, and evidence for evolution. While some criticisms of the drawings are legitimate, others are more tendentious.

(I notice that the abstract is only intermittently available. Try a Google search on ["Michael K. Richardson" tendentious] to get other sites with the abstract.)

"...and generally are quite illuminating"
Ah, I see now. You're reading someone else's comments.

"but you know, you are spot on, here"
That's a simple combination of my own humble genius...and paraphrasing Shermer (see Why People Believe Weird Things, or any other number of articles he's pen'd).

"smart people are better at coming up with reasons to hold on to dumb beliefs"

but you know, you are spot on, here. And, as a person who still enjoys a good-faith argument whenever possible, this is probably why I keep on niggling at people - especially when I can see that they are smarter than that!

"We also shouldn't overlook the possibility of deliberate deceptiveness."
Some, yes. Guys like Phillip E. Johnson are true believers though. I've seen him interviewed, and I can't see any indication that he's being willfully dishonest.
For the smarter ones reason is a slave to the Holy Spirit (WLC is the only example that comes quickly to mind. He's not a Creationist Creationist like Gish, but he does go through the mental gymnastics to make sure that the answer is what it should be, not necessarily what it is...which is a pretty good definition of apologetics, actually. God is. God is good. God is the God of the Bible. Anything that casts doubt on that trinity must be wrong).
Also, smart people are better at coming up with reasons to hold on to dumb beliefs (I skip that and just use dumb reasons for my own dumb beliefs. It's easier and, in addition to dumb, I've also got a severe case of lazy).
That means anything that contradicts the pre-drawn conclusion must be wrong. All transitional fossils must be forgeries, because life falls into "kinds" not "trees", all methods that date something as being over 6k must be wrong since everything is younger than that, genetics is right within Man up to the point that it indicates common descent with other life (or if it does it just shows that God used the same template and it just happens to look exactly like that), chimps "simulate" thought, altruism and empathy while Man has the genuine articles because because God made only Man in His image, etc.
It also means that any scientific conclusion stated as "is", "did" or "definitely", if later found to be incorrect or overstated (which happens) means that they all are, and scientists' more common "if", "likely" and "probably" are just admissions of weakness (especially when compared to "Genesis says..." & "And God said to...", which are absolute and inviolate).
Granted, I might just be reading more into it than is justified, but I've conversed with people who seem remarkably (if not absolutely) sure that the majority of the universe, as it presents itself, is wrong. I'm sure you know the same type of person, where any argument against ToE destroys it (no matter how distorted, evidence-lite, debunked or outright false it is), but the weakest anecdote proves the whole [insert holy book] True.
On a side note, conversing with them has pretty much destroyed my ability to argue in good faith, to the point that I've actually gotten into arguments with people that for the most part I agree with (hopefully not here, but if I did that's because you're all wrong! Moo ha-ha!). If you can still maintain the ability to argue in good faith, you're a better man than I (even if not, you're still a better man. Frankly, I'm quite insufferable. I don't even like hanging around me. I only do so to save on rent. Plus I give me a ride to work, which saves on gas).

Err, according to my googling, he died in 1919.

Doh. Alex is quite right; I don't know what I was thinking there. I've fixed the piece to something more accurate.

He docks points from his rating for including photos of embryos - and admits it?!

Indeed he does, AnonaMiss. Here's an excerpt from Wells' Icons on Google Books. The relevant quote is on the end of p.103 and the beginning of p.104:

Some textbooks, instead of reproducing or redrawing Haeckel's embryos, use actual photos [italics as in original —Ebonmuse].

...The 1999 edition of Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell's Biology also uses photos of actual embryos that mislead students.

Near the end of the book, on p. 255, Wells also explains that he grades books with a "D" if they use photos of embryos.

Just a hypothesis, but I think this may come as a side effect of inerrancy. If any of the Bible is wrong, then none of it is authoritative. Ergo, if Haeckel cheated, then they all cheated. If Piltdown Man was a fraud, then they all are, etc.

Excellent point, Modus, and I think there's some truth to that. This probably also explains why creationists persist in believing that evolution necessarily must teach that it's acceptable to kill the weak, practice euthanasia, and so on; since their holy book has both moral lessons and an origin story, they can't comprehend the idea of a competing theory that doesn't contain both.

We also shouldn't overlook the possibility of deliberate deceptiveness. Creationists are waging a propaganda war, not a scientific debate, and their main goal is to score points with the public. Any forgery that they can pull out and wave around "counts" for "their side" (such as Archaeoraptor, which I'll get to shortly - another hoax that Wells flogs at length, even though it was swiftly detected and was never published in any peer-reviewed journal).

Plus, Haeckel lead to Darwin and Darwin lead to Hitler. True story.