Rarities of These Lands

Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic

Claudia Swan

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780691213521
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Historia del arte

A vivid account of Dutch seventeenth-century art and material culture against the backdrop of the geopolitics of the early modern world The seventeenth century witnessed a great flourishing of Dutch trade and culture. Over the course of the first half of the century, the northern Netherlands secured independence from the Spanish crown, and the nascent republic sought to establish its might in global trade, often by way of diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim powers. Central to the political and cultural identity of the Dutch Republic were curious foreign goods the Dutch called "rarities." Rarities of These Lands explores how these rarities were obtained, exchanged, stolen, valued, and collected, tracing their global trajectories and considering their role within the politics of the new state. Claudia Swan's insightful, engaging analysis offers a novel and compelling account of how the Dutch Republic turned foreign objects into expressions of its national self-conception. Rarities of These Lands traces key elements of the formation of the Dutch Republic—artistic and colonialist ventures alike—offering new perspectives on this momentous period in the history of the Netherlands and its material culture.

CHAPTER 1

RENOWNED EMPORIUM

A FARRE AND A FAIRE PROSPECT

The English merchant-voyager Peter Mundy ventured far and wide in the employ of the British East India Company, touring India, China, and other points east before visiting the Netherlands in 1640. In the travelogue of his journey to the Lowlands, he noted that in twenty-five years of travel, he had not undergone a fraction of the mortal perils he did in the fifteen days it took to cross the English Channel.¹ The weather was dreadful, the currents strong. On his arrival, Mundy visited Rotterdam, Delft, The Hague, and Haarlem, marveling along the way at the local mode of travel over land by boat, in skiffs pulled by horses through canals whose water level was regulated by windmills. In April 1640, he took up lodgings in Amsterdam.

On what must have been a splendidly clear spring day, Mundy climbed the tower of the Westerkerk, the massive, recently completed church designed by city architect Hendrick de Keyser for the city of Amsterdam (figure 26). One of the earliest churches built for Reformed practice (rather than having been converted or “altered” from Catholic use), it was consecrated in 1631, and its soaring steeple, which reaches 85 meters above the intersection of the Prinsengracht and the Rozengracht canals, was completed in 1638. In Mundy’s day, the Westerkerk was the largest purpose-built Protestant church in existence. It marked time with enormous bells renowned to this day and cast a shadow from its site over the western flank of the city.² It was from atop this local wonder that Mundy described what he called “A Farre and a Faire prospect.”

26. Jan van der Heyden, View of the Westerkerk, 1668–1672. Oil on oak panel, 41.3 × 59.1 cm. Wallace Collection, London.

From the toppe off the said tower att the greatt Crowne is a Farre prospect (Utrecht and Leyden in sight . . . with other townes), and as Faire and delightsome Near hand as I Never saw the like For a Citty; Most off the Cheiffe streets and Channells lying there aboutts and From alofft open to our view, as the Zingle [Singel], Heregraught [Herengracht], Princes grafft [Prinsengracht], Keisers grafft [Keizersgracht], etts. (where Many off great dealing Merchanntts dwell), beesides pretty gardeins: the Channells [and] streets soe long, soe straightt; the buildings soe faire and unifforme; rancks off trees on each side off the Channell . . . soe thatt they seeme pleasant walkes rather then citty streets.³

What Mundy looked out on was a rapidly expanding city, its center radiating outwards to accommodate the burgeoning merchant class, for whom large homes were built along the canals that formed a concentric ring around and past the Singel. From a city boasting no more than 30,000 inhabitants in 1580, Amsterdam grew exponentially in subsequent decades: estimated at 100,000 souls in 1622, the count nearly doubled by 1650 and would reach 200,000 by the close of the century.⁴ By 1700, the ring of canals extended from the banks of the River IJ at the west of the city all the way across the Amstel River in the east of town, which had been engineered, constructed, and built up to accommodate new inhabitants and their wealth (figure 27). In addition to the new canals—the Herengracht, the Keizersgracht, and the Prinsengracht—Mundy named a handful of older streets: the Warmoesstraat, one of the arteries of the medieval heart of the city; the Nieuwendijk; the Kalverstraat; and the Jodenbreestraat, noting that “the 3 Former [are] Full off shoppes, tradesmen, Artifficers.”⁵

From the streets, Mundy’s account ventured into the homes of Amsterdam. Of the Jewish population, he wrote, “They allow Pictures in their houses (Not soe att Constantinople), yea, some of them Painters.” It is for the subsequent passage, also about paintings, that Mundy is best known to art historians. In a section titled “Painting and Pictures,” Mundy noted, “As For the art off Paintings and the affection off the people to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beyond them.” He named Rembrandt as an example of the many excellent “Men in thatt Facullty” and declared that even butchers, bakers, blacksmiths, and cobblers owned pictures. “Such is the general Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native(s) have to Paintings.” At this point, Mundy’s attention shifted to the interiors and contents of Amsterdam homes, noting the lavish furnishings.

27. Johannes de Ram (?), Bird’s Eye View of Amsterdam (Amstelodami veteris et novissimi delineatio), 1683–1684. Etching, 48.5 × 56.6 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-P-AO-20-46.

Allsoe their other Furniture and Ornamentts off their dwellings very Costly and Curious, Full off pleasure and home contentment, as Ritche Cupboards, Cabinetts, etts., Imagery, porcelaine, Costly Fine cages with birds, etts.; all these commonly in any house off indifferent quallity; wonderfull Nett and cleane, as well in their houses and Furniture, service, etts. within doores, as in their streetes . . . all great quantities off Commodities broughtt by water.⁶

The homes of this expanding metropole were as notable for their cleanliness as for the rich furnishings, among which were “costly and curious” cabinets, cupboards, pictures, porcelain, bird cages, and the like, even in homes of “indifferent quality.”

From the Westertoren, Mundy gazed out upon a great new urban landscape rising from the marshy land on the banks of the IJ. In the distance lay the cities of Utrecht and Leiden. Nearer at hand, the masts of countless ships would have filled the harbor, hugging the slender shore at the northern edge of the city. “For their shipping, trafficke and Commerce by sea, I conceave No place in the world comes Near itt,” Mundy wrote, before enumerating the twenty-six ships that returned during his stay from the East Indies, the West Indies, and Guinea. “The number of other shippes which perpetually Ebbe and Flow to this city . . . is incredible.”⁷ Around 1640, when Mundy was in Amsterdam, at least four thousand ships per year were registered to enter the Amsterdam harbor, and as many as a thousand more are estimated to have entered without official assent.⁸

What Mundy saw when he gazed out on Amsterdam, its new growth perched atop wooden piles in the marshy land, were the locales and the effects of the commerce for which the Dutch had quickly gained renown throughout Europe and beyond. Referring to the beneficial impact of the Twelve Years’ Truce with Spain, one writer boasted in 1629 “that we by our management and decisiveness . . . drove all nations out of the water, drew the majority of trade from other lands here, and have served all of Europe with our ships.”⁹ Like many travelers, Mundy noted that although the land was not ideal for agricultural use, “yet by Meanes off their shipping [the Dutch] are plentifully suplied with what the earth affoards For the use of Man . . . and From any part off the world beesides, either in Europe, Asia, Affricke or America, where any trade is, with the most pretious and Ritche Comodities off those parts, with which supplying other Countries they More and More enritche their owne.”¹⁰ Looking out from the Westertoren in 1640, Mundy saw the hub of commerce that Descartes admired when he wrote that he derived such pleasure from seeing “the ships coming into port here, bringing all the produce of the Indies and everything rare in Europe.”¹¹ Admiration for the Dutch emporium was widely noted. The German diplomat Johan Albrecht von Mandelslo traveled to Persia, the East Indies, and India before returning to Europe in 1639. After visiting Amsterdam around the time Mundy did, Mandelslo declared that “all the other parts of the World seem’d to have sent their Factours thither, and . . . the East and North had brought thither all their Commodities.” The abundance of foreign commodities made it seem “as if all other Provinces of the world were emptied of their wealth, to make Amsterdam a publick treasury of all they produce.”¹² Descartes’s, Mundy’s, and Mandelslo’s palpable awe was shared by countless other visitors; it resonates with and affirms the terms by which Amsterdam was promoted locally, by poets and painters and printmakers and chroniclers alike.

AMSTERDAM EMPORIUM

The view Mundy recorded reads like a narrative extension or verbal echo of the image of the city propagated locally.¹³ In the summer of 1624, the young poet Constantijn Huygens wrote a series of poems collectively known as the Stedestemmen en Dorpen (City and village voices) about locales in the Netherlands that “speak” for themselves. Amsterdam thus: “Everyday amazement hardly captures my wonders.” Describing Amsterdam as a “golden bog,” Huygens relied on the most resilient metaphor for the city, calling it “Warehouse of East and West, all water and all street.”¹⁴ Throughout the seventeenth century, Amsterdam was celebrated by natives and foreigners alike as the warehouse of East and West, a city whose limits extended along trade routes to the farthest reaches of the navigable world.¹⁵ While these encomia would reach a fever pitch later in the seventeenth century, earlier accounts consistently emphasized the abundance of worldly goods available in Amsterdam.

Amstelodamum Emporium is the title of a two-page map of the city published in the 1611 history of Amsterdam by the chronicler Johannes Pontanus (figure 28). In the upper register, the city is depicted as if seen from the northern bank of the river IJ; the ribbon of rooftops is punctuated by a handful of identifiable spires and steeples. The bird’s-eye view map of the city lacks the Westerkerk, constructed in the subsequent decades, but shows the warren of waterways through which goods flowed into the city. A rich scholarly account of Amsterdam as a global hub, Pontanus’s Rerum et urbis Amstelodamensium Historia debuted in Latin in 1611, was published in Dutch in 1614, and was “the first printed work dedicated to the topography and history of a city in the Dutch Republic.”¹⁶ Pontanus chronicles the city’s history, describes major municipal buildings, recounts overseas voyages, and lists political offices. Accounts of trade voyages adapted from prior publications form the core of the text, many illustrated with engravings of ports and havens and inhabitants of Asia, the icy North, exotic animals, and even battle scenes.¹⁷ Vivid tales and spectacular accounts of military prowess sold books, but they also fortified the burgeoning identity of the Dutch as merchant-voyagers. Moreover, Pontanus’s account is a crucial record of how swiftly Amsterdam emerged as a global trade hub. A world map by Jodocus Hondius (figure 29) is inserted at the juncture of the text where the first voyages to the East are described; it extends from the Atlantic coast of Africa to China and the Pacific Ocean, encompassing the trade routes east, and is topped with a long cartouche containing images of pairs dressed in the garb of five foreign locales: Ethiopian-Guinean, Persian-Turkish, Moluccan-Javanese, Sumatran-Malaccan, and Chinese (figure 30).

28. Amst...