FRANEKER, FRIESLAND (DATED 1662)
’S HERTOGENBOSCH, NORTH BRABANT (DATED 1671)
IRON WALL-TIE FROM ALKMAAR (see opposite page)
Designers were thus getting farther away from Gothic architecture. The political and religious events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries revolutionized old beliefs. Time-honoured faiths were not only given up, but were viewed with positive distrust. The powers that had swayed the people of the Middle Ages, the mysticism, ideals, and poetry of their lives, were unrealities to the great majority of seventeenth-century Hollanders; such doctrines fell meaningless upon their senses, and were to them but unintelligible and empty forms. They not unnaturally turned from a creed in whose name loathsome crimes had been committed and countless lives had been sacrificed. It was a time of new life and faith. This change in the trend of thought is amply reflected in the domestic architecture. The Gothic tradition, already more or less alienated from the public sympathies, had almost spent itself. Its vitality was gone and only as a survival, a mere shadow of former glory, was it carried on. The old order gave place to the new. But it was long before a fresh system of planning came to be generally accepted and mediæval methods of construction and workmanship still persisted. Classic motives, however, were increasingly applied to the elevations. All the features, and the entire decoration of many of the houses, were often the direct outcome of Renaissance influences. In some few cases—such as the gateway at Arnhem of 1642 (page [53])—the whole schemes were conceived in the Classic spirit and were evidently designed by men of advanced intelligence, who were able to comprehend the significance of the style in which they worked.
ALKMAAR, NORTH HOLLAND (DATED 1672)
’S GRAVENHAGE (THE HAGUE), SOUTH HOLLAND—“T’GOUTSMITS KEUR HUIJS”