Plate 27. Portrait Of Jan Lutma. From an impression, in the First State, of Rembrandt's etching, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[pg 164] been exclusively Protestant, but internal dissensions had succeeded the abolition of the Roman Catholic Church, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century had resulted in intense factional feeling. Towards 1630 this storm had subsided and the magistrates, although themselves clinging to the Reformed Protestant Church, did not further molest other sects, such as the Remonstrants, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Walloons, who were permitted to build their own churches. The Catholics also were again able to fulfill their religious duties on condition that they avoided ostentation. The Jews officiated in their own Synagogues and nowhere enjoyed greater liberty than in Amsterdam.[5] The royal road of religious tolerance, rare in those days, was more and more deliberately taken, and it sounds well to hear how in 1660 Governor Stuyvesant, of New-Amsterdam (New York), receives from his directors in Amsterdam the following admonition to be less rigorous against other sects: “Let everybody remain unmolested as long as he behaves modestly and peacefully, as long as he does damage to nobody and does not oppose the magistrates. This principle of statesmanship and forbearance was always honoured by the government of this city and the consequence was, that the persecuted and the downtrodden from all countries congregated in this haven of refuge. Tread in its footsteps and you will be blessed.” This attitude, taken by the public authorities, greatly promoted general welfare, spiritually as well as materially. [pg 165] We may conclude from Rembrandt's work how prejudices were then overcome and how freely the leading intellects intermixed: the Calvinistic Reformed Minister Sylvius, the Mennonite Minister Cornelis Anslo, the Jewish doctor Ephraim Bonus, the Rabbi Menasseh-ben-Israel, whom we have mentioned before, were among the master's intimate friends, or were at least so portrayed by him that we understand from the loving application, manifested in his work, how deeply he appreciated their highly cultured mind and heart.
This freedom of religion went hand in hand with an animated mental evolution and naturally favoured it considerably. At the time of Rembrandt's settlement in Amsterdam we find proof of this in the foundation, in 1632, of a classical school, the forerunner of the later university, called the “Athenæum illustre,” where the celebrated professors Vossius and Van Baerle (or Barloeus) initiated many youths into the secrets of philosophy, languages, and other sciences. Within the leading classes of Amsterdam's population, supported by the great merchants, interest in matters of art and science strongly develops, though as we noticed before, in the case of the town-hall architecture, with a marked preference for classicism and all foreign civilization. It seems as though these clever merchants could not understand that their own genial countrymen were sufficiently gifted and quite capable of astonishing the world by their work; this increasing lack of mutual appreciation is not so astonishing, if we take into consideration Holland's, and especially Amsterdam's, rapid growth, making all those people (aside from the great artists, who were sufficiently confident in their own powers), feel small and humble in face of the firmly established fame [pg 166] and merits of the classics and the Italians. The large and fertile School of Amsterdam painters, Rembrandt foremost among them, felt this keenly: landscapes of Italy and allegorical and mythological subjects were preferred to the productions of an art intensely national, the sincerity of which failed to impress the Dutch amateurs. Even portraiture, an art where sincerity is so indispensable, felt the effects of the people's blindness, and in the last years of Rembrandt's life we see those portrait-painters coming to the fore, who did away with true expression of character and joined the private burghers in their decadent predilection for artificiality in dress and appearance.
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 [pg 167] 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 [pg 168] 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 [pg 169] 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.”