Rembrandt's Amsterdam

by Frits Lugt

This impression of Amsterdam by a seventeenth century author [1] takes us back to the time when no rivals had yet contested with the town its commercial monopoly,— when its full and radiant display struck the eyes of every visitor. Tempted though we feel to recall this glorious past (the period and direct surroundings of its greatest painter), we naturally take Amsterdam's present state as a basis, and in doing so painfully notice the loss of precious reminiscences which the course [pg 112] of time has inevitably involved. But realising that such loss is not only the consequence of neglect and lack of respect, and that to a large degree modern life with its different requirements and intensity forcibly causes cruel changes, we must conquer our regrets and rather view with open eyes the vitality of the town and the renewed energy of its present existence. Sad indeed is the aspect of towns, known as “dead cities,” which preserve their old architectural appearance, and where all life seems extinguished. They are but their own shadows and a perpetual outcry against the reverses of Fate or the relaxation of human energy, which proved unable to carry on the aspirations of preceding generations. Fortunately Amsterdam escaped this disgrace, because its spark of life never quite died out; the burning vigour of its inhabitants, which was instrumental in raising the town's prosperity in the seventeenth century, may seem a high-flaming fire compared to the peaceful existence of its rich population in the eighteenth century; and it may be true that the former energy and enterprise were reduced to glowing embers about the beginning of the nineteenth century; but let it be recognised that the same fire always smouldered and that it is now spreading anew with a sympathetic stubbornness. When Motley says, in his “History of the United Netherlands,” that the Dutch Republic was “sea-born and sea-sustained,” we have to apply this, in the first place, to its most important town, Amsterdam, and if we then remember that the suppression of a nation accustomed to maritime pursuits is one of the rarest things in history, we shall arrive at a better understanding of Amsterdam's vitality.

In a town where life so maintained its course, we cannot [pg 113] expect to find whole quarters preserved, just as they appeared in the first half of the seventeenth century; the general disposition of the town, however, is so original and effective that its indestructible plan survived until our days. There are in the world but few towns that possess such a charming singularity, and Venice is probably the only town offering a similar attraction, although it differs in many respects. Hence, Amsterdam's surname of The Venice of the North is easily accounted for, and appears already in the writings of Guicciardini, the sixteenth-century historian. It is the water that lends to the town its peculiar charm, and while some canals had to be filled in to create carriage accommodation in the old parts, most were preserved, and though in their water other house-fronts are reflected, the visitor can reconstruct, without great difficulty, a vision of Amsterdam in Rembrandt's days.

Let us offer some help to the visitor in his efforts to revive the old town in his imagination. Such assistance is needed, because Amsterdam is not a place where one would prefer to be left alone with his dreams. Modern life overshadows the past to such an extent, that one cannot transpose one's self three centuries by simply eliminating the present; there are no ruins which induce us to reconstruct, in our mind, that which has vanished, no population which has arrested its progress at the period of its greatest prosperity. Fortunately the nature of Amsterdam's beauty and originality has not changed and from this fact every newcomer may derive great help in his efforts to rebuild the scenes of bygone times.

First of all, let the stranger take into consideration that Rembrandt took up his abode in the town when it [pg 114] was rapidly growing, and when the picturesqueness of its late-mediaeval appearance had to concede to graver conceptions, based on the classics and the Italian renaissance. Let him remember that the threefold girdle of wide canals lined with big houses, which now embraces the old city, was at that time only in course of construction, and that less stately canals preserved a more intimate aspect. These narrower waterways in the heart of the old town, filled with barges between quays crowded with merchandise, reveal more the city's growth and nature,—the stately but less lively canals of a later extension typify better the pride and ease ensuing from the reaped harvest.

When Rembrandt came to Amsterdam about 1631 he found the town broken through its boundaries and new quarters risen on the fields outside, which a former generation had known only as meadows and vegetable gardens. The artist must have noticed many changes even since he passed his years of apprenticeship in Amsterdam in the studio of Pieter Lastman, returning again to his native town Leyden during the intermediate seven or eight years.

Until the period of Rembrandt's settling in Amsterdam, this city, although having been long the metropolis of the Northern Netherlands, had not been very different in aspect to other important Dutch towns; its seventeenth-century buildings belong to the same school of architecture as those of the other cities, like Haarlem, Alkmaar, Leyden. Its immense prosperity and development as Europe's most important seaport since about 1600, however, originated a notable change: its aspect gradually became more individual, until in the second part of the golden century it had assumed the grandeur [pg 115] worthy of “the capital of Europe, the neighbours' support and hope,” as our greatest poet then justly called her. Important buildings and a very logically and royally planned extension of its canals and streets were the causes of this alteration. We do not know of any other big town of that period so systematically laid out, with such a preservation of its original beauty and with such an outspoken aim to obtain in its new thoroughfares a similar attraction to the eyes. Of all the cities of the Netherlands none possessed the means, or were forced to undertake such big works, as Amsterdam. Consequently the best Dutch architects of that time erected their finest and most important edifices in Amsterdam, and very often exclusively built there; and this accounts for her assuming that individual aspect of stateliness.

Rembrandt got acquainted in Amsterdam with two distinct architectural periods: 1st, the one just closed on his arrival, dominated by the eminent architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser (father of the celebrated portrait-painter Thomas de Keyser); 2d, the following period, influenced by Jacob van Campen. The first period enriched Amsterdam with a great number of buildings, generally in red brick with decorations in clear sandstone, of a varied and often baroque appearance; their style, although based on early sixteenth-century Italian renaissance, may be called a typical Dutch one, strongly personified as it was, towards the end of the sixteenth century, by Netherlandish architects, like Cornells Floris and Vredeman de Vries.—In the second period, when the classical style after Palladio became generally accepted, the variety of aspect and the baroque details had to yield to monumentality and severity.

Plate 2. The Old Town Hall in Amsterdam. After an engraving by Cl. Jz. Visscher.

The spirit of the town's aspirations is best reflected [pg 116] [pg 117] [pg 118] in her town-hall, which marks the culminating point of her evolution (about 1650). That imposing square building, still in existence in Amsterdam's centre, called the Dam, must be familiar to all who have visited the town, and the interested art-lover may have noted that this building, grand and magnificent as it is, has no typical Dutch character such as marks Amsterdam's earlier buildings. He will have remarked a strong tendency to the classic style of Italy, and the rich marble sculptures inside must have appeared to him as belonging to another school than the contemporary Dutch pictures, which he admired in Amsterdam's Rÿksmuseum. In this circumstance we may find the clue to the disharmony which existed between Rembrandt and his surroundings in his later years. His art and the spirit of his contemporaries were going athwart with different aims. When the artist settled down in Amsterdam, at the age of twenty-five, circumstances were still favourable to a good mutual understanding: the ambitious and pulsating spirit of the growing commercial city must have felt akin to the boisterous aspirations of the young, gifted artist. His great material success during the first years furnishes a proof of this supposition. Then more and more came the alienation, and it is most instructive to compare the different results at which the artist and the intelligent population arrived: the artist, guided by the strength of his immense personality and talent, remained himself, but his fellow-citizens gradually changed their taste and predilections in matters of art and intellect, uncertain as they were of themselves in these matters. Being more gifted as traders than as artists, they showed that short-sightedness and narrowmindedness in judging their contemporary artists, which [pg 119] [pg 120] so often repeats itself in history (even in our time!). They were unable to understand the strength and value of the country's native art, and turned to foreign taste, even to foreign workmanship, as in the case of the commission to Quellinus, the Flemish sculptor, to execute the sculptures in the town-hall, thus emphasizing their preference for the school of Rubens and Van Dyck above the one of Hals and Rembrandt. This tendency occasioned a preference for foreign theories and forms, and so we see between 1648 and 1660 a town-hall built, ten times bigger than the former one and costing, according to our money, about twenty million guilders, resulting in a work of art, imposing but not essentially Dutch (plates [2], [3], [4]).