Chapter 4

It is not to be wondered at, that on this fertile Amsterdam soil intellect and art blossomed splendidly in other ways also. Music was in great favour and could boast a celebrity: Sweelinck, the organist and composer. Besides this there was a great literary movement; to emphasize its importance it suffices to say that half of the literary productions of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century were by Amsterdam writers. The ordinary public was rather slow in recognising their merits, and as a rule only estimated poetry when it had an edifying and moralising tendency. A practical use was made of the poets, when pithy verses or inscriptions for gables or institutions were needed and when wedding-parties, births and deaths, necessitated the scarcely ever failing poems. Nevertheless highly meritorious and lasting work was produced by the popular poets, such as Brederode and Starter, and Samuel Coster, who founded in 1617 the first permanent theatre (de Duytsche Akademie, i.e. the Dutch Academy), the more refined and classically educated Hooft, who, like Gerard Brandt, also produced excellent prose, the genial and universal Vondel, the greatest of all, and the poets of less originality like Andries Pels, Reyer Anslo (not to be confuted with Rembrandt’s friend the clergyman Cornelis Claesz. Anslo), Jan Vos, Jan Hz. Krul, Jeremias de Decker, passing over in silence those of a subsequent generation. Only the last three are known to have been on intimate terms with Rembrandt; no traces appear in the artist’s work of any friendly relation with the others, especially with the great Vondel, and on this ground we may safely say that such a relation is not very likely to have existed, because the hard-working painter had a homely life, and all relations he had with lending men of his time generally reflect themselves either in his pictures, drawings, or etchings. Amoug the latter we meet one person whom we should not omit, because he is the representative of another class of people than we have mentioned above, namely Jan Six, the son of a wealthy silk-dyer and textile manufacturer, who continued his fathers business till 1652 and who, after Rembrandt’s death, rose to important functions in the magistracy. Excepting this influential person, Rembrandt obviously had little intimate intercourse with the town’s patricians or authorities, his art absorbing him so much that even public events of note, do not appear to have claimed his attention. We may therefore pass in silence the historic events coinciding with his lifetime. Suffice it to say that those concerning Amsterdam exclusively, were not many and that even the greatest events in the history of the Netherlands were in those times generally accounted by Amsterdam’s citizens as secondary to their town’s interest as the greatest commercial centre. Their magistrates, if they wanted to promote the city’s particular interest, did not hesitate to oppose the Stadhouder’s power and the will of the States General. Their solicitude and vigilance for their town’s welfare are quite remarkable; but that their attachment often blinded them to their country’s more general interests, becomes clear, if we consider that Amsterdam was more important than all the towns of the province of Holland together and that the province of Holland alone provided 60 per cent of the total income of the Seven Provinces forming the Dutch Republic. Hence, until the present time, the name of Holland is generally used in designating the Netherlands.

Taking all in all and remembering especially what was said about the town’s outward appearance and population, we must conclude that no place could have been more appropriate than Amsterdam, as the abode of the typically Dutch genius Rembrandt. A noted Dutch writer, Van Deyssel, has expressed this well in the following words: “Rembrandt and Amsterdam, these belong so amazingly together! There are northern cities, that are like Amsterdam, but it seems to us that Amsterdam for the one who beholds her quietly, has a unique, unequalled, deep charm. Amsterdam is the heart of Holland and this means that it lies in the middle of Holland as the heart in a flower, and that it is the spot where the most delicate beauty of Holland is found.” No art is more akin to the city’s beauty and embodies it better than the art of Rembrandt.

It is hard to take leave of Rembrandt and his unique abode, without allowing the town’s immediate surroundings to fascinate us by their quite original charm. The excursion, which we could offer our friends through Amsterdam’s immediate neighbourhood, in Rembrandt’s company, would, however, give rise to so many comments, often of great local interest, that they would far exceed the limits of this periodical. The reader shuuld therefore look for an account of such an excursion along the Amstel River, past diked, across meadows, illustrated by Rembrandt’s works, in one of the coming numbers of the Dutch art-periodical “Oud-Holland.”

FOOTNOTES

1 Fenelon, _The Adventures of Telemachus_, Book III, where we find stated in a footnote that the description of the Phoenician town, Tyre, actually depicts Amsterdam.

2 Described by Dr. Hofstede de Groot under numbers 656, 761, 857, 1211, 1334, and reproduced by Lippmann—Hofstede de Groot, 1st series 163, 3d series 23, 1st series 72, 2d series 79 and 8.

3 The statement of a sharp-eyed contemporary, the English ambassador, Sir William Temple, is here of interest and applies in the first place to Amsterdam, then exceeding in importance all the other Dutch towns: “It is evident, to those who have read the most, and travelled the farthest, that no country can be found either in the present age (i.e. 1672), or upon record of any story, where so vast a trade has been managed, as in the narrow compass of the four maritime Provinces of this commonwealth (i.e. the Dutch Republic): nay, it is generally esteemed that they have more shipping belong to them, than there does to the rest of Europe.” (_Observations on the United Provinces_, Chap. VI, p. 182).

4 It is interesting to note here the following opinions of a contemporary, Sir William Temple: “There are some customs or dispositions, that seem to run generally through all these degrees of men among the them; as great frugality, and order, in their expenses. Their common riches lie in every man’s having more than he spends; or, to say it more properly, in every man’s spending less than he has coming in, be that what it will: nor does it enter into men’s heads among them, that the common port or course of expence should equal the revenue and, when this happens, they think at least they have lived that year to no purpose; and the train of it discredits a man among them, as much as any vicious or prodigal extravagance does in other countries. This enables every man to bear their extreme taxes, and makes them less sensible than they would be in other places.” (_Observations upon the United Provinces_, Chap. IV, p. 158.)

5 Sir William Temple writes in 1672: “It is hardly to be imagined, how all the violence and sharpness, which accompanies the differences of religion in other countries, seems to be appeased or softened here, by the general freedom which all men enjoy, either by allowance or connivance. No man can here complain of pressure in his conscience. The power of religion among them, where it is, lies in every man’s heart.” (_Observations_, Chap. V, p. 180.)