Hidden Stories. Wise Lessons in the Decorations of Amsterdam's Former Town Hall

Wise Lessons in the Decorations of Amsterdam’s Former Town Hall

Wise Lessons in the Decorations of Amsterdam’s Former Town Hall -1

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Contents 5

Foreword

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Hidden Stories

Marianna van der Zwaag Renske Cohen Tervaert

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How Theseus was Insured and Odysseus Saved from Ruin

29 32 34 38 42 44 46 48 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86

Hidden Stories Revealed Jasper Hillegers Atlas Justice The Maid of Amsterdam with Power and Wisdom The Four Virtues The Four Elements Amphion Mercury, Io and Argus Mars Venus Icarus Odysseus and Nausica채 Arion Theseus Returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne Saturn Cybele Lycurgus and his Nephew Charilaus Quintus Fabius Maximus Goes on Foot to Meet his Son Diana Mercury Fidelity / Mucius Scaevola Silence Jupiter Apollo The Tribunal

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Locations Hidden Stories -3

Eric Jan Sluijter

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Foreword The Royal Palace in Amsterdam is a building full of stories—stories about the building’s history and about who used it, about events that took place there, but also stories from classical mythology and the Bible. These stories are to be found in the often life-sized paintings that adorn the building’s interior, and in the magnificent Baroque sculpture. They are stories in images, not words, about the status of Amsterdam in the Golden Age, civic power and the ideals of the city’s rulers. In those days the Royal Palace was Amsterdam’s Town Hall—its construction was the most prestigious project of the century.

The paintings and sculptures are still in their original positions in the building, but many of their stories have been forgotten, and knowledge of their meanings and the reasons why they were given a place in the former Town Hall has been lost over the years. It was this loss that prompted the present book and the exhibition of the same name. Each and every one of the hidden stories has a universal relevance. Full of adventure, danger, tragedy and romance they express ideals that are not confined to one place or time.

This book is designed to bring you closer to the painted and sculpted stories.

A separate essay is devoted to two unusual paintings—Odysseus and Nausicaä by Thomas de Keyser and Theseus Returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne by Willem Strijcker.

The realization of this publication and the exhibition is the result of the dedication and collaboration of many people. I am most grateful to the authors, Renske Cohen Tervaert, Professor Eric Jan Sluijter and Jasper Hillegers. Thanks also to everyone else who helped: the designers, editors, translators, the printer, production companies and the staff of the Royal Palace Amsterdam.

I would like to conclude by inviting you to visit the Royal Palace and discover the stories it contains with your own eyes. You are most welcome!

Marianna van der Zwaag

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Hidden Stories WISE LESSONS IN THE DECORATIONS OF AMSTERDAM’S FORMER TOWN HALL1

by Renske Cohen Tervaert Heroes of a golden age, gods and Titans, wise poets and foolish kings, powerful city maids, goddesses of the hunt or love, gods of trade or war. These are no ordinary residents of a town hall or a palace. They may give no sign of life, but they are lifelike.

They watch reprovingly and their searching gaze follows transitory passers-by—the users, fleeting in their eyes, of the building that they have called home for more than three and a half centuries. In silence they tell their stories to those who want to hear.

These are wise lessons from bygone ages, but still relevant to whomever recognizes them. Where do these mythical beings come from and why were they given a place in Amsterdam Town Hall, now the Royal Palace? 1 PARALLELS WITH THE PAST ‘People give significance to their lives and their place in the world in response to stories that present a different reality’.2 This custom is as old as mankind. Fables, myths, stories from sacred writings like the Bible, tales from classical and national history: they are all sources in words and pictures on which the Western world draws, seeking hope, courage, validation of earthly existence, inspiration, edification and amusement.

It was no different in the young Republic of the Seven Provinces in the seventeenth century. The Revolt against the Spanish and the hard-won peace and independence in 1648 created the need for a form of identification. Residents of the Republic modelled themselves on famous peoples of the past. Above all they saw parallels with the Roman Republic and the biblical tribes of Israel. The affinity between the present day and classical and biblical history was emphasized in writings, art and everyday life.3 In praising the excellence of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, they likened the town to the holy city of Jerusalem and Caesar’s Rome.4 The growth of the city, of its trade and prosperity gave rise to a desire to visualize the parallels with the past in

1 M y thanks go to two pioneers, Henri van de Waal and Katharine Fremantle; their fascinating books published in 1952 and 1959 respectively remain the starting points for research into the decorations in the former Town Hall.

Eymert-Jan Goossens and Pieter Vlaardingerbroek published extensive studies in recent years, on which I have likewise drawn for this article. I also wish to thank my fellow authors Eric Jan Sluijter and Jasper Hillegers for their enthusiasm and their suggestions in the drafting of this essay. Their contributions represent another step in deciphering the pictorial vocabulary in the former Town Hall.

2 Christmas speech by King Willem-Alexander, 25 December 2014.

3 See for instance A. Blankert, ‘General Introduction’ in Washington/Detroit/Amsterdam 1980-1981, pp. 22-23.

4 Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), pp. 41-42; Goossens 2010, p. 23.

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architecture.5 The Amsterdam City Council dreamed of a new town hall to replace the dilapidated medieval wooden building. It would have to convey the power of the city and its governors and equal the splendour of the government buildings of their illustrious forerunners, the consuls of the Roman Republic. The city council aspired to a monument for future generations, a temple to the recently signed peace, just like the eternal foundations of the old Roman fortifications.6 The new Town Hall was built on the site of the old one: in the heart of the city beside the Nieuwe Kerk—the religious centre of the city—opposite the Waag (weigh-house) and the fish market, and around the corner from the stock exchange— the financial centre. Although the Town Hall had to be a functional building first and foremost, able to house the many offices of the city council and the Amsterdam exchange bank, the positioning of the building and its design were intended to make a statement.7 It had to make a powerful visual impact, projecting Amsterdam’s status and history, its civil authority and the council’s ideals. The grandiose dimensions of the building itself reflected the scale of classical architecture in Rome. The architectural style, Dutch Classicism, was based on Classical Antiquity and followed the rules laid down in architectural treatises by the Roman architect Vitruvius (85-20 BC) and the Italian Renaissance architect Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616).8 The baroque style of the sculptures and the monumental history paintings were designed to impress visitors to the Town Hall and make them hear the building’s rhetoric.

Together the classicist architecture and baroque design of the decorative programme form a ‘language’. It is a language based on the literature of classical antiquity that was understood in the seventeenth century, but one that we have to relearn today because its meanings have changed or passed into oblivion.9 A CREATOR WITH UNDERSTANDING In 1648 the architect Jacob van Campen (1596-1657) was awarded the commission to translate the ideals of the city’s governors into a building—or, more accurately, a Gesamtkunstwerk. [fig. 1] Van Campen already had an impressive record.10 His work included the design of a house for the diplomat Constantijn Huygens, and another for Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, the present-day Mauritshuis, in The Hague. In 1624 he designed the façade of the Coymans House in Amsterdam for the immensely wealthy Coymans brothers, the first classicist mansion on an Amsterdam canal. It was followed in 1636 by the design for the new Heiligewegspoort and in 1637/8 the design for the new Amsterdam theatre. In 1647 Van Campen took rooms in an inn in 5 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 16.

6 Fremantle 1959, pp. 33, 55-56; Goossens 1998.

7 Fremantle 1959, pp. XXI, 34-35.

8 For more information see K. Ottenheym, Schoonheid op maat. Vincenzo Scamozzi en de architectuur van de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 2010.

9 Fremantle 1959, pp. XXI, 36.

10 For the life and work of Jacob van Campen see Amsterdam 1995.

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Fig. 1 Jacob van Campen (1596-1657) In J. Vennekool, Afbeelding van ‘t Stadt huys van Amsterdam: in dartigh coopere plaaten, geordineert door Jacob van Campen en geteeckent door Iacob Vennekool, Amsterdam 1661.

Kalverstraat to work on two commissions in Dam Square: the tower he designed for the Nieuwe Kerk, which had been partially destroyed by fire, and his ambitious plans for the new Town Hall.11 The Amsterdam burgomasters believed that Jacob van Campen’s plans demonstrated ‘his excellent understanding’.12 Van Campen was more than an architect—he was a painter and designer of extensive decorative schemes. In his design for the grand salon in Huis Honselaarsdijk, Stadholder Frederick Henry’s largest building project, for instance, he combined architecture, sculpture and painting.13 The concept was based on the triumphs of the then Prince of Orange.

While the Town Hall was being built, Amalia of Solms, Frederick Henry’s widow, gave Van Campen the commission for another prestigious project: the Orange Hall in Huis ten Bosch. The paintings that decorate the room from floor to ceiling work together to glorify the stadholder as the bringer of peace.14 They are quite a contrast with the decorations in the Town Hall, which celebrate the role of Amsterdam’s city government in bringing about that self-same peace.

Van Campen began work on the precise content of the iconographic programme for the Town Hall in 1651.15 The humanist ideas that underlie Van Campen’s complex decorative schemes can be located in the context of the scholarship of his time.16 Through his second cousin Maria Tesselschade, he was in contact with many literary figures, Constantijn Huygens among them, and with poets and playwrights like Pieter Cornelisz Hooft, Jan Vos and Joost van den Vondel. These seventeenth-century intellectuals immersed themselves in classical literature, history and mythology, translating them into a contemporary philosophy of morality, justice and history.

Knowledge of the Classics was an important part of everyday life, for ‘whoever swims in the flood from these pens will overflow with meaningful ideas and firm convictions’.17 To Van Campen it was not words but images—in the form of architecture and painting—that he used as tools to express seventeenth-century thinking in visual terms. His ideal was to recreate the universal harmony he had found in the writings of Classical Antiquity.18 11 Neither project was completed.

12 ‘sijn overtreffeliijk verstandt’; Vennekool 1661, p. 3; quoted in Goossens 2010, p. 13. At that time Amsterdam was governed by four burgomasters. They held the post alongside their everyday activities as merchants and bankers.

For more information about the city council see Amsterdam 1987.

13 Q. Buvelot, ‘Ontwerpen voor geschilderde decoratieprogramma’s’, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 121-28; Broekman 2005, p. 65.

14 Van Eikema Hommes/Kolfin 2013, p. 45. For the creation of the programme of decorations for the Orange Hall and a detailed description see Van Eikema Hommes/Kolfin 2013.

15 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 54.

16 Humanism is a cultural movement that specifically takes its inspiration from ancient Graeco-Roman and Early Christian civilization. See also Goossens 2010, p. 19.

17 ‘wie in den vloet dezer pennen zwemt, zal overvloeien van zinrijcke gedachten en vaste stellingen’; Albrecht 1979, p. 9. Quotation from Vondel 1645-1656 (ed. 1931), p. 487, quoted in Buchbinder-Green 1974, p. 97, note 5.

18 Amsterdam 1995.

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We can only speculate about Van Campen’s precise role and involvement in working out his complex plans for the Town Hall, since no documentary evidence has survived. It would appear from source material relating to other building projects that Van Campen concerned himself chiefly with the coordination and execution of the decorative schemes he had designed, and that he made sure that the artists followed his sketches.19 When it came to the largest construction project with the most inventive programme of decorations in the Republic, which should have been the pinnacle of Van Campen’s career, however, something went seriously wrong. On 1 December 1654, after disagreements, Van Campen abandoned his work on the Town Hall and left Amsterdam. At that point he had only had direct oversight of the production of the sculptural work, most of which was supplied by the Antwerp sculptor Artus Quellinus (1609-1668) and his workshop.20 The paintings date from after Van Campen’s departure. Nevertheless, his influence on them remained. In his Inwijdinge, the poem written to commemorate the inauguration of the Town Hall six months after Van Campen left, Vondel gives a detailed description of the decorations, the majority of which had not yet been executed. Vondel, who had good contacts with the city fathers and the artists concerned, must have been familiar with the original designs. Even so, in a number of cases different subjects were chosen in preference to those that had been planned.21 FROM WORD TO IMAGE In translating the city council’s ideals into a decorative scheme, Jacob van Campen drew on a variety of sources, particularly classical literature. Most of these books and treatises were popular reference works at the time. The specific episodes he chose, by contrast, were generally unusual. Van Campen clearly selected the stories and protagonists on the grounds of their appropriate symbolism and the wise lessons they imparted.

Although classical themes dominate in the Town Hall, a list of Van Campen’s sources starts with the most important ‘guide to life’: the Bible. Wise Old Testament kings and judges were a particular inspiration for the programme of decorations.

Major events in the lives of Solomon, Moses and Joseph were given key positions in the Tribunal, the Magistrates’ Chamber, the Council Chamber and the Treasury

19 Van Eikema Hommes/Kolfin 2013, pp. 53-54.

20 By the end of 1654 a great deal of work had been done on the carved decorations in the Tribunal, the major part of the galleries and the east side of the Citizens’ Hall (the side with the entrance door on Dam Square). The terrestrial and celestial maps had already been ordered in 1652. Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 129-32.

See also Fremantle 1959, pp. 156-71. She writes that in all likelihood Quellinus himself was responsible for the final versions of the designs, but that these designs were based on Van Campen’s sketches and after the models of the sculptural work had been approved by the architect.

21 Including the Batavian series in the Town Hall galleries, which are attributed to burgomaster Cornelis de Graeff, see M. van der Zwaag (ed.), Batavian Commissions. Flinck, Ovens, Lievens, Jordaens, De Groot, Bol and Rembrandt in the Palace, [exh. cat.] Royal Palace (Amsterdam), Amsterdam 2011.

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Fig. 2 The Last Judgement, ca. 1653 Jacob van Campen (1596-1657) Oil on canvas, 328 x 203 cm Sint Joriskerk, Amersfoort (on loan from Amersfoort City Council)

Ordinary. They represent good and just government. Drawing on the New Testament, in 1652 Van Campen himself painted The Last Judgement for the Tribunal. He only completed the central part of the scene and the work was never hung in the Town Hall.22 [fig. 2] Another important source was the Metamorphoses, a narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC−AD 17). The watchful Argus and Io, who was turned into a heifer, the gods Mercury and Apollo, the goddesses Diana and Cybele, the foolish King Midas, the benign King Amphion, Daedalus and his son Icarus, the hero Theseus and Princess Ariadne; their likenesses appear in the Town Hall and their stories are taken to a greater or lesser degree from Ovid’s masterpiece. Ovid described the gods as ordinary, even human, creatures with their own weaknesses and desires.23 This made them recognizable role models for people in the seventeenth century. The Metamorphoses became the most translated, adapted, annotated and illustrated work of all the literature of Classical Antiquity.24 Several editions designed for a general readership were published; these were emblem books of a sort, containing a selection of extracts in the form of prints accompanied by a poem. The painter and poet Karel van Mander went so far as to call the Metamorphoses the ‘Painters’ Bible’, because the narratives were such extraordinarily popular subjects for paintings.25 Van Mander added an exposition—the Wtleggingh op den Metamorphosis—to his Schilder-boeck or Book of Painting, a theoretical treatise on painting that included biographies of artists from Antiquity up to his own day. His commentary on Ovid’s masterpiece was written to serve the interests of artists and art lovers, so that they would be familiar with the profound wisdom contained in these tales.26 Inventories of the books owned by Amsterdam artists between 1650 and 1700 reveal that a great many of them had both Van Mander and Ovid on their shelves.27 The History of Rome by Titus Livius or Livy (59 BC−AD 17), a contemporary translation of Ab Urbe Condita about the history of Rome and its influential leaders since the founding of the city, is the third important source for the Town Hall decorations. To illustrate the theme of justice in the Tribunal, Van Campen chose an oft-depicted episode: the moment when Lucius Junius Brutus, the first consul of 22 In the more recent past, the classicist character of Van Campen’s image of Christ with arrows in his hand has led to Christ’s being taken for the Roman god Jupiter. Q. Buvelot, ‘Jacob van Campen als schilder en tekenaar’, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 85.

23 The following Dutch translation was used in preparing this essay: M. d’Hane-Scheltema (translation and commentary), Ovidius ‘Metamorphosen’, Amsterdam 2014.

24 Sluijter 2007, p. 45. For the popularity of the Metamorphoses see among others Sluijter 2000a and b, Sluijter 2007.

25 Van Mander 1604, fol. iiiiv, quoted in Sluijter 2007, p. 45.

26 Sluijter 2007, p. 51.

27 In the seventeenth century, books were a far more valuable possession than they are today: the folio editions, in particular, were too expensive for most people. For more information about the book holdings of Amsterdam artists see Kattenberg 2014.

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Rome, gave the signal for the beheading of his two sons for their complicity in a conspiracy.28 Two scenes from the life of Quintus Fabius Maximus were chosen as the model of dignity for the overmantels in the burgomasters’ private office—by Jan Lievens (1607-1674) in paint and by Artus Quellinus in marble. In the Burgomasters’ Cabinet, the meeting room used by the burgomasters present and past, Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) were each commissioned to portray a powerful ruler of the Roman Empire, the incorruptible Manius Curius Dentatus and the steadfast Gaius Fabricius Luscinus.

These last two examples illustrate just how closely the artists adhered to the source text in creating their works. The episode from the life of Curius that Flinck depicted is the moment when the Samnites, sworn enemies of the Romans, send envoys to offer the consul gold. [fig. 3] ‘The envoys found him in his farmhouse, where he sat by the hearth roasting turnips and, as they had been charged to do, offered him gold, which he refused with this noble reply, saying “that he would rather rule over those who possessed gold than possess gold himself: and that they should therefore take their gold away again, and say to those who had sent them that Curius could not be beaten in battle nor bribed with gold”.’29 Flinck transformed the farmhouse into a classical temple, but the contrast between Curius’s simple garment and the envoys’ elaborate robes and the gold they bring, the gesture of proud rejection, holding the turnip aloft while waving away their offer with the other hand, successfully conveys the story’s moral message. A wise lesson for the burgomasters—they, too, must be incorruptible.

The story surrounding Bol’s picture of Fabricius starts with a similar refusal of gold and silver. This time it is King Pyrrhus who puts a great Roman leader to the test.

When bribery fails to produce the desired result, the king tries to frighten him with the largest elephant in his garrison. [fig. 4]

Fig. 3 The incorruptible Consul Manius Curius Dentatus, 1656 Govert Flinck (1615-1660) Oil on canvas, 485 x 377 cm Location: Burgomasters’ Cabinet

‘This was so staged that while Fabricius was turned towards the elephant’s trunk, the elephant, standing behind the tapestry and firmly goaded, gave a terrifying bellow. However, Fabricius, not at all dismayed, turned amiably to the king and said to him, “Sire, your gold did not move me yesterday, and your elephant did not do so today”.’30

28 Van de Waal 1952, p. 261 (via DBNL http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/waal016drie01_01/waal016drie01_01.pdf), Buch binder-Green 1974, p. 54.

29 Livy/Dupleix 1646, II, fol. 104. Valerius Maximus (see for example Maximus/Mirkinius 1614, 4.3.5, fol. 227) also recounts the story of Manius Curius Dentatus.

30 Livy/Dupleix 1646, II, fol. 108-109. Plutarch (see for example Plutarch/Van Zuylen van Nyevelt 1644, Pyrrhus X, fol. 171) also gives an account of Pyrrhus and Fabricius, but not as expressively as Livy.

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Fig. 4 Fabricius and King Pyrrhus, 1656 Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) Oil on canvas, 485 x 350 cm Location: Burgomasters’ Cabinet

Fig. 5 Title page of Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, of Uytbeeldingen des Verstands, 1644

To press home the message of the painting, steadfastness, Joost van den Vondel wrote an accompanying verse, as in an emblem book; the last sentence reads: ‘Thus no statesman yields to gifts or noise’.31 Alongside the kings, consuls and gods, Van Campen put allegories with moral messages. Abstract concepts are easier to comprehend when they are personified.

Above the door to the Secretary’s Office, for instance, we find the quality of ‘silence’.

For this Van Campen turned to the widely consulted emblem book Iconologia of Uytbeeldinghen des Verstants by Cesare Ripa (1560-1625). This manual was translated from the original Italian into Dutch by D.P. Pers and published in Amsterdam in 1644. [fig. 5] In Vondel’s view it served ‘to express the work in a lively fashion and richly embellish it’.32 In his book Ripa describes virtues and vices, the attributes that belong to the various gods and to the elements of fire, air, water and earth (Fuoco, Aria, Acqua and Aerde), and explains how artists could best embody the different continents in a single person.

While Van Campen selected several figures or stories from each of the sources referred to above, the same is not true of those mentioned below. For the decoration above the door to the Insurance Chamber, where individuals could take out insurance policies, he sought inspiration in the History of Herodotus (484-425/20 BC), from which he chose the story of the poet Arion who was captured by pirates. His sublime lyre-playing attracted dolphins, one of which saved him when he was cast into the sea. The scene of the hero Odysseus meeting Princess Nausicaä, designed for the fireplace in the Bankruptcy Chamber, was taken from the Odyssey, the epic poem by the Greek poet Homer (c. 800-750 BC).

Bit by bit, the biblical kings, Greek gods, Roman consuls and personifications in the allegories, allotted starring roles by Van Campen in every room in the Town Hall, give shape to the rhetoric of the building. These figures should not be regarded as isolated lessons or episodes chosen at random. As we read in Vondel’s Inwijdinge, it is possible to identify overarching storylines in the Town Hall within which all the personages can be placed: Amsterdam as the centre of the golden age of universal peace and universal justice; and the philosophy of virtues and vices for good governance and civil rule.

31 ‘Zoo zwicht geen man van Staet voor gaven nog gerucht.’ Fremantle 1959, p. 62. For more information about the creation of Bol’s painting see Blankert 1982, pp. 42-46.

32 ‘het werck levendigh uit te drucken, en rijckelijk te bekleeden’. Quotation from Vondel 1645-1656 (ed. 1931), p. 487, quoted in Buchbinder-Green 1974, p. 99 in note 19.

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THE MORAL OF THE STORY After the Dutch Revolt against Spain officially came to an end on 15 May 1648, the construction plans moved ahead more swiftly.33 The signing of the peace gave the city fathers the opportunity to dedicate the new Town Hall to a higher goal: the glorification of Amsterdam in the new golden age of universal peace and universal justice.34 We find this higher goal reflected in the decorations on the exterior and in the areas most accessible to the public—the Citizens’ Hall and the surrounding galleries.

Adopting the arguments of the Roman philosopher Seneca and the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, the city fathers of Amsterdam believed that trade was the best means of promoting peace between peoples.35 The two tympana and the six bronze statues on the exterior thus project Amsterdam’s dominance of peace and trade. The bronze Peace and Atlas together express universal peace. The four bronze personifications of the prime virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and vigilance allude to qualities of the good, just authority that is essential for peace. On the two tympana the Maid of Amsterdam receives ‘favour and honour’ from all quarters, from the world’s oceans on one side and from the four continents on the other.36 [fig. 6] The Maid of Amsterdam also takes centre stage in the Citizens’ Hall, this time as the midpoint of the world and the universe, while the elements acclaim the Town Hall and the planets dance around her.37 In the Metamorphoses Ovid writes that the universe and the world were formed from the four elements—fire, air, earth and water. In the seventeenth century people believed that God combined and merged the conflicting properties of the elements so that harmony was achieved. Ovid also

33 On 28 July 1648 Amsterdam City Council approved Van Campen’s final design. The first stone was ceremonially laid exactly three months later.

34 Goossens 2010, p. 13. Goossens asserts that Creation is the noble goal.

35 Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), p. 120.

36 Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), p. 185, ll. 1329-30.

37 Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), p. 26, ll. 20-21.

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Fig. 6 Design for the tympanum on front of Amsterdam Town Hall, 1646-1650 Jacob van Campen (1596-1657) pen and brown ink, over a pencil sketch, 19,5 x 76,8 cm Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

describes how, when man was created, an aurea aetas dawned, a golden age of universal harmony. Ovid describes a world that knows no vengeance or laws, no punishment or war, no farming or hunting, a world in which crops grow and flowers bloom untended. In the seventeenth century it appeared that this golden age had arrived, even though this Utopian view stood in stark contrast to the fact that the city’s prosperity came from a position in international trade and commerce built on bloody armed conflict.

To the depiction of the universe in the Citizens’ Hall Van Campen added decorations alluding to good and just authority. This second storyline is pursued in the various Town Hall offices. Hugo Grotius believed that virtue and liberty were closely allied concepts. In time, a people that is not virtuous ‘by nature’, will descend into internal disputes. Authority is then required to restore order and peace.38 The virtue ethic has its origins in the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle states that people develop an excellent character through custom.39 By doing excellent—in other words, virtuous—things, man himself becomes virtuous. Aristotle pointed out that with punishment and reward legislators can encourage people to do what is good and refrain from what is bad. The symbolism of the Town Hall, as the seat of order and authority, consequently had to encourage good government and good citizenship. There is nothing strange in the arts being used for this purpose; their task first and foremost was to educate people and encourage socially desirable behaviour.40 On the one hand, the sculpture, the paintings on the overmantels and the ceiling decorations in the administrative and judicial offices served a practical goal as visual signposting. On the other, they were scenes that were relevant to the working of the body that met in the room or acted as encouragement—or a warning—to the citizens who had to deal with the body concerned.41 It was instantly obvious to visitors to the Town Hall that the door in the Citizens’ Hall surmounted by Justice flanked by Penalty and Strict Law led to the court of justice, the Magistrates’ Chamber. The statuary group left them in no doubt as to what awaited them if they broke the law.

To the magistrates the personifications symbolized the classical ideals judges must aspire to, among them justice, wisdom and mercy. On the opposite side of the Citizens’ Hall, above the entrance to the burgomasters’ offices, the hundred-eyed monster Argus guarded Io, whom Jupiter had transformed into a heifer, just as the city fathers watched over their citizens and their city.

38 Albrecht 1979, p. 18.

39 Jacobs 2008.

40 Fremantle 1959, p. 63.

41 Vlaardingerbroek 2013, p. 91. The idea of mythological figures symbolizing the use of the different rooms is not unique, but this conceit was only ever carried through in detail in Amsterdam’s Town Hall. For examples of decorations in other town halls see Buchbinder-Green 1974, pp. 45-72 and B. Brenninkmeijer-de Rooij, ‘“Ansien doet ghedencken”. Historieschilderkunst in openbare gebouwen en verblijven van de stadhouders’, in Washington/Detroit/Amsterdam 1980-1981, pp. 65-75.

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Heroes of a golden age, gods and Titans, wise poets and foolish kings, powerful city maids, goddesses of the hunt or love, gods of trade or war; they still watch and warn.

Yet their silence has been broken. They tell their stories to those who want to hear.

These are wise lessons from bygone ages, but still relevant today.

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How Theseus was Insured and Odysseus Saved from Ruin MYTHOLOGY IN THE INSURANCE CHAMBER AND THE BANKRUPTCY CHAMBER

by Eric Jan Sluijter

Fig. 1 Civil Affairs Department at Amsterdam Town Hall, 2015

Nowadays Amsterdam’s city council communicates with its citizens on brightly coloured websites, where cheerful young people represent the virtues of the work of the city’s civil servants. In the Golden Age the powerful role of the city government and its officials was similarly legitimized with images of attractive youngsters. Today, subtle messages about higher ideals in society are conveyed in wholly contemporary terms. [fig. 1] In the seventeenth century words and images from Classical Antiquity were harnessed to raise the contemporary and the commonplace to a higher plane and present the council’s dignity and ideals in a timeless and prestigious wrapping.

This was true above all of the sculpture and decorations for Amsterdam’s Town Hall, for they would have to express the power and the values of the city fathers for centuries to come.

Joost van den Vondel’s ode to the new Town Hall reveals that the Amsterdam elite’s image of itself and of the council was one of supreme self-confidence and extraordinary idealism. In the last few lines of this long hymn of praise, Vondel writes that the city council knows when to loosen the reins and when to tighten them; it gears taxation to the prosperity of state and trade, grants everyone a place, whatever his origins, and takes compassionate care of the poor. Freedom of conscience is protected, everyone may think what they wish and nobody’s rights are infringed.

Loyalty to the community is rewarded, virtue is prized above all, the arts flourish and the sciences are held in esteem, while peace is fostered by remaining friends with everyone all over the world—as far as our ships sail.1 This distinctly propagandist poem rings with unflagging pride in all that the city and its government have achieved. In our time, no one would dare to blow their own trumpet in this way, and there are certainly many caveats to Vondel’s overblown exultation about the city government and his rose-tinted picture of freedom and prosperity through trade, tolerance, care and justice. It was, though, a city ideology that the authorities took every opportunity 1

Vondel 1645-1656 (ed. 1931), p. 904, ll. 1349-79: ‘De Burgemeester weet den breidel hier te vieren, / En aen te halen; weet alle ampten te bestieren / ... / De lasten minderen, zoo veel de Staet dit lijdt, / Eer ’s koopmans koopkans keere, en winste en welvaert slijt’. / Uitheemschen gunt hy plaets, en welkomtze uit ontfarmen, / ’t Geweten, min of meer door onverstant verruckt, / Beschut hy, niemant wort in zijn gemoedt gedrukt, / Noch in zijn billijck Recht verkort, of opgehouden, / Getrouwheit aen ’t Gemeen wort rijckelijk vergouden. / De deughden draven hoogh, op ’t voortreên van den Heer, / De boosheit smilt allengs, geen gout gaet boven eer, / De kunsten winnen velt, de nutte wetenschappen / Geraecken op den troon, ... / ... / Men koestert pais en vre, tot daer de zeevaert stuit, / Houdt ieder een ten vrient, ...’

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to proclaim and one in which the Amsterdam elite believed. These notions also resonate in the Town Hall decorations. The paintings in the Bankruptcy Chamber and the Insurance Chamber are prime examples of this thinking. [figs. 2 and 6] Stories from Classical mythology were co-opted with great ingenuity for these civil offices in order to present officials and visitors alike with ideals that were seen as appropriate to the functions of these rooms. In other rooms in the Town Hall, there were no qualms about comparing the burgomasters with Roman consuls and projecting very masculine images of Roman republican virtues like austerity, intrepidity, justice and incorruptibility on to the governors of the respublica amstelredamensis.2 The officials of the Bankruptcy Chamber and the Insurance Chamber, by contrast, could look at images of mythological women to portray the virtues of compassion, sympathy and insuring against risks.

Some regents with a humanist background, supported by Jacob van Campen, must have delighted in seeking out fitting subjects, for they display an originality that was highly unusual. In his ode, which was written several years before the decorations were executed, Vondel referred to other, equally uncommon scenes. For the Bankruptcy Chamber he mentioned the story of Odysseus, who was saved by the beautiful goddess Calypso after his ship was wrecked (from Homer’s Odyssey V) and for the Insurance Chamber the tale of Medea, who gave Jason magic herbs to render the dragon of the Golden Fleece harmless (from Ovid’s Metamorphoses VII, 84-158).

Although Vondel sometimes proves well informed about the decorations that were yet to be painted, in this case either he or Daniel Stalpaert, the superintendent of the building works who, as Vondel reports, had given him a guided tour and explanation, must have been mistaken.3 Perhaps one of them could only recall that the story for one of the rooms came from the Odyssey and was about Odysseus’s shipwreck, and that the other was taken from the Metamorphoses. Remembering only this much, Vondel may well have come up with a tale himself.4 These, though, were not suitable subjects. A painter could do little with the story of Calypso, for instance, because Homer provides no details whatsoever about Calypso’s rescue of Odysseus, while Medea with her magic powers, who murdered her brother, her children and others, was anything but an exemplary woman.

2 Van de Waal 1952, vol. 1, pp. 215-20; Blankert 2004.

3 Vondel 1645-1656 (ed. 1931), p. 898, l. 1169: ‘Toen Stalpaert mij de kunst aldus liet zien en hooren.’

4 Oddly enough, both stories immediately precede those that were actually chosen.

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Fig. 2 Odysseus en Nausicaä, 1657 Thomas de Keyser (1596-1667) Oil on canvas, 200 x 167 cm Location: Bankruptcy Chamber

Fig. 3 Odysseus en Nausicaä, 1619 Pieter Lastman (1583-1633) Oil on panel, 91.5 x 117.2 cm Alte Pinakothek, Munich

THE BANKRUPTCY CHAMBER Odysseus’s reception by Nausicaä, on the other hand, was a very apt choice for the Bankruptcy Chamber. [fig. 2] Not only was the subject one that had previously been depicted by Pieter Lastman, a universally admired painter of an earlier generation, it was also a story in which Homer had given a great many expressive details, so that an artist had plenty to go on.5 Lastman had made grateful use of them and many people must have been familiar with the painting he made in 1619 [fig. 3], among them Thomas de Keyser, who painted the overmantel for the Bankruptcy Chamber.6 The work probably hung in the house of one of the Amsterdam regents. As far as we know, Lastman was the first artist to choose this dramatic confrontation as the subject for a painting.7 He may well not have had an example in the form of a book illustration or print,8 as was often the case, because unlike Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey had not been illustrated at that time. It is clear from both paintings, however, that Lastman had undertaken a close reading of Homer’s wonderful story, in Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert’s translation, and had reproduced many of the details in it. The location described by Homer and the occupations of Nausicaä and her handmaidens before they were alarmed by Odysseus, washed up on the shore, are clearly represented. The girls are on a sheltered beach which they had reached on a donkey-cart. They have washed clothes and are now folding them up and loading them on to the cart, having enjoyed a picnic of delicacies and wine provided by Nausicaä’s mother. Awakened by their voices, the naked Odysseus, covering himself with a leafy branch, has crept out from the bushes; the startled girls scatter in all directions. Only Nausicaä (supported, although she does not know it, by Athena) stands calmly and courageously, while Odysseus kneels at some distance before her.9 In the 1619 painting Nausicaä’s monumental figure immediately draws the eye— both Odysseus’s and the viewer’s. Her outflung arms reflect her surprised reaction to the sudden appearance of the dirty, wretched Odysseus, but at the same time 5 Homer/Coornhert/Weevers 1561 (ed. 1939), V, pp. 445-93 and VI, pp. 1-216. For Coornhert’s translation see note 9. On the relationship between text and images in Lastman’s paintings see Sluijter 2000a, p. 40.

6 For Lastman’s works and all the paintings derived from them see Seifert 2011, pp. 101, 230-34, 275-76, 289.

7 Lastman’s first version of this subject dates from 1609 and is now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig.

8 Tümpel reproduced a woodcut from a German edition of the Odyssey dating from 1537 depicting the same moment. A print like this may have given Lastman the idea, but there is no formal relationship whatsoever.

Tümpel 1974, pp. 135-36.

9 Homer/Coornhert/Weevers 1561 (ed. 1939), p. 128, ll. 152-57 and 160-63: ‘Dies vloden zij verschrikt ginds en herwaarts al te zamen, / Behalven Nausikaa; die heeft alleen voet gehouen, / Door Pallas die haar gesterkt had met goed betrouwen;/ Dies bleef zij moedig staan om Ulyssem te verwachten/ Die peinsde oft hij dicht bij haar zijn knien zoude vouwen / Dan van verre bidden met smekelijke klachten / ... / Daar docht hem best, om troost in zijn lijden te verpachten / Van verre te verwekken tot meedogende minne / Om haar niet te vertoornen t’zijnen ongewinne, / En begons aldus met zijn listige tonge te smeken.’ In the 1609 work he also pictured a songbook—an allusion to the fact that the girls had been singing, as the story relates. There is no reference to the ball game Homer mentions.

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suggest that she receives the stranger with open arms. Because the viewer is looking from Odysseus’s viewpoint, it seems that she is also addressing him. The key idea, a hospitable welcome, is clearly expressed. The difference between Nausicaä’s steadfastness and the other girls’ fear is palpable, as is the contrast between the rich king’s daughter and the poor and wholly destitute shipwreck survivor. This painting was probably designed to hang on the overmantel in the reception room of an Amsterdam patrician. This is certainly true of a painting of the same scene made more than twenty years later by Joachim von Sandrart as an overmantel for the reception room in the house of the powerful burgomaster Joan Huydecoper [fig. 4], who a decade later was probably also involved in the decoration and furnishing of the Town Hall.10 The house no longer exists, but the magnificent mantelpiece designed by Philips Vingboons, with Sandrart’s painting, has come down to us unscathed. [fig. 5]23 Lastman chose the moment when sudden physical movements on the part of the protagonists could be used to express a powerful emotion whose aim was to ‘move’ the viewer and awaken his compassion. Sandrart chooses a calmer moment, for he also wanted to picture idealized grace and beauty.11 Here we see how, despite the miserable state he is in, Odysseus kneels gracefully before Nausicaä as he addresses her beseechingly. Nausicaä, standing in an elegant contrapposto, takes clothes from a basket held by a handmaiden so that he can cover his nakedness, while another young woman offers a bowl of fruit. This takes place after Nausicaä has commanded her friends to stay calm and give this stranded man clothes and food. Sandrart chose to present not the reception of a frightening stranger, but the image of civilized people offering one another help and hospitality—after all, Nausicaä swiftly recognized that despite his alarming appearance Odysseus was not an ordinary stranger but a man of high rank.

Thomas de Keyser must have been very familiar with both Lastman’s work and Sandrart’s. He opted for a middle way and pictured both the reception and the help given to someone who has lost his home and possessions, for these were the ideals that the city fathers wanted to convey. The commissioners of the Bankruptcy Chamber, appointed by the magistrates and burgomasters, ruled in bankruptcy cases in this room. On the one hand they acted severely; property was immediately seized, taken into safekeeping and inventoried. On the other they provided the bankrupt with the means to live, tried to collect any outstanding debts he might be owed and called the creditors together to reach an accommodation. Creditors had to support their claims with evidence and had to be satisfied with only a percentage of the sums they were claiming.12 The fact that the cause of the misery pictured in the painting was a devastating storm at sea would have struck a chord with the seventeenth10 Sluijter 2015, pp. 87-88. On Huydecoper’s house see Ottenheym 1989, pp. 34-42.

11 On the painting by Sandrart see Sluijter 2006, pp. 217-18.

12 For the history, organization and function see the Archives of the Commissioners of the Bankruptcy Chamber: https://stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl/archieven/archiefbank/overzicht/5072.nl.html.

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Fig. 4 Odysseus en Nausicaä, 1641-1642 Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688) Oil on canvas, 104 x 168.5 cm Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Fig. 5 Odysseus en Nausicaä by Joachim von Sandrart in the original mantelpiece designed by Philips Vingboons, from Joan Huydecoper’s house.

Fig. 6 Theseus Returns the Ball to Ariadne, 1657 Willem Strijcker (1606/07-1663/67) Oil on canvas, 201 x 167 cm Location: Insurance Chamber

century citizens of Amsterdam. Many a bankruptcy was the result of investments in ships and cargoes that were lost—a disaster of this kind may even have contributed to Rembrandt’s bankruptcy.13 This subject consequently placed the emphasis on the image of assistance and compassion, not on the hard-headed pragmatism that was equally essential in a commercial culture. The fact that sympathy for the bankrupt had its limits was made plain before one ever entered the Bankruptcy Chamber. Above the door to the room was a stark warning of the pride that comes before a fall: Icarus plunging to his death because he believed he could fly higher and higher, and flew so close to the sun that the wax holding the wings to his back melted. As Karel van Mander wrote in a moralizing explanation of the tale, it shows that excess is dangerous: ‘Moderation stands fast / Immoderation perishes’.14 Like Lastman, De Keyser chose to place us in the position of the unfortunate, destitute shipwreck survivor looking at the steadfast Nausicaä, who makes a gesture of welcome. At the same time the maidservant beside her is already reaching for a length of fabric to clothe Odysseus; this, as in Sandrart’s painting, refers to the assistance that is offered at once. De Keyser added more elements of the story than Sandrart had, among them the wagon on which the laundry is being loaded (admittedly not drawn by Lastman’s donkeys—faithful to the text—but by high-bred white horses). The still life on the right is curious. In Lastman’s work it was a reference to the meal that Nausicaä and her friends had just enjoyed, but here there is no sign of food. The profusion of silver and gold chalices, dishes and ewers would have reminded seventeenth-century viewers of the many paintings in which such valuable objects allude to vanity and the transience of all riches.15 Nausicaä is dressed in a loose robe of white fabric falling in narrow folds— a reference to a classical past that has no connection with contemporary dress.

There can be no doubt that De Keyser studied a live model for Odysseus’s naked back and legs, and rendered what he saw. He also provided the officials and visitors with a little entertainment by adding some female nudes; he painted two virtually naked young women, walking away from us as if they were Diana’s nymphs who had just bathed (these figures must originally have been much clearer). De Keyser, who had little experience in painting nudes, made things easy for himself. He used the same figure seen from behind twice—once in mirror image. In terms of pose and form it bears a remarkable resemblance to the model that appears in the Rembrandt etching 13 Marten van den Broeck, who traded, among other things, a number of important paintings by Rembrandt in exchange for more than 8,000 guilders’ worth of ship’s fittings, was bankrupted by a shipwreck in 1650; Montias argued that Rembrandt’s paintings represented a stake in this enterprise. At his cessio bonorum (surrender of goods) he himself stated as the cause ‘losses suffered in trade as well as damage and losses at sea’ (‘door verliesen geleden in de negotie alsmede schaden ende verliesen bij der zee’). Montias 2002, pp. 180-86. See also Crenshaw 2006, pp. 38-39.

14 ‘De maet houdt staet / Onmaet vergaet.’ Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 71v.

15 See the emblem in Roemer Visscher’s Sinnepoppen ‘Ad Tragoedias, non ad Vitam’. Visscher 1614, no. 53.

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known as Pygmalion.16 THE INSURANCE CHAMBER The subject chosen for the Insurance Chamber was the story of the hero Theseus, who returns to Ariadne after killing the Minotaur—a monster, half man, half bull, that was imprisoned in the Labyrinth and fed with young men and maidens from Athens.

Theseus had found his way back out of the Labyrinth with the aid of a ball of yarn given to him by the lovesick Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete. In Willem Strijcker’s painting, Theseus, gazing gratefully up at her, returns the ball to Ariadne. [fig. 6] This mythological tale occurs in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII, 169-175).

Using Ovid as a source was a much more obvious choice at that time than Homer.

Almost all the mythological subjects in seventeenth-century paintings are based on the Metamorphoses. No other writer of Classical Antiquity was as popular or wrote as expressively on classical mythology as Ovid. In consequence, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards—the period when books illustrated with prints really began to flourish—no other book, aside from the Bible, was published so often in translations with illustrations.17 Ovid touched on the story of Theseus only briefly and seemed to assume that it would be familiar (in Amsterdam, for that matter, it would have been known chiefly through Hooft’s Theseus and Ariadne of 1614).18 In translations of the Metamorphoses, however, it was always accompanied by an illustration, and all these illustrations were always variations on the same pictorial scheme—the woodcut reproduced here had been reprinted countless times for almost a century since 1566. [fig. 7] They show two moments in the story: in the foreground Ariadne gives her beloved Theseus the ball of wool to find his way back out of the Labyrinth. In the middle ground, situated somewhat lower, we see the Labyrinth and discover the Minotaur with Theseus facing him, ready to strike. In the woodcut we look at a maze created with fences. In an Italian print, however, the Labyrinth has monumental brick walls [fig. 8], as we also observe in the background to Strijcker’s painting. Strijcker could not let us view it from above, though, because this would have meant that he had to violate the perspective, and a seventeenth-century painter could not possibly compromise reality in that way. The story is thus rather less clearly told, for the structure looks more like a fort than a labyrinth.

Such prints were clearly Strijcker’s starting point, but he selected a different moment to depict. The artist shows Theseus returning the ball to Ariadne when he

16 On this etching see Sluijter 2006, pp. 281-85. The pose originally derives from the famous Hellenist Venus de’ Medici (Roman copy of the type Aphrodite of Knidos), which Claes Moyaert also used in his Odysseus and Nausicaä of 1649.

17 On Metamorphoses translations and illustrations see Sluijter 2000a, Appendix I, pp. 170-79 and Appendix II, pp. 194-95.

18 At slightly greater length, but still very summarily, Ovid recounts Theseus’s defeat of the monster in Ariadne’s famous lament in Heroides X, 101-10. On Hooft’s play see the following note.

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Fig. 7 Theseus Receives the Ball from Ariadne, copy after Virgil Solis In: P. Ovidius Naso (trans. Johannes Florianus), Metamorphosis dat is: Die Herscheppinghe oft Veranderinghe, Amsterdam 1650, p. 236 (first edition Antwerp, 1566)

Fig. 8 Theseus Receives the Ball from Ariadne, c. 1470 Attributed to Baccio Baldini (1436-c. 1487) Engraving, 20.1 x 26.4 cm British Museum, London

has carried out his heroic deed.19 Behind him lies the slain Minotaur, whose hind legs and tail can only be made out on a closer examination; he consequently looks more like a satyr than a terrifying monster. In the prints he had the body of a bull, and only his chest and head were those of a man; there, the much more familiar type of the centaur was used. According to the legend, the Minotaur actually had a human body with a bull’s head, but we only encounter him in this form on Greek vases and in much more recent images. Theseus seems to have hastened back to Ariadne immediately: his sword, which he holds by the hilt and has not yet returned to its scabbard, is still smeared with the Minotaur’s blood. One of the girls behind Ariadne, a smile on her lips, makes contact with the viewer, as does the little dog in the foreground that spots us and appears to be barking at us furiously. These are devices to include the viewer more directly in the action.

While De Keyser had made his protagonists look as classical as possible, Strijcker was far less concerned about this, and dressed his classical heroes in the sort of hybrid costumes that were customary on the stage in those days.20 Elements of Roman and contemporary soldiers’ uniforms are fancifully combined in Theseus’s garb. His moustache and long hair lend him a rather fashionable seventeenth-century air, but the baggy drawers emerging from under his tunic and his spindly legs do not look very heroic to us, used as we are to the toned, muscular bodies of today’s Hollywood stars in roles like Odysseus. How this struck the seventeenth-century viewer is, however, impossible to say. Ariadne is dressed in a sumptuous costume that is a whimsical variation on mid-seventeenth-century dress. In this period the black slave girl was a familiar motif for denoting wealth and power; in reality, too, black servants could be found in the households of rich Amsterdam citizens.

This moment was probably chosen because the aim of the painting was to demonstrate not so much that Theseus ‘insured’ himself as that he benefited from this ‘insurance’ and was grateful to his ‘insurer’. The Insurance Chamber was where insurance policies were registered and rulings handed down in the event of disputes in matters of insurance. It is unlikely, though, that people were intended to think too deeply about the parallel, since Theseus, of course, did not pay any premium—unless we interpret as such his promise to marry Ariadne if she helped him. In fact, he broke this promise. Admittedly he did take her with him when he left, but he abandoned her on the island of Naxos, where the grieving Ariadne was subsequently found by Bacchus, who fell in love with her. The insured thus brought the insurer grief, after 19 Ovid does not describe this event in the Metamorphoses or Heroides. Buchbinder-Green suggests that Strijcker was inspired by a passage in Pieter Cornelisz Hooft’s Theseus and Ariadne of 1614 (Buchbinder-Green 1974, p. 147), but this seems unlikely. When Theseus comes to greet Ariadne, he simply says, ‘Voorsichtige Princes, ten waer u heussche gave / Mij immers alsoo veel behouden hadd’ als zij’ (‘Far-seeing princess, I owe my survival as much to your gift [the skeins] as to them [the gods]’) (Hooft 1614 (ed. 1972), p. 77, ll. 772-73). Strijcker and his clients must have come up with this logical scene of the return of the skein themselves.

20 This emerges from the title page prints of tragedies, such as the 1656 edition of Jan Vos’s smash hit Aran and Titus (Hummelen 1967, fig. XVI).

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profiting from her.

The idea that the viewer should not think about the rest of the story and that the meaning was contained solely in the episode depicted was customary in the seventeenth century. Married couples would have themselves painted in the guise of the lovers Meleager and Atalanta, Venus and Adonis, Venus and Paris, and even Jason and Medea, in what were known as portraits historiés, although all these tales have gruesome endings.21 Like the Bible exegeses of the period, stories from mythology were cut into pieces in the seventeenth century for the purpose of explaining them, and these fragments were interpreted without paying any heed to what followed.

In depicting love stories it was the idyllic picture of a loving couple that acquired timeless prestige from the context in classical mythology. Strijcker’s painting is about gratitude for the benevolent insurance against impending hazard; it was this that was the function of the work and the reason why this unusual scene was chosen.22 WHY THESE ARTISTS? The makers of the paintings discussed here were not among the most famous painters of the Golden Age. We may wonder why they, rather than any other artists, were awarded these important commissions. To start with, we have to remember that the Bankruptcy Chamber and the Insurance Chamber were not offices for the burgomasters, council members or magistrates; they were two public spaces where civil servants who were lower in the hierarchy performed their duties. (The artists commissioned to paint the overmantels for the Burgomasters’ Chamber, the Burgomasters’ Cabinet, the Council Chamber and the Magistrates’ Chamber were Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol and Jan Lievens, celebrated painters who asked and got high prices.23) Economies were evidently made in these public rooms, and the commissions went to painters who were much less expensive. But what prompted the improbable choice of a painter by whom no other work is known (Strijcker) and an artist who had virtually given up painting some considerable time before and was in any event primarily a portraitist (De Keyser)?

There was no question of open tenders in the seventeenth century; commissions were awarded to the artists with whom one had close ties. Commercial dealings were 21 For Ferdinand Bol’s portrait of a married couple as Jason and Medea, which was previously also taken to be Theseus and Ariadne or Bacchus and Ariadne, see Grijzenhout 2009-2010.

22 The learned viewer could project on to the picture Van Mander’s moral explanation that it was necessary to conquer desire and follow the thread of reason through the winding paths of the world, but this is of little relevance in this context (Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 71r.). On Van Mander’s Wtleggingh see Sluijter 2000a, pp. 179-83. How Renckens arrived at the far-fetched interpretation that the scene ‘symbolized the difficulties often encountered in establishing losses at sea’ is not clear to me (Renckens 1952, pp. 117-18).

23 For the few payments about which we have any information see among others Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 148; the difference between the payments for the decorations in the Council Chamber by Flinck and Van Bronckhorst, for instance, is significant; Flinck was paid 2,500 guilders, Jan van Bronckhorst 1,000 guilders. I estimate the prices for De Keyser and Strijcker at around 200 to 500 guilders. Given the difference in reputation, De Keyser would undoubtedly have been paid more than Strijcker.

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confined as far as possible within one’s own circle, because people had the greatest trust in their carefully constructed networks of family and friends.24 Where the commissions to painters for the Town Hall decorations are concerned, the relationship in Strijcker’s case would have been with Jacob van Campen, the Town Hall architect, and Thomas de Keyser’s brother, Willem Hendricksz de Keyser, who was closely involved in the building works as the city stonemason and drafting assistant to Van Campen. True, Willem de Keyser was removed from his post because of alleged bookkeeping irregularities in 1653 and Jacob van Campen left after a row in 1654, but by then the commissions would already have been granted to these painters. One salient detail: in 1658, as a bankrupt, Willem would have been able to contemplate his brother’s painting in the Bankruptcy Chamber, where it had been installed a year earlier.25 As a result of a misreading of the signature, Willem Strijcker acquired the nickname Braessemary, which authors continue to repeat to this day. Several of them interpreted this supposed nickname as a ‘Bentnaam’—dating from the time Strijcker was in Rome (around 1626) and probably belonged to the ‘Bentveughels’ (‘Birds of a Feather’), a group of Netherlandish artists there.26 What it actually reads is ‘Willem Braesseman / Alias . strijcker . f. 1657’.27 The artist used his mother’s maiden name; she came from an old Amsterdam family and her name was much classier than his father’s.28 The Braseman family, who remained Catholic during the Reformation, like the Van Campen family, were members of the well-to-do Catholic elite of Haarlem, whose origins were in Amsterdam.29 It is clear that Strijcker and Van Campen shared networks,30 and although we now know of no other work by Strijcker, Van Campen

24 Kok 2013, chapter 1 ‘De economie van dienst en wederdienst’. See also Kooijmans 1997, chapter 1 ‘Vriendschap’.

25 The commissions were probably awarded in 1652 (Blankert 1982, pp 42 and 44; Van de Waal 1952, volume 1, p. 216).

26 Renckens 1952, p. 117. In Rome he called himself Willem Dircksz Braesman (Hoogewerff 1942, p. 23).

27 This misreading goes back to Van Dyk 1758, p. 136, who calls him ‘Brassemary’, and this has been repeated ever since (in Bredius 1915-1922 as ‘Brasemary’, in Renckens 1952 as ‘Braessemary’).

28 The name occurs as that of a prominent family in Amsterdam as early as the fifteenth century: Dudok van Heel 2008, p. 44.The name is usually spelled Braseman.

29 Dudok van Heel 2008, pp. 57-58, p. 352. In 1538 and after the Alteration in 1578, members of the family moved from Amsterdam to Haarlem; Willem Strijcker’s maternal grandmother was the sister of Jacobus Zaffius, the well-known provost of the chapter in Haarlem, from whom Willem and his brothers inherited the Reguliershof.

Information about the Braseman family is based primarily on archive research carried out by Ietje Eijk in Amsterdam and Haarlem for a working group paper in 2010. For Van Campen’s family see M.J. Bok, ‘Familie, vrienden en opdrachtgevers’, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 27-52.

30 Strijcker was a friend of the landscape painter Steven Jansz van Goor. Jacob van Campen was a witness at the wedding of a niece of his and Steven Jansz van Goor. Van Goor worked with Strijcker and Van Helt Stockade, and also received commissions for decorations in the Amsterdam theatre, which Van Campen designed. The friendship between Van Goor, Strijcker, Rombout Verhulst and Gerard van Zijl emerges from a document dated 1646: Bredius 1915-1922, IV, p. 1244.

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owned several of his paintings.31 Strijcker was also well known to other artists in Van Campen’s circle who were awarded commissions for the Town Hall, among them the sculptor Rombout Verhulst, the painter Nicolaes van Helt Stockade and the successful Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol, with whom he shared life drawing sessions with a nude female model.32 He was with Willem de Keyser in Rome in the sixteen-forties.33 As a minor painter, Strijcker was not only cheap, he could also be relied upon to faithfully execute a composition by Van Campen. We know that Van Campen made accurate compositional sketches for the decorations in Huis ten Bosch and the painters were obliged to stick to them;34 he probably did the same for the Town Hall.

Famous artists sometimes made a fuss about this, as Jordaens did in Huis ten Bosch, but the position was different for lesser lights. It would appear highly plausible that the composition of the Theseus and Ariadne, which unmistakably betrays familiarity with a work in Rubens’s Medici cycle, was designed by Van Campen and executed by Strijcker.35 Thomas de Keyser, son of the renowned city architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser, was one of the most successful portrait painters in Amsterdam in the second half of the sixteen-twenties and in the sixteen-thirties.36 By the time he made the work for the Bankruptcy Chamber, he had virtually given up painting; his dealings in bluestone were probably much more lucrative.37 For this commission, unquestionably obtained through his brother, who had worked closely with Van Campen, he set

31 In the estate of Willem van Campen (Bredius 1915-1922, IV, pp. 1119-20), Jacob’s second cousin, there were no fewer than four works by Willem Strijcker. Marten Jan Bok convincingly argued that Willem’s collection of

paintings and architectural treatises came from Jacob’s holdings (‘Familie, vrienden en opdrachtgevers’, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 52).

32 This emerges from a case document dated 1658, in which posing nude was cited as proof of the model’s immorality. Bredius 1915-1922, IV, p. 1255 and Sluijter 2006, p. 323.

33 Renckens 1952, p. 117; see note 28 above. What will also have helped is that his brother, Dirck Dircksz Strijcker, was Secretary of Maritime Affairs in Amsterdam (Renckens 1952, p. 116).

34 See among others Q. Buvelot, ‘Ontwerpen voor geschilderde decoratieprogramma’s’, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 137-38 and Van Eikema Hommes/Kolfin 2013, pp. 48-58.

35 As Renckens already pointed out (Renckens 1952, pp. 117-18) the composition as a whole is based on Rubens’s painting of Henry IV Handing Over the Reign to Marie de’ Medici in the Louvre. It is evident from some of the paintings in Huis ten Bosch that Van Campen must have been familiar with compositions in the Medici cycle, probably from drawn copies, since there were no prints of them at that time. The motif of the woman standing in front of a palace while a young black man holds a parasol above her head—a young woman in Strijcker’s painting—shows unmistakable similarities to Van Dyck’s portrait of Elena Grimaldi (1623), now in the National Gallery in Washington D.C. Van Campen may have had a drawing of it, but Strijcker himself might also have seen the motif in Genoa and copied it during his travels in Italy. Genoa was a favourite destination for artists, famous as it was for its palace architecture and collections.

36 Adams 1985. On De Keyser’s history paintings in this period see Sluijter 2015, pp. 272-84.

37 Biography Weissman 1904, 79-82. Adams 1985, pp. 18-44, 71-94, 416-21 and 439-40. He was referred to as a ‘blausteencooper’, a dealer in bluestone, since 1640. Ann Jensen Adams suggested that this was Portland stone (Adams 1985, p. 418), a white stone in which the De Keyser family traded, but it is more likely to have been azurite or lazurite (lapis lazuli, from which the costly pigment ultramarine was made).

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about painting a ‘history’. It is likely that in this case, too, there was a design by Van Campen to work from.

Both De Keyser and Strijcker produced wholly satisfactory reflections of the ideals considered appropriate for the function of these rooms in the Town Hall.

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Hidden Stories Revealed Jasper Hillegers

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Atlas dominion over the sea. The two paintings were to have trumpeted Amsterdam’s all-encompassing power.

A ceiling painting of the southern firmament, which was never executed, would have mirrored the magnificent inlaid northern firmament in the marble floor. This was designed so that visitors could imagine that they were part of the microcosm that was the Town Hall, in which Amsterdam—with its ships that sailed all over the world—was the radiant centre.

The iconic statue of Atlas, bearing the blue-green southern firmament on his shoulders, dominates the universe of the Citizens’ Hall from the cornice at the top of the west wall. Writers such as Hesiod (Theogony, 507 ff.) and Hyginus (Fabulae, 150) tell us that Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene. He led the Titans—the children of Gaea and Uranus—in the Titanomachy, their ill-fated series of battles against the gods. As punishment Zeus had him placed on the western edge of Gaea (the Earth), where he had to carry Uranus (the celestial spheres) on his shoulders to prevent their further alliance. Van Mander left all this out and wrote that Atlas had studied heaven and its phenomena in detail, and so it was said that he ‘had taken heaven on his shoulders’.1 The statue is identical to the bronze Atlas on the western tympanum of the Town Hall. It is in fact the full-size modello which was used to make the mould for the bronze statue.

It was not to be. In 1665, when the Town Hall had already been open for ten years, but the programme of decorations was still unfinished, it was decided to reuse the models for the statues on the tympanums— Atlas, Peace and the Four Virtues—in the Citizens’ Hall. So Atlas also carries the celestial sphere inside the Town Hall and is, as Vondel writes in his Inwydinge, vital to Amsterdam’s fleet and its prosperity : ‘and Atlas upholds, / Heaven which he bears on his strong shoulders, / in which the globe hangs, divided into land and seas, / So that the sailor dares to voyage to every shore’.3

Although seemingly self-evident, Van Campen had not foreseen Atlas’s presence in the Citizens’ Hall. An engraving made by Jacob Vennekool in 1661 shows the original design for the west wall, in which we can see that Van Campen had planned an enormous painting of the Gigantomachy above the Justice sculptural group.2 In this story, taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I, 151-62), Jupiter seals his dominion by curbing the rebellion of the Giants. A painting of the same size on the east side was to have shown Neptune’s 1 Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol 39v: ‘desen Atlas was wonder ervaren in Hemelconst, loop, cracht, en werckinghe, van Sonne, Mane, en Sterren hem wel verstaende: en om dat hy soo swaer leeringe, en arbeydt hadde bestaen, werdt geseyt, dat hy den Hemel op zijn schouderen gheladen hadde.’

2 Vennekool 1661, pl. H. The composition looks very much like Virgil Solis’s woodcut of the subject, part of his well-known series of illustrations from the Metamorphoses. See also Fremantle 1959, pp. 43-44.

3 ‘en Athlas onderschraeght / Op zyne schouders fors den hemel, dien hy draeght, /

Waerin al d’ aerdtkloot hangt, gedeelt aen aerde en baren, / Om wien de zeeman durf naer alle kusten vaeren’. Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 891-96.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Atlas, c. 1660-61 Plaster, wood, height Atlas approx. 355 cm, diameter of terrestrial globe approx.

350 cm Location Citizens’ Hall, west wall cornice Selected bibliography Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. X Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 42 Gabriels 1930, pp. 120, 146-47 Luttervelt 1949, p. 37 Fremantle 1959, p. 55 Swillens 1961, p. 229 Amsterdam 1977, p. 72 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 216, 218, fig. 219 Goossens 1996, p. 27, fig. 31 Goossens 2010, pp. 29, 49, 56 Scholten 2010, pp. 22, 44-45, 47-48, 51, 54, fig. 23

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Justice Justice sits on her throne above the entrance to the Magistrates’ Chamber, where the aldermen and the sheriff administered justice. She holds her golden sword of justice and a pair of scales. Behind her radiates the sun of divine justice.1 Under her right foot lies the Phrygian king Midas, identified by his donkey’s ears. In his Metamorphoses (XI, 90-179), Ovid relates how he received them after he was present at an ill-matched competition between Pan, the god of the fields and forests, who blew on his pipes, and Apollo, who played his divine lyre. The mountain god Tmolus was the judge and declared Apollo the winner, but Midas disagreed with his decision. Apollo, furious with such incompetent ears, turned them into the ears of a donkey. This is preceded by the story of Midas taking pity on the satyr Silenus, tutor of the wine god Bacchus. After days of feasting he brought Silenus back to Bacchus, who was grateful to Midas and granted him a wish. Midas wished that everything he touched would turn to gold, but swiftly discovered that the wish meant that his food turned to gold, too.

Starving, he had to implore Bacchus to cancel the wish. Midas’s presence here represents foolishness and lack of judgement.2 This is why Midas also wears a crown of poppy seed-heads, to underline his folly and forgetfulness, and why Fokkens, for instance, described Midas as ‘ignorant’.3 To Midas’s right, under Justice’s left foot, lies Invidia or Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, depicted as a shrivelled old woman with serpent hair.

Ripa explained that she ‘is painted old because she is an old enemy of Virtue. The snakes instead of hair are the evil thoughts’.4 Like Midas’s ignorance, Envy was a poor adviser to Justice, and hence to the magistrates, who had to pronounce objective judgment without selfinterest or ‘other desires that can harm justice.’5 The personification on the left of the main group is always regarded as Death, but actually appears to be the embodiment of Giustitia Rigorosa – Strict Justice.

Ripa describes this figure as ‘A skeleton, as Death is painted, covered with a white cloak’.6 Strict Justice represents the administration of the law which will not bow to apparent innocence nor consider a reduction in sentence on unsound grounds, which acts without regard for people—like Death, which does not concern itself with age, status, sex or position ‘in carrying out its punishment’. Above Strict Justice is the Rod or Scourge of God—‘God’s strength and power over guilty and angry people’—portrayed by two putti, who hold a scourge and bolts of lightning in their arms.

The scourge stands for the punishment that will bring people to the right path ‘after the proverb, whom I love, I punish’. The lightning represents the punishment for stubborn sinners, who believe that they will receive God’s forgiveness at the end of their lives.7 Strict Justice reminds us of the integrity and steadfastness of the courts; the Scourge of God refers to the divine justice of punishment.

1 Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 84. The Sun of Justice is Christ.

2 It is often suggested that Midas personifies avarice. See for example Gabriels 1930, p. 118; Fremantle 1959, p. 75; Fremantle, in Amsterdam 1977, p. 38.

3 Fokkens 1662, p. 119. Dapper 1765, p. 34 even left out the name Midas and merely calls him ‘Ignorance’.

4 oud geschildert, om dat zy een oude vyandin van de Deughd is. De Slangen in plaets van de hoofdhayren zijn de quaede gedachten’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 350.

5 ‘andere sucht, die het Recht kan schenden’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 432.

6 Een geraemte, gelijck men den Dood schildert, met een witte Mantel bedeckt’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 433. Ripa also described a sword and a set of scales, but Justice herself carries them here. Ripa’s descriptions are repeatedly half quoted and/or mixed up.

7 ‘de kracht en mogentheyd Godes over de schuldige en boose Menschen’; ‘nae ‘t spreeckwoord, dien ick lief heb, straf ick.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 439-40. Although Ripa described the Rod or Scourge of God as a man in a red cloak, the attributes correspond. It seems likely that - 34

The most complicated figure seems to be Chastisement or Punishment, on Justice’s left. Ripa describes various personifications of punishment.8 One is Punitione, who holds a ruler—for sentencing—and a bridle in her hands, and was seen as Justice’s daughter. Punishment does indeed have a ruler, a pair of compasses, a bridle and a chain as attributes. Another personification of punishment is Pena—Agonizing Punishment. Her attributes are the stelte (the wooden leg that lies on Punishment’s lap) and the geessel. The scourge that Punishment holds in her right hand is actually a fasces, the Roman bundle of wooden rods with an axe with a rope hanging from it. From one of Ripa’s personifications of Justice we learn that the scourge and the axe were traditionally carried by executioners and Lord Chief Justices ‘to show that punishment must not hold back where Justice demands it: people should not be hasty, but allow time to ponder judgment with mature reason, which can be shown by binding the Scourge’.9 Hence Punishment legitimizes herself by carrying Justice’s scourge, which represents mature consideration—and with it the correctness of punishment and sentence. The two figures above Punishment are harpies, female monsters in the form of birds with human faces. Several writers of Antiquity, among them Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica II, 178-239), tell how the Thracian king Phineus abused his prophetic gift and thus showed a total lack of respect for Jupiter, who punished him by blinding him and every

day had the harpies steal the food from his plate and pluck it out of his hands. Here the harpies refer to this story10 and, like their pendants, the putti on the left, function as winged divine scourges.

In the centre of the frieze below the group we can see the winged eye of God, with measuring instruments and two horns of plenty beside it. While the cornucopia on the left is entwined with flowers and filled with fruit and a hand holding a palm and a laurel wreath, the one on the right is crowned with thorns and filled with shackles, chains, a cane and a hand grasping a scourge.

They represent, as Hubert Quellinus recorded on the print after the work by his brother Artus, ‘The Reward of the good and the Punishment of the evil, with the Rule with which one measures, one shall be measured’.11

10 Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 335, described the harpies (which he calls Jupiter’s Dogs) and said that they were sent to punish. However he also stated that this happened because Phineas had put out his son’s eyes.

11 ‘De Beloningh van de goede en de Straf van de quade, Met de Maet daermen meede meet, salmen gemeten worde’. Quellinus 1655-1663, Index to the second volume, no. L. For the frieze see also Fremantle 1959, p. 75.

12 Gabriels 1930, p. 118 thought that the group was not made by Quellinus, but executed by an assistant, possibly Bartholomeus Eggers, after Quellinus’s model.

See also Luttervelt 1949, pp. 36-37, who also suggested Eggers as the sculptor.

13 The group had already been specifically described by Fokkens in 1662, presumably from Quellinus’s model. However Gabriels 1930, p. 118, argued on the basis of the absence of Hubertus Quellinus’s print from the first edition of volume II of his Van de voornaemste statuen that the group was created in 1664-65. The print does though appear in the second edition.

putti were chosen to maintain symmetry with the winged harpies on the right. Ripa’s personification of rhetoric (pp. 596-97) has the same attributes.

8 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 492-94.

9 ‘om te vertoonen, dat de straffe niet moet nae blijven, alwaer ‘t Recht dieselve vereischt: Men moet niet voorbarigh zijn, maer tijd geven om ‘t oordeel met rijpen raede te overwegen, ‘t welck by ‘t binden van de Roede wort te kennen gegeven’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 432.

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Artus Quellinus12 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Justice, 166213 Marble, c. 300 x 450 cm Location Magistrates’ Chamber, vestibule Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 349 Vennekool 1661, fig. Q Fokkens 1662, pp. 118-19 Dapper 1663, pp. 353-54 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 269-70 Quellinus 1655-63, II (only in the second edition, Amsterdam 1665-1668, unnumbered) Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 34 Gabriels 1930, pp. 117-18, 120, 303, fig. 22 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 36-37 Fremantle 1959, pp. 75-76, pl. 77-79 Swillens 1961, p. 229 Amsterdam 1977, p. 38, figs. 39, 40 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 103 - 36 9

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The Maid of Amsterdam with Power and Wisdom The Maid of Amsterdam, the proud personification of the city, sits on a throne in the centre of Van Campen’s microcosm in all her glory. As she does on the large eastern tympanum of the Town Hall, she holds an olive branch in her right hand. In her left she has palm branches; on her breast the three St Andrew’s crosses of Amsterdam. She wears a diadem in the shape of a town, as does Cybele the mother goddess in the gallery and the personification of the element earth on the south-eastern arch to the gallery. Above her an eagle with outspread wings places an emperor’s crown on her head, a lion lies on each side of her.

immortality. The eagle crowning the Maid belongs to Jupiter, but here it also refers to the eagle of the House of Habsburg, since it was Maximilian of Austria who granted Amsterdam the privilege of bearing the Habsburg crown on the city arms in 1489. The lions beside the Maid, as well as having a general association with power, strength and vigilance, also refer to the city arms of Amsterdam, which were already flanked by two lions at this time.2 The Maid of Amsterdam is supported by two female personifications; Power on the left and Wisdom on the right. Power or Forza, lays her hand on the Maid’s knee, as Ripa described, with a sword in her right hand.3 The lion’s skin she wears over her head, which also represents power, courage and even generosity of mind, belongs to the inhumanly strong Greek hero Hercules.4 Hercules wore the lion’s skin, as well as carrying his permanent attribute, the club, after he slew the Nemean lion—the first of the twelve labours he had to perform by order of the Mycenaean king Eurystheus. The lion had an impenetrable skin, but Hercules strangled the beast (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca II, 74-76) and stripped the skin.5 Wisdom is shown with the attributes of Minerva, the goddess of reason and ingenuity, who was born from the head of her father, Jupiter. On her head she wears Minerva’s helmet; behind her we can see the shield on which Minerva placed Medusa’s grisly head of snakes, which

The figure of a woman as the personification of a city is found in Antiquity. Ripa, for example, referred to female personifications of Rome, which he described from old medals. We encounter the Maid of Amsterdam for the first time on the lid of a harpsichord dating from 1606, now in the Rijksmuseum.1 Since then it has been impossible to imagine the standard iconography of the city without her. Thus she was present at official events, such as the reception of Marie de’ Medici in 1638, the Peace of Münster in 1648 and the inauguration of the Town Hall in 1655. The olive branch she holds was her popular attribute and symbolizes the peace that Amsterdam so jubilantly welcomed. The palm branch, like the olive branch also popular since antiquity, is a broad symbol that expresses peace, triumph, victory, glory, honour and 1 See Kolfin 2011, p. 384, fig. 2.

2 See for example the print of the city arms of Amsterdam by Boëtius Adamsz Bolswert (c. 1580-1633), which was used in L. Marius, Amstelredams eer ende opcomen, door de denckwaerdighe miraklen aldaer geschied aen ende door het H. Sacrament des Altaers Anno 1345, Antwerp 1639. Fokkens 1662, p. 117, refers to the vigilance of the lions.

3 Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 267 (‘Kracht’).

3 Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 267 (‘Kracht, Sterckheyd van ’t Lichaem’); p. 81 (‘Dapperheyt des

lichaems, vervoeght met eedelheyt des gemoet’).

5 Some sources maintain that the skin is in fact the skin of the Cithaeron lion, which Hercules killed when he was eighteen.

6 Medusa was once stunning; her hair was particularly beautiful. After Poseidon raped her while the chaste Minerva looked on, Minerva transformed Medusa’s hair into snakes so that people were turned to stone when they looked at her. Perseus finally beheaded her with the aid of a gleaming shield and gave her head to Minerva, who placed it on her - 38

was given to her by Perseus (Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, 770-803).6 Ripa quite cynically thought that Wisdom carried this frightening shield in order to cut off all false affection with it.7

symmetrically—the sun and the moon, the months of March, April and May represented by their zodiacal signs of Aries, Taurus and Gemini, and the months of December, January and February represented by Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces; dawn in the form of two swallows and a cockerel, and dusk, represented by a bat and an owl. It is striking that only half the signs of the zodiac are present. We may wonder where the other six signs should have been.12 In this context it is interesting that the birds and the bat are also symbols of East and West, and that as such they also represent the six male signs of the zodiac.13 As yet the whereabouts of North and South, and the female signs, remain unclear.

Four putti in relief are portrayed above the main statues. From left to right they carry a rudder, a sceptre with a beaming eye, Mercury’s winged hat and caduceus (the staff with snakes) and a horn of plenty, ‘all signifying Heaven’s Favour’, said Melchior Fokkens in 1662. They are all symbols that we come across elsewhere in the Town Hall, and in the Amsterdam context refer specifically to shipping, dominion, trade and prosperity.8 Katherine Fremantle noted that the symbols also represented the four elements: water, fire, air and earth.9 The frieze below the group depicts the four seasons, ‘The four seasons of the year mean the rise and fall of the life of man’;10 from left to right pinecones (winter), grapes (autumn), ears of wheat (summer) and flowers (spring), and on either side children’s heads (emergence) and a cow’s skull (decay). In the centre of the frieze there is a magnificent composite symbol that represents the eternal, cyclical nature of the world—a winged hour glass is also a symbol for time and for immortality.11 A snake forms a circle around it by biting its own tail, a symbol of Eternity. More cyclical elements follow. On either side we find—seen

sceptre with an eye. The other three symbols are self-explanatory.

9 K. Fremantle, in Amsterdam 1977, p. 32.

10 ‘De vier getijden van’t Iaer, betekent het op en afdalen van’t Leeven van den Mensch’, Quellinus 1655-63, Register, M (‘De Fries van ’t Portael aen de Trap’).

11 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 278 and 368. Time, according to Petrarch, is a winged old man with an hourglass and Immortality is a woman with wings and a golden circle.

12 Fremantle 1961, p. 263 suggests that they should have been incorporated in the painting of Dawn (never executed) at the top of the east wall (see also Goossens 2010, p. 61). It is true that in Vennekool’s print of the east wall (Vennekool 1661, fig. R) there are signs of the zodiac to be seen around the painting of Dawn (never executed). However Fremantle also thought that the painting of Sunset (likewise not executed) at the top of the west wall would also have featured signs of the zodiac (p. 264). In that case it seems more logical to assume that the signs of the zodiac in these two paintings correspond to one another, and not to the small marble signs on the frieze described here.

13 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 624-25, 627-28.

shield. According to Ovid, Minerva placed the head on her breastplate.

Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fols. 42v-43r, said that it could also be placed on the shield.

7 Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 621.

8 ‘The sceptre with an eye on it … is without any explanation a sign of dominion’ (‘De Scepter met een oogh daer op … is sonder eenige verklaeringe een teycken van Heerschappye’), Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 196-97, 284-85. See pp. 632-33: modesty is also characterized by a

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 The Maid of Amsterdam with Power and Wisdom, 1662 Marble, c. 300 x 450 cm Location Citizens’ Hall, entrance doors Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Vennekool 1661, fig. R Fokkens 1662, pp. 117-18 Dapper 1663, p. 353 Von Zesen 1664, p. 254 Quellinus 1655-63, II (only in the second edition, Amsterdam 1665-1668, unnumbered) Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), pp. 33-34 Gabriels 1930, pp. 117-18, 303 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 36-37, fig. 10 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45, 71-72 Fremantle 1961, pp. 260, 262-64, fig. 85 Swillens 1961, p. 228 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 32-33, figs. 32-34 Goossens 1996, pp. 30-32, figs. 37-38 Goossens 2010, pp. 58-61, figs. 48a-c, 49, 50 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 103 - 40

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The Four Virtues the moulds of the four bronze statues of the virtues that adorn the east and west tympanums of the building together with Atlas and Peace. They were never intended for the Citizens’ Hall. The building of the Town Hall conceived as a temple of peace began in 1648, the year of the Peace of Münster so passionately desired by Amsterdam.6 The decorative programme had first and foremost to spread the message of peace and the virtues were the basic conditions to which Peace owed her existence—both on Earth and in heaven. Although Van Campen initially provided for the installation of the four cardinal virtues on the tympanums, at a later stage the master builder Daniel Stalpaert decided to replace Fortitude with Vigilance.7 In 1665 the decision was taken to cancel the open galleries planned for the second floor, which would have provided a view into the Citizens’ Hall. The empty spaces were then decorated with the models, which, although rather too large for the overall scale, are nonetheless extremely fine.8

Four large statues of women, personifications of the four virtues with their attributes executed in gold, can be seen on the cornice above the four entrance arches to the galleries in the Citizens’ Hall. Above the northeast arch is Justice, holding a set of scales in her left hand and a sceptre with the sun in her right.

This is a departure from the usual sword, undoubtedly after Ripa. Ripa, paraphrasing Plato, stated that Justice sees everything and that the old priests called her the seer of all things: ‘Therefore Apuleius swore at the same time by the eye of the sun, and by Justice, because one could not be seen without the other.’1 Temperance stands above the northwest arch and carries reins, her regular attribute.2 Above the entrance to the southwest gallery stands Vigilance with a book in her right hand, a torch in her left and a cockerel at her feet. Her attributes, which express the alertness of both the body and of the mind, can be found in Ripa.3 Finally there is Prudence above the southeast arch, with a mirror and a snake in line with the current iconography. The mirror stands for self-knowledge and the snake protects the body with its coils, as people must ‘set themselves against the challenges of fortune and all other things, no matter how dear they may be to us’.4 Unlike most of the sculptures in the Town Hall these statues are made of wood and plaster, not stone.5 In fact they are the original models that were used for 1 ‘Daerom swoer Apulejus te gelijck by ‘t oogh van de Sonne, en by de Gerechtigheyt, om datmen d’een sonder d’ander niet sien konde.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 432. The sun on the original bronze on the Town Hall’s eastern tympanum has an eye.

2 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 316-17.

3 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 588-89.

4 ‘stellen tegens de aenvallen der fortuyne, en alle andere dingen, hoe lief dieselve ons mogen wesen.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 622.

5 Gabriels 1930, pp. 120 and 147. The city accounts also refer to this as they state that ‘it has been decided to make the large models of statues standing in the half

niches a stone colour’ (dat de groote modellen van beelden staende op de halve nissen, is geresolveert dat hen bij provisie een steen kleurtje zal geven). Fremantle, in Amsterdam 1977, p. 72, states that the models were ’hewn from a number of blocks of stone’.

6 For the palace as a temple of peace see Goossens 1998.

7 Goossens 2010, pp. 34-35, 153, note 61.

8 Burgomasters’ resolution, 20 October 1665. Fremantle 1959, p. 41, note 2; Goossens 1996, pp. 27-28. The statues were put in place by 1666.

See Amsterdam 1977, p. 72.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 The Four Virtues, c. 1661-63 Wood, plaster, height approx. 350 cm Location Citizens’ Hall, on the cornice above the arches to the galleries Selected bibliography Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. W, X Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 41 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 117 Gabriels 1930, pp. 120, 146-47 Luttervelt 1949, p. 37 Fremantle 1959, p. 165 Amsterdam 1977, p. 72 Goossens 1996, pp. 27-28 Goossens 2010, p. 54, figs. 44a-d - 43

The Four Elements From the corners of the Citizens’ Hall, four galleries give access to the surrounding offices. On the entrance arches to these galleries are personifications of the four elements—Earth, Fire, Water and Air. In each case two elements adorn one arch (in other words, each element is shown twice) and as a result all the elements are represented at every point of the compass. The elements were the building materials of the universe. Van Campen had allotted them a central role, which Ripa also endorsed.1 For the most part they correspond, although interchanged in places, with Ripa’s descriptions, which in each case provide several possible ways to represent them.

woman with a fire basket in her hands. Portrayed as African, this woman graces the southwest arch. A phoenix, which Ripa also mentioned, rises from the fire basket. Whereas Ripa did not mention Water personified as a mermaid on the northwest arch, he did describe Water on the southwest arch: ‘it seems that with great effort she holds up a ship, which she has on her head.’ Air, mindful of Ripa, is portrayed as a virgin with a cloud in her hands (on the northeast arch) and as a young lady with a peacock and a chameleon in her hand (on the southwest arch). Ripa maintained that a chameleon was an animal that neither ate nor drank, ‘but lives only from the wind, as Pliny tells us’.

Ripa’s personification of Earth, with a globe in her right hand, a floral wreath on her head and a lavishly filled horn of plenty, is on the northwest arch. However, the lion ‘by her side’ is on the southeast arch, beside the other personification of Earth, ‘a woman with a castle on her head’. In line with Ripa she carries a child at her breast, but the dead man, whom according to the description she embraces, is missing. To a considerable extent the personification of Fire on the northeast arch also follows Ripa, who described a naked young man, with a bald head and a lock of hair standing on end.2 The salamander surrounded in flames by his foot originates from the alternative description of fire, a

That the elements correspond with Ripa’s descriptions is obvious and often emphasized.3 However, there is a caveat here. As early as the sixteenth century printmakers were already making series of the four elements in which the motifs described featured. One of the many examples is the series by Nicolaes de Bruyn after Maerten de Vos, in which, for instance, the salamander—in contrast to Ripa—appears at the feet of the personification of Fire, just as it does on the northeast arch.4 Van Campen would have based his designs to a significant extent on existing pictorial traditions.

1 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 117-21 for all the quotes cited here and in the text. ‘The four elements through whose amalgamation natural generation occurs are at the highest also part of the four other qualities: and in that regard are found in Man as the four humours, the four strengths, the four principal sciences, the four most noble arts of the world, the four seasons of the year, the four parts of the world, the four winds, four local distinctions, and four sources of human knowledge.’(De vier Elementen door welckers t’saemenvoeginge de natuerlijcke voorttelinge gemaeckt worden, zijn ten hooghsten mede deelachtigh, de vier andere hoedanigheden: en ten dien aensien worden in den Mensche de vier complexien, de vier krachten, de vier voornaeme kennissen, de vier eedelste konsten der Werreld, de vier tijden des Iaers, de vier deelen des Werrelds, de vier

Winden, vier plaetslijcke onderscheydlijckheden, en vier oorsaken van de Menschlijcke wetenschap, gevonden.) (p. 118).

2 Interestingly, the lock of hair is absent in the arch sculpture, but it can be seen in the print that Hubertus Quellinus made and which must therefore have been engraved after the design rather than after the actual carving.

3 Fremantle 1959, pp. 44-45; Fremantle 1961; Amsterdam 1977, pp. 34-37; M. Spies, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 234.

4 See for example also the personification of Air, which De Vos stated holds a chameleon in her hand (as in the southwest arch), whereas Ripa makes no mention of it.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 The Four Elements, 1655 Marble Location Citizens’ Hall, gallery arches Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Vennekool 1661, fig. S

Fokkens 1662, pp. 119-23 Dapper 1663, pp. 256-57 Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. C, E Von Zesen 1664, pp. 256-57 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), pp. 39-41 Kroon 1867, p. 108 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 117 Gabriels 1930, pp. 57, 120, 303, pl. XVII Fremantle 1959, pp. 44-45, 160-61 Fremantle 1961, pp. 258-61,

figs. 79-83 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 34-37, figs. 35-38 Goossens 1996, pp. 32, 49, fig. 39 Goossens 2010, pp. 62-65, figs. 51, 52a-d

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Amphion the Town Hall on its back. The rock of Benthem dances.

The Weser flows fast. The western marble cliff follows Van Campen’s measure.’ The architect Van Campen was a seventeenth-century Amphion, who with his ‘measure’ orchestrated the building materials in Dam Square delivered from far and wide into a harmonious entity that epitomized the unity of the society.2

Seated on a block playing his lyre, Amphion watches the hustle and bustle of a building site with his twin brother, Zethus. A pair of compasses leans against the block and a set square, ruler, chisel and hammer lie in front of them. Writers, including Van Mander in his Wtleggingh on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, recounted that the twin brothers were sons of Zeus, who in the guise of a satyr had made the Theban princess Antiope pregnant. The dishonoured Antiope was imprisoned and her sons were raised by shepherds.

Whereas Zethus concentrated on developing physically, Amphion proved to be talented on his lyre, which some maintained was given to him by Mercury, while others believed he received it from Apollo. Eventually the sons avenged their mother, after which they ruled together over Thebes, which they reinforced with a wall. While Zethus dragged the stones along, Amphion played his lyre so beautifully ‘that the stones jumped up by themselves, and each one went and lay down in its appointed place.’1

In a more metaphorical sense, Amphion’s ‘measure’ stood for good government. Amphion had already been presented as a good-natured ruler during the Peace performances in Dam Square in 1648.3 The Amphion relief above the entrance to the City Council Chamber consequently contained political advice to the city council. This advice was expressed again by Vondel in a poem accompanying a commemorative medal made by the silversmith Juriaen Pool, which was distributed at the opening of the Town Hall. The medal shows—in line with the relief—Amphion with a lyre, sitting in front of the building: ‘Who wishes to learn, lend eye and ear / to Amphion’s measure and strings … through which this harpist teaches us / that keeping the measure governs best.’4

The parallel between the myth of Amphion and the building of the Town Hall is clearly defined in the bas-relief. The twins are not watching the activities at Thebes, but are plainly observing the work on the new Town Hall. Vondel described the situation in his Inwydinge: ‘Amphion with his strings once gathered the stones to found the city of Thebes in a wondrous fashion. It is Amsterdam in truth, unvarnished and without poets’ tricks. The Norwegian pine forest takes

The pictorial tradition surrounding Amphion is relatively limited. The Florentine Stefano della Bella made an etching for a Metamorphoses card game published in 1644; this etching seems to be the basis of the present design.5

1 ‘dat de steenen van selfs op sprongen, en elck ter bequame plaetsen voeghden en nederleghden.’ Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 51r-52r. Van Mander only mentioned Zethus in passing.

2 ‘[heeft] Amfion met zijn snaer / De steenen oit verzaemt, om Thebe wonderbaer / Te stichten tot een stadt; ‘t is t’ Amsterdam gebleecken / In waerheit, onverbloemt, en zonder dichters streecken. / Het Noortsche mastbosch neemt het Raethuis op den rugh. / De rots van Benthem danst. de Wezerstroom wordt vlugh. / De Wester marmerklip den maetzang volght van Kampen.’ Vondel 1655

(ed. 1982), pp. 100-5.

3 For this see the print by Pieter Nolpe in Snoep 1975, pp. 78-79, figs. 42, 43. The caption to the print, in 1648 still referring to William II, reads: ‘Amphion, King of Thebes, through his charm and gentle rule brought prosperity to the city, allowed everything that was allowable … so that people of all kinds could live, trade and offer their labour to other citizens in peace and freedom. The spectacle featured the figure of Amphion, accompanied by Justice, Wisdom, Prudence, Valour, Resolve, - 46

Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Amphion, 1655 Marble, c. 233 x 176 cm Location Citizens’ Hall, entrance to the Execution Chamber / Council Chamber6 Selected bibliography Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. G Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 347 Fokkens 1662, p. 144 Dapper 1663, pp. 375-76 Von Zesen 1664, p. 258 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 72 Kroon 1867, p. 111 Gabriels 1930, pp. 116-17, 304, fig. 21 Fremantle 1959, pp. 58-59, 66, 71-72, pl. 65 Swillens 1961, p. 229 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 12-13, 33, fig. 5 Goossens 1996, p. 76, fig. 74 Goossens 2010, pp. 131, 133

Strength, Impartiality &c.’ (Amphion, Koninck van Thaebe, bragt door zijne lieflijkheyt, en zachte regeeringe de Stadt tot welvaert, liet alles toe wattoelatelijk was … op dat allerley slagh van volckeren hier in vrede en vryheyt mochte woonen, handelen, en nevens andere burgers haer neringe oeffenen. De vertoning is gestoffeerd met de persoon van Amphion, vergeselschapt met Gerechtigheyt, Wijsheyt, Voorsichtigheyt, Kloekmoedigheyt, Stant-vastigheyt, Sterckheyt, Onpertijdigheyt, &c.)

4 ‘Wie leerzaem is, leene oogh, en oor / Aen maetzang en Amfions snaeren. … Naerdien dees Harpenaer ons leert; / Dat maet te houden best regeert’. The poem is printed on a print after the medal made by Bernard Picart (1673-1733) in 1718. See also Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), p. 104.

5 De Vesme/Massar 1971, no. 528.V. Della Bella visited the Republic in 1647, but there is no evidence that he met Van Campen at that time.

See Rutgers 2007.

6 The relief is actually above the Justice Chamber, from which a door gives access to the City Council Chamber (which also has its own

entrance from the gallery), the room to which the relief refers. Fokkens had already referred to the relief in his description of the Justice Chamber in 1662, then linked it explicitly to the City Council Chamber, ‘Proclaiming through this fable … the unanimity and good harmony of the citizens / in whose name the city fathers / or Councils / with the burgomasters in this Council Chamber / come together about the city’s affairs (Gevende door dese fabel te kennen … de eenstemmigheyt en goede eendracht der burgers / (uyt wiens name de Vroetschappen / of Raden / met de Burgermeesters in deze Raadt-kamer / over de stadts zaken te zamenkomen). The positioning of the important Amphion relief above the Justice Chamber and not above the main entrance to the City Council Chamber was prompted by the symmetry in respect of the relief on the other side of the doorway, above the entrance to the Burgomasters’ Chamber. This relief of Mercury, Io and Argus can likewise be read as an example of good administration.

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Mercury, Io and Argus of the pipe. Sleep has no hold here; he closes his open ear … The guardian who watches over the heifer of the General Good must ever be awake, or the graceful sword of flattering deceit will cut his throat.’3 This is thus a rather paradoxical reminder to the burgomasters above all to remain vigilant. The relief shows a watchful Argus, although everyone knew that in the myth Argus eventually fell asleep.4 The message is: that will not happen here.

The ever watchful Argus was ordered by Juno to keep guard over Io, the river god Inachus’s daughter who had been turned into a heifer. Leaning on his shepherd’s crook with his dog at his feet, he listens to Mercury, who sits before him playing his flute and telling stories in an attempt to send him to sleep. The myth is recorded in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I, 583-723). Jupiter abducted the beautiful Io, but accidently aroused Juno’s suspicion. He instantly changed Io into a beautiful heifer, but Juno was not fooled and demanded the animal as a gift. Reluctantly Jupiter agreed, after which Argus’s hundred eyes watched over the unfortunate Io. Out of pity Jupiter sent the artful Mercury, who with his flute and endless talk was able to while away the hours until finally Argus closed his last eye and Mercury cut his head off.

As with Amphion (Council Chamber) and Quintus Fabius Maximus (Burgomasters’ Chamber) this is a subject that had previously been used during the festivities surrounding the Peace of Münster in 1648.

Argus represented the vigilance of the States of Holland in a performance in Dam Square at that time.

The caption to the print of this event describes Argus ‘with a hundred eyes’, while the cow he watches over represents the ‘pleasant Fatherland’.5 Though hard to see, Argus’s hundred eyes are also depicted in the ­basrelief—something that was almost always omitted in paintings6—which again emphasizes his watchfulness.

The myth of Mercury, Io and Argus enjoyed great popularity in the decorative art of the seventeenth century. The scene usually depicted—among others

by Jacob van Campen—was when Argus slumped down and finally fell asleep.1 The bas-relief, however, deliberately shows Argus standing, wide-awake.2 Placed above the entrance to the Burgomasters’ Chamber and Cabinet, it was intended to evoke an association with watchfulness. As Jan Vos wrote in his Inwyding: ‘Here Mercury seeks to force the music into Argus’s ear: but the Argus who watches here to protect the right of the citizens against attack ignores the sound 1 The Hague, Mauritshuis, inv. nr. 1062, c. 1635.

2 Quellinus 1655-63, index: ‘A. Mercurius, die Argus geeren in ’t slaep wilde speelen, maer Argus die staet en waeckt, op dat hem die koe niet ontnomen en wort.’

Fremantle 1959, p. 58 rightly states that the figure of Argus was derived from the Farnese Hercules. The question remains as to whether this was done on the basis of drawings that Quellinus had made in Rome, as Goossens 2010, p. 156, note 160, suggests. Prints—present in particular abundance around Dam Square in Amsterdam—were widely used as examples in the decorative programme for the

Town Hall, and there was no lack of prints of the Farnese Hercules (see for example Hendrick Bloemaert’s engraving, c. 1640-46).

3 ‘Hier zoekt Merkuur het spel in Argus oor te dringen: / Maar d’Argus die hier waakt, om ‘t recht der stedelingen, / Voor overval, te hoên, ontzeidt de pyp gehoor. / De Slaap heeft hier geen vat. hy sluit zyn oopen oor … De wachter, die de koe van ‘t Algemeen bewaart, / Moet staadigh wakker zyn: of ‘t sierelyke zwaardt / Van ‘t vleiende Bedrogh zal hem de strot afstooten.’

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Mercury, Io and Argus, 1655 Marble, c. 233 x 176 cm Location Citizens’ Hall, entrance to the Burgomasters’ Chamber and Cabinet Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 347 Fokkens 1662, pp. 123-124 Dapper 1663, pp. 369-370 Von Zesen 1664, p. 259 Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. A Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 52 Kroon 1867, p. 110 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 121 Gabriels 1930, p. 114, 116, 304, fig. 20 Luttervelt 1949, p. 43 Fremantle 1959, pp. 58-59, 66, 71, pl. 66 Swillens 1961, p. 229 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 30, 34-37, figs. 35-38 Q. Buvelot, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 70-72, fig. 50 Goossens 2010, pp. 118, 123-24, fig. 95

4 Evidently this was not seen as problematic. The bas-relief is an exception in the iconographic programme in the Town Hall, because in a sense it encourages the viewer to do good with a (potentially) negative example.

Q. Buvelot, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 71, thinks, in view of the bas-relief discussed here, that such a political explanation could also apply to Van Campen’s painting in the Mauritshuis. In the painting Argus has fallen asleep, however, whereas in the bas-relief Argus—remarkably and in a departure from the pictorial tradition—is shown standing and awake.

5 The performance was illustrated in a print by Pieter Nolpe. See Snoep 1975, p. 79, fig. 42. The caption reads: ‘Argus with a hundred eyes here represents the Lords of the States of Holland, who will nevermore allow

themselves to be played to sleep by the sweet piping of a wily Mercury (wherever he may come from), but will preserve the cow (which is the pleasant fatherland) as watchful guardians.’ (Argus met hondert oogen, daer mee bediedende de Heeren Staten van Hollandt, die haer, door het lieflijk pijpen van eenen Looze Mercurius (hy kome waer van daen hy kome) nimmermeer in ’t slaep laten spelen, maer de koe (dat is haer elck aengename Vaderlandt) als wakende sorg-dragers, wel sullen bewaren.)

The display can only be seen when the paper flap with the portrayal of Numa Pompilius is lifted. Tellingly, Argus is shown standing here, too.

6 Sluijter 1989, p. 122.

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Mars explained the dragon, a beast that had belonged to Mars from time immemorial, thus: ‘The monstrous creatures on his armour express Mars’s madness, godlessness and other similar failings.’3

In full armour—and the only god wearing breeches— the bearded Mars leans on a large axe. His left arm, on which is strapped a shield, rests against the hilt of a sword attached to his cuirass. His helmet is adorned with a dragon. He wears a long cloak (‘painted with human blood’ according to Fokkens) down to his feet, where a magpie takes flight; a wolf emerges from behind his legs. There can be no doubt that Mars is the god of war, who swears by battle. The elaborate military trophy on the base—for which Quellinus was paid two hundred guilders—also makes this clear.

There are several stories about Mars’s birth. Homer (Iliad V, 865-890) maintained that Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) were his parents, whereas Ovid (Fasti V, 229-260) told of how Juno was touched by Flora with a flower from the fields around the Peloponnesian city of Olenus. ‘Juno having touched or tasted it, she was impregnated by it.’1

Strikingly, Mars stares into the eyes of his lover, Venus.

When Venus’s husband, Vulcan, found out about the affair, he was enraged and decided to catch the lovers in the act in a gossamer-fine bronze net (Homer, Odyssey VIII, 266-367 and Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, 171-89). Then Vulcan summoned the other gods, which led to great hilarity. Here, though, the association with Venus should be seen in the context of the peace that flourishes when Venus keeps Mars away from war.4 Descriptions like Fokkens’s ’cruel and terrible face’ and Dapper’s ‘severe, cruel stare with his rough beard’ reveal how tremendous the statue was thought to be at the time. Later generations were less impressed, witness, for example, Juliane Gabriels’s monograph on Quellinus, in which she described Mars as ‘a provincial tenor, with too round a belly, short legs, and a beard that is noticeably false.’

Mars’s appearance seems to have been largely taken from Ripa, who did indeed mention a magpie, which used the ‘strength of its beak’ in battle. Wolves—also present in the sculpture above the adjacent doors— represent the insatiable bloodthirstiness of those who wage war ‘as wolves do’.2 The wolf also appears to be a reference to ancient Rome, to which Amsterdam was so fond of comparing itself. The founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, who were said to be the children of Mars, were supposedly suckled by a she-wolf. Ripa 1 ‘Iuno dese gheraeckt oft ghesmaeckt hebbende, was hier door bevrucht.’ Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 28r. makes reference to ‘the fields of Olona’.

2 Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 273.

3 ‘De monsterdieren in sijn Waepenrustinge, drucken uyt, dat by Mars zijn de dolligheyt, Godloosheyt en andere diergelijcke gebreecken.’ The dragon also seems to be a reference to Mars’s dragon, which was killed by Cadmus, as Ovid relates (Metamorphoses III, 31-94).

4 Bedaux 1993.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Mars, 1653 Monogram on the axe: AQ Marble, 181 x 95 cm Location Northwest corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Fokkens 1662, pp. 153-55 Dapper 1663, pp. 362-63 Von Zesen 1664, p. 271 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. Q Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 44 Kroon 1867, p. 109 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 110, 113 Gabriels 1930, pp. 109-10, 123, 304, fig. 23 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-43 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45, 47, 165, pl. 52, 53, 55, 56 Swillens 1961, pp. 203, 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 44-45, figs. 49, 50 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-40, fig. 4 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217e Goossens 1996, pp. 50-51, 53, fig. 44 Goossens 2010, pp. 72-73, fig. 55h Scholten 2010, pp. 23-24, 35, fig. 27 (modello) Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 105, 107-8, 115-16, 118-19, figs. 121, 123, 137 - 53

Venus lecherous, as there is hardly any time of the year when they do not copulate’.

At the end of the northwest gallery stands Venus, goddess of love and desire, the only statue of a planet

by Rombout Verhulst. He portrayed her realistically as a beautiful, almost naked young woman, embraced by her children Cupid and Anteros (Love and Requited Love); although she was married to Vulcan, they were sired by her lover, Mars. At her feet are a swan, a dove and a dolphin. She holds an apple and wears a garland of roses with myrrh on her head. Homer maintained that Venus was Jupiter’s daughter, but Hesiod’s account (Theogony, 176-206) is more widely known and states that Venus was born from the foam of the sea, when drops of Uranus’s blood touched the water after his son Saturn had castrated him. The dolphin and the garlands of shells on each side of the statue refer to Venus’s maritime origin. The apple denotes the Judgment of Paris, when Venus won the golden apple ‘for the most beautiful’ after she had promised Paris the dazzling Helen of Troy.1 Above all, Ripa emphasized Venus’s erotic connotations. She ‘was made naked, for the affection of frivolous embraces, or because the one who always goes back to the frivolous sensualities, is often deprived of all his wealth.’2 The roses and myrrh belonged to her because their scents are like those of Venus, and the ‘the incitement and power that the myrrh gives to lewdness.’ Ripa believed that the doves (which pulled Venus’s carriage) were ‘extremely

There have been repeated references to the incorrect order of the planet gods.3 Katherine Fremantle could not conceive that there was any possibility of arbitrariness in Van Campen’s universe. She (and before her Brugmans and Weissman) linked the position of the statues of the gods to the functions of the surrounding rooms.4 However, Fremantle’s connections are sometimes far-fetched. Jan Bedaux is more enlightening; he points out that it was only Jupiter and Venus that have been exchanged. His explanation is as simple as it is convincing. The building was erected as a temple of peace and from that perspective it was of great symbolic importance to unite Venus with Mars— the god of war—and by so doing end the war. It is for good reason that they are the only two gods who look at each other, and Venus is accompanied by their two children. Lastly, the gods portrayed were all associated with elements and the eight planet statues are positioned such that the four elements are equally divided on either side of the Citizens’ Hall. However, this is not the result of switching Venus and Jupiter, as has been suggested, since they represent the same element—air.5

1 The apple also appears to refer to autumn as the attribute of the personification of the Herfsts Evenaer, the fruit she holds in her left hand. Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 505-6. For this see also Jupiter, Mercury and Saturn.

2 ‘was naeckt gemaeckt, om de genegentheyt van de dertele omhelsingen, of om dat die geene die altijt te rugge gaet nae de dertle wellusten, dickwijls wert berooft van al het goede.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 271. Ripa continued, ‘For wealth is squandered on lewd women, the body is weakened, and the soul is besmirched with such filth that neither good nor clean remains.’ (‘Want de Rijckdommen worden van geyle Vrouwe verslonden, het licchaem wort verswakt, en de Ziele wort met soodanige vuylicheyt bemorst, datter oock niet goeds noch schoons overblijft.’) It is in this light—and not so much as a personal statement

(see Goossens 1996, p. 50; Goossens 2010, pp. 73-74)—that the lines of verse in Fokkens 1662, p. 154, should be read. He paraphrased Ripa and remarked in almost the same words that ‘those who follow lecherous women will soon squander their wealth; the soul will be besmirched with filth’ (‘Die geyle vrouwen volght diens goedt wordt haast verslonden, De ziel wordt vuyl bemorst’).

3 Dapper 1663, p. 357; Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 110; Fremantle 1959, p. 45; Bedaux 1993; Goossens 2010, p. 66.

4 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-47.

5 Goossens 2010, p. 66.

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Rombout Verhulst Mechelen 1624 - 1698 The Hague Venus, c. 1653 Marble, 178 x 103 cm Location Northwest corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Vennekool 1661, fig. S Fokkens 1662, pp. 155-56 Dapper 1663, pp. 363-64 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 271-72 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. P Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 44 Notten 1907, p. 12 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 110 Gabriels 1930, p. 123, fig. 23 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-43, 45, fig. 15 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-47, 72-73, pl. 52, 54, 57-60 Swillens 1961, pp. 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 44-45, figs. 49, 51 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-40, fig. 4 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217f Goossens 1996, pp. 51, 54, fig. 45 Goossens 2010, pp. 72-74, fig. 55g Scholten 2010, p. 23, fig. 24 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 104, 107-8, 111, 118, fig. 130 - 55

Icarus Pride—literally—comes before a fall. Those who make a show of taking risks in their business dealings bring about their own bankruptcy. At the moment when they had to give account at the Town Hall, they were reminded of this by Icarus, displayed above the entrance to the Bankruptcy Chamber. The festoon above the relief presses home the point with beautifully detailed empty purses, sniffed at by rats, and flowers that only bloom for a very short time. Undoubtedly Rembrandt (1606-1669) also cast a glance at the brand-new relief when he had to present himself at the Bankruptcy Chamber in the mid-1650s.2

While his father Daedalus flies on in the background, Icarus looks up in panic as he realizes that there is something fatally wrong with his wings. Quellinus made use of the entire picture plane by portraying Icarus in a downward diagonal. As is the case everywhere in the Town Hall, this bas-relief was chosen appositely, above the entrance to the Bankruptcy Chamber, the room in which bankruptcies were dealt with. Icarus’s fate has often been written about, by among others Ovid (Metamorphoses VIII, 183-235), and was known around 1650 in translations by Johannes Florianus and P.C. Hooft. Icarus and his father, the famous inventor Daedalus, escaped from Athens and found accommodation with King Minos of Crete. Despite Daedalus’s services—he designed the Labyrinth for the Minotaur, for example—Minos would not let them leave, so Daedalus decided to escape with wings made of wood, feathers and beeswax.

Immediately before they left he gave his son some advice: ‘Take good care, Icarus, to fly at a moderate height, because if you fly too low, the roughness of the water will hinder you, and if you fly too high, the heat of the sun will burn your wings.’1 At first Icarus followed his father’s advice, but then he got more and more pleasure from taking risks. Recklessly he flew higher and higher, until the sun melted the wax and he plunged into the sea that now bears his name—the Icarian Sea.

Part of the iconographic programme of the Town Hall refers to the work of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).3 As regards the Icarus, Goossens points to Rubens’s oil sketch of the subject, which is part of the famous Torre de la Parada series of 1636-37.4 Artus Quellinus’s brother Erasmus (1607-1678), who attended to the paintwork for the Town Hall, did indeed collaborate on this project and Rubens’s design could have been known through him. However, the bas-relief is also very reminiscent of the Icarus in the popular Metamorphoses card game produced by the Florentine printmaker Stefano della Bella (1610-1664) in 1644.5

1 ‘Siet wel toe, Icare, dat ghy in’t vliegen der middelmate hout, want ist dat ghy te leeghe vlieght, de baren des water sullen u beletten, ende ist dat ghy te hooghe vlieght, de hitte der sonnen sal uwe vleughelen verbranden.’ Ovid/Florianus 1650, pp. 237-38.

2 See esp. Crenshaw 2006, pp. 68-75.

3 See for example Fremantle 1959, pp. 141-42, 178-79; Fremantle 1961.

4 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 202-3, fig. 193.

5 The Amphion relief above the entrance to the Council Chamber also appears to

have been borrowed from one of Della Bella’s prints for the same pack of cards.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Icarus, 1654 Marble, c. 97 x 139 cm Location Entrance to the Bankruptcy Chamber Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Fokkens 1662, pp. 135-36 Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. H Dapper 1663, pp. 374-75 Von Zesen 1664, p. 273

Goossens 2010, p. 142

Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 66 Kroon 1867, p. 110 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 113 Gabriels 1930, pp. 114, 116, 304 Luttervelt 1949, p. 43, fig. 12 Fremantle 1959, p. 73, pl. 62 Swillens 1961, pp. 211, 227 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 46-47, figs. 52, 54 Bedaux 1993, p. 39, fig. 3 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 203, fig. 194 Goossens 1996, pp. 39, 68, pl. XI, fig. 61 Sluijter 2000a, p. 287, note 90 - 57

Odysseus and Nausicaä In books five and six of the Odyssey, Homer relates how Odysseus was washed ashore exhausted on the island of Phaeacia after his ship had foundered. When he was woken from his sleep by female voices he decided to investigate. The beautiful Princess Nausicaä and her handmaidens had just washed their clothes and were playing with a ball, when suddenly Odysseus made his appearance covered only with some leaves. This is the moment that De Keyser depicted, ‘They became aware of him, covered with leaves and burrs, swollen by the sea, and terrible in appearance. Frightened, they fled and ran hither and yon all together, except for Nausicaä, who stayed because Pallas had fortified her with good faith; she remained standing bravely to await Ulysses … to direct him to a town and relieve his suffering.’1 The almost naked Odysseus, seen from the back, kneels and spreads his arms beseechingly to Nausicaä, who beckons to him sympathetically. In contrast to Homer’s text, most of the ladies in Nausicaä’s retinue continue their activities unperturbed.

based on an unexecuted earlier plan, unless he was mistaken.2 In this scene Calypso takes pity on the stranded Odysseus.3 The final choice of Nausicaä may have come from burgomaster Joan Huydecoper (1599-1661), who was closely involved in the iconographic programme for the Town Hall. In early 1640 Huydecoper commissioned Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688) to paint an Odysseus and Nausicaä for the mantelpiece in the reception room of his own house on Singel. De Keyser would have been aware of Sandrart’s composition, but was mainly indebted to Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), who was the first to depict the subject in 1609, and again in 1619.4 Whereas the element of (unconditional) hospitality was key in the context of Huydecoper’s reception room, the emphasis in the Bankruptcy Chamber would have been placed on the battered protagonist and the council’s willingness to help.

In any event the subject of De Keyser’s painting soon ceased to be recognized, as appeared in 1758, when Jan van Dyk thought that the figures were Ariadne and Bacchus.5 It was not until 1907 that Adriaan Willem Weissman restored the painting’s correct title.

The theme of the destitute Odysseus and the bountiful Nausicaä is appropriate for the Bankruptcy Chamber, where bankruptcies were dealt with. Initially, however, another scene had been envisaged. In his Inwydinge of 1655, Vondel describes a related subject—evidently 1 ‘Zij werden hem gewaar, bestoven met bladers met bramen, Gezwollen van der zee, en vreeslijk in haar aanschouwen. Dies vloden zij verschrikt ginds en herwaarts al te zamen, Behalven Nausicaa: die heeft alleen voet gehouen, Door Pallas die haar gesterkt had met goed betrouwen; Dies bleef zij moedig staan om Ulyssem te verwachten … Hem een stad te wijzen en zijn leed te verzachten.’

Homer/Coornhert/Weevers 1939, VI, 150-58 (p. 128).

2 See the essay by Eric Jan Sluijter in this catalogue.

3 Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1143-44. Calypso is a remarkable choice, because the subject was depicted extremely rarely before Vondel’s time.

4 For the pictorial tradition surrounding the subject see Sluijter 2000a, p. 40; Seifert 2011, pp. 230-36.

5 Van Dyk 1758, p. 137: ‘ik voor myn kan hier geen andere zin in vinden, als daar Thëzeus, Ariadne te Naxis aan land gezet en verlaten hebbende, door Bachus wert opgenomen, waar door den desolaten stand van Ariadne, door Bachus hersteld wierd.’ Undoubtedly Van Dyk’s interpretation followed from his discussion of Strijcker’s painting Theseus Returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne in the Insurance Chamber.

6 Wagenaar 1760-1768, XIII (1768), p. 143, lists the commissioners of the Bankruptcy Chamber.

7 The text was placed there by burgomaster Jan Six in 1924. See Goossens 2010, p. 156, note 195.

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Thomas de Keyser 1596 - Amsterdam - 1667 Odysseus and Nausicaä, 1657 Signed and dated below centre TDKeyser fecit 1657 (TDK in ligature) Oil on canvas, 200 x 167 cm Above the painting the escutcheons of the commissioners of the Bankruptcy Chamber in 1655: Nicolaes Pancras, Nicolaes van Loon, Dr Pelgrom ten Grootenhuys, Dr Joan van Hellemond; Nicolaes van Waveren.6 Below the painting the text ‘Nvdo navfragio deiecto in litvs Vlixi Vestes hic miserans Navsicaa ecce dabit / MCMXXIV I SIX’.7 (Translation: See how Nausicaä takes pity and will give clothes to the naked Odysseus, who was washed ashore from a shipwreck.)

Location Bankruptcy Chamber Selected bibliography Von Zesen 1664, p. 273 Van Dyk 1758, pp. 136-37, no. 101 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 66 Weissman 1907, p. 75 Bergman/Weissman 1914, pp. 141-42 Luttervelt 1949, p. 58 Van de Waal 1952, I, p. 218 Buchbinder-Green 1974, pp. 148-50, 367, fig. 146 Adams 1985, II, pp. 441-47, III, pp. 150-52, cat. no. 88 (with literature references) Goossens 1996, pp. 39, 68, pl. XII Sluijter 2000a, pp. 40, 221, notes 11, 12, 286, note 90 Goossens 2010, pp. 144-45 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 148 Seifert 2011, pp. 234-35, fig. 265 Sluijter 2015, pp. 86-87, 284, fig. IIA-112 - 59

Arion Town Hall, which could only be built by burning down the old one, to the joy of the merchantmen who saw the sun breaking through after a storm at sea. To this he pointedly added, ‘In bad weather over-insurance makes for joy, / And puts the wealthy office on a firmer footing.’ Paradoxically, merchants were able to make good money from damage by over-insuring the cargo.1

The bas-relief above the entrance to the Insurance Chamber shows the Greek singer Arion on the back of a dolphin. In the background a ship sails out of the picture. Arion’s adventures were chronicled by Herodotus (Histories I, 23-24), who described him as the most gifted musician of his time and the inventor of the dithyramb, an impassioned hymn sung in honour of Dionysus. From Corinth Arion had undertaken a profitable tour through Italy and Sicily. However, during the return trip the ship’s crew—lusting after his money—wanted to throw him overboard. When an appeal failed to sway them, Arion conceived a trick. He asked the crew to let him sing one more song, a request they gladly granted as he was the most famous singer in the world. After Arion, accompanying himself on the lyre, had sung his song, he suddenly threw himself into the waves with utter confidence. A dolphin, moved by his music, picked him up and carried him ashore.

The character of Arion was a familiar figure in official events staged in Amsterdam. In 1642 he was supposed to feature in a tableau vivant in Damrak, in honour of the entry of Henrietta Maria, the Queen of England.

Ultimately the spectacle did not take place, but it was nevertheless illustrated in a print by Pieter Nolpe.2 An early engraving featuring Arion, made by Antwerp artist Gerard de Jode, was published for the first time in 1579 in the Latin emblem book Mikrokosmos: Parvus Mundus.3 The popular print was reused repeatedly, in the Dutch translation of 1608, in Vondel’s Den Gulden Winckel der Konstlievende Nederlanders of 1613 and elsewhere. In view of the very similar composition, De Jode’s print may well have been the basis for the design for the relief.

Insurance matters were settled in the Insurance Chamber, first and foremost concerning the shipping that was so essential to Amsterdam. The thinking behind the relief above the entrance can be explained by this maritime parallel: those who had covered themselves well could feel assured like Arion, who fearlessly jumped overboard because he knew that his music would save him. In his Inwydinge, Vondel devoted an ambiguous passage to such insurance policies as this. He compared the joy about the new 1 ‘In ’t onweêr, wort met vreught door overwinst geboet, / En zet het rijck kantoor op eenen vaster voet.’ Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), pp. 141, 143-44. This dubious situation was later brought to a halt by obliging merchants to leave a part of the cargo uninsured.

2 Snoep 1975, pp. 67-68, fig. 33.

3 Van Haecht Goidtsenhoven/De Jode 1579, no. 64.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Arion, 1654 Marble, c. 97 x 139 cm Location Entrance to the Insurance Chamber Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. B

Goossens 2010, pp. 141, 143, fig. 114

Dapper 1663, p. 375 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 275-76 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 66 Kroon 1867, p. 110 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 114, 121 Gabriels 1930, pp. 116, 304 Luttervelt 1949, p. 43 Fremantle 1959, p. 73 Swillens 1961, pp. 211, 227-28 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 46-47, fig. 54 Goossens 1996, p. 68. fig. 62 - 61

Theseus Returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne enliven the scene; the young woman on the extreme right and the little dog look straight at viewers, involving them in what is taking place.

In this painting Willem Strijcker shows the moment when the Greek hero Theseus, with bloodied sword, returns the ball of thread to Ariadne, having just killed the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The monster’s lifeless body can be seen behind him. Ovid (Metamorphoses VIII, 169-182) recounted that Ariadne was the daughter of the Cretan king Minos and his wife Pasiphäe. Her mother had fallen deeply in love with a white bull and gave birth to a monstrous creature by this animal.

Every nine years this Minotaur, half man, half bull, confined by Minos to the underground Labyrinth, demanded seven boys and seven girls from Athens to devour. Theseus, the Athenian king’s son, decided to put an end to this horror. Armed with a ball of thread given to him by Ariadne, he managed to find his way through the maze and slay the monster. No one will fail to notice that within the walls of the Insurance Chamber, where insurance matters were dealt with, the painting can be interpreted as seventeenth-century advertisement for insurance. The good outcome of Theseus’s undertaking was a direct result of the ball of thread (his ‘insurance’) and the painting shows the insured’s gratitude to his ‘insurer’.1

It has been suggested that the subject was new and probably devised especially for the Town Hall programme,4 and we certainly know of no earlier paintings of the subject. However, the iconographically very similar moment when Theseus accepts the ball of thread had already been depicted in prints several times, for example by Crispijn de Passe, for a Metamorphoses edition of 1602.5 De Passe’s engraving, which may have served Strijcker as his example, itself seems to derive from a print of the subject attributed to the Florentine printmaker Baccio Baldini (c. 14361487).6 This latter print moreover shows Theseus’s club—which features so prominently in the foreground of Strijcker’s painting—making it likely that Strijcker was also aware of it.

We know of no other paintings by Strijcker,2 but here he proves technically adept; the composition—which must have been borrowed from Rubens3—and the palette contribute to a balanced whole that contains all the elements of the story. The figures behind Ariadne 1 For reasons that are not clear, Renckens 1952, p. 117, thought that Theseus’s hazardous adventure and its fortunate outcome were intended to symbolize the difficulties that establishing the cost of damage at sea frequently presented.

2 Renckens’s attributions of two works are highly speculative.

3 Cf. Rubens’s The Transfer of the Regency, part of the Medici Cycle, Paris, Louvre.

Noted by Renckens 1952, p. 117.

4 Sluijter 2000a, p. 262, note 194.

5 Ovid/Salsmann/De Passe 1602. The handing over of the thread, with the Labyrinth in the background, is shown for instance in a woodcut in Ovid/Florianus

1650, p. 236, which harks back to earlier examples by Virgil Solis (1563) and Bernard Salomon (1557).

6 See p. 23, fig. 8.

7 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 60, lists the commissioners of the Insurance Chamber.

8 See p. 58 note 7. Six’s caption leads us to suspect that he believed that the moment depicted was before and not after Theseus had braved the Labyrinth.

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Willem Strijcker 1606/07 - Amsterdam - 1663/67 Theseus Returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne, 1657 Signed and dated lower left Willem Braesseman / Alias . strijcker .f. 1657 Oil on canvas, 201 x 167 cm Above the painting the escutcheons of the commissioners of the Insurance Chamber in 1655: Jacob van Neck; Jacob Servaes; Pieter van Loon.7 Below the painting the text ‘‘Thesea mox Labyrinthi aditvrvm magna pericla Filo iam servat en Ariadna svo / MCMXXIV I SIX’.8 (Translation: See how Ariadne with her thread already gives deliverance to Theseus, who will soon face great danger in the Labyrinth.)

Location Insurance Chamber Selected bibliography Van Dyk 1758, p. 136, no. 100 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 66 Weissman 1907, p. 75 Bredius 1915-22, IV, p. 1254, ill.

Luttervelt 1949, p. 58 Renckens 1952, pp. 116-22 Van de Waal 1952, I, p. 218 Buchbinder-Green 1974, pp. 146-48, 367, fig. 143 Sluijter 2000a, pp. 85, 262, note 194, 286, note 90 Goossens 1996, pp. 40, 68, pl. XIII Goossens 2010, p. 145, figs. 117, 118 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 148 - 63

Saturn The model that was executed—which Quellinus made, borrowing heavily from prints by Goltzius4 —is closer to Ripa’s description. ‘An old, ugly, dirty and slothful man, who has bound his head with a slovenly cloth … he holds a sickle in his right hand and a child in his left.’5 Ultimately the commission went to Quellinus, probably because of his more spectacular choice of subject and workmanship, but also perhaps because ‘the child that he devours shows that Time destroys those same days of which he is the father and progenitor’.6 More than the stone, the child symbolizes that aspect of Saturn, which the scythe and the hourglass emphasize.

The gruesome but magnificent statue of Saturn is the last planet statue in the planet cycle, which begins with the Earth (Cybele). Gruesome because Saturn holds his frightful sickle and raises a struggling baby to his mouth; magnificent thanks to Quellinus’s virtuoso sculpting.1 The titan Saturn, god of agriculture and time, was the youngest son of Uranus, the god of the heavens, and the primordial goddess Gaea. Gaea helped Saturn overthrow his father’s rule by giving him the sickle with which he castrated him. Then Saturn married his sister Cybele, and had several children with her. However he devoured nearly all of them because his parents had prophesied that his children would dethrone him (Hesiod, Theogony, 453-506). Cybele managed to hide Jupiter, the last child, and fed the unknowing Saturn a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Once fully grown, Jupiter forced Saturn to regurgitate the children he had swallowed and imprisoned him in Tartarus.

The Janus head on the left has both a young face, which looks forward, and an old face, which looks backwards and belongs to Saturn’s constellation of Aquarius (January). The hay cut by the scythe is in keeping with Saturn’s agricultural iconography, but within the context of the planet statues may refer specifically to Summer, which has hay as its attribute.7 Fremantle, who saw a relationship between the placing of the planet statues and the surrounding offices, maintained that Saturn was linked to the adjoining Bankruptcy Chamber and the Insurance Chamber, two offices that dealt with financial matters. However, the association of Saturn with finances (by way of Melancholy) is far-fetched.8

Terracotta designs for some of the Town Hall’s sculpture have survived. Two modelli for Saturn provide insight into the competitive creative process. The model that was not executed, probably made by Rombout Verhulst,2 shows Saturn swallowing the stone, while four little children lie at his feet. This is in line with Van Mander: ‘with a stone in a cloth, which he appeared to put in his mouth, and had four small children around him’.3 1 Gabriels 1930, p. 112, praised the statue as ‘an important product of Quellien’s skill’.

Swillens 1961, p. 203 rated Quellinus’s work of 1653 as ‘undoubtedly the very best that has ever been produced in the Netherlands in the field of sculpture’.

2 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 108 makes a reasonable case for this through a comparison of the egg-and-tongue mouldings.

3 ‘met eenen steen in bewonden, die hy in de mondt scheen te steken, en hadde ontrent hem vier cleen kinderen’. Van Mander 1604, Uvtbeeldinge, fol. 125r.

4 The pose of both the modello that was not executed and the finished statue is strongly reminiscent of Willem Bassé’s Saturn etching after Goltzius’s design and Jacob Matham’s 1597 (mirror image) engraving of Saturn after Goltzius. The likeness to Rubens’s Saturn in the Prado (Goossens 2010, p. 74) in terms of the pose is less

obvious, although Rubens was certainly aware of the Goltzius prints.

5 ‘Een oud, lelijck, vuyl en traegh Man, die ‘t hoofd met een slordig laecken heeft omwonden, … Hy sal in de rechter hand een seyssen houden, en mette slinckerhand een kindeken.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 269.

6 ‘het kindeken dat hy verslint, betoont dat de Tijd die selve dagen verwoest, van de welcke hy vaeder en voortteelder is.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 269.

7 Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 476-77, Somer-Sonne-Stand (ears of wheat). See for the assumption that Summer is depicted here also Jupiter, Mercury and Venus.

8 Fremantle 1959, p. 46. See also Bedaux 1993, esp. p. 39.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Saturn, 1653 Marble, 162 x 100 cm Location Northeast corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Vennekool 1661, fig. S, W Fokkens 1662, pp. 157-58 Dapper 1663, p. 365 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 276-77 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. O Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), pp. 44-45 Kroon 1867, p. 110 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 111 Gabriels 1930, pp. 45, 110, 112, 304, pl. XIII Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-44 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-46 Swillens 1961, pp. 203, 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, p. 41 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-39 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217g Goossens 1996, pp. 51, 55, 60, fig. 46 Goossens 2010, pp. 71, 74, fig. 55f Scholten 2010, pp. 23, 25, figs. 28, 29 (modelli) Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 108, 110, 118, figs. 128, 129 (modelli) - 65

Cybele Behind Cybele there are two lions. Ripa, in one of his bursts of unfathomable logic, believed that ‘the lions pulling the chariot symbolize the use of agriculture in sowing, as lions … are accustomed to travel through the dust, and then they cover their paw prints again with dust by swishing their tails so that hunters will not spy their tracks’.4 Ovid (Metamorphoses X, 286-704) gave a more convincing explanation; he related how Atalanta and Hippomenes were making love in a temple sacred to Cybele. Cybele’s displeasure was such that she changed the couple into lions and harnessed them to her chariot. Quellinus does indeed show us a lion and a lioness in accordance with that story.

Cybele, the mother goddess and personification of the Earth, is dressed in a distinguished cloak and stands on her plinth with the natural grandeur of a mater familias.

Cybele, also known as Berecynthia, was the wife of Saturn, the statue beside her, and the mother of Jupiter. Like the Maid of Amsterdam and the personification of the element earth, she wears a crown with city walls, which symbolizes mankind’s habitation of the Earth. Her right hand rests on her hip and in her left she holds a key, which Van Mander said was to show ‘that she is locked in winter’, while she allows the seeds and plants to emerge in the spring.1 The various flowers and plants on the hem of her garment reflect this. Melchior Fokkens stated that Cybele also held a sceptre, which Ripa said she did indeed carry: ­ ‘The sceptre in the right hand administers the kingdoms, riches and power of the rulers of the world.’2 Here, however, it is a trumpet, the attribute of Fama, Good Rumour, ‘whose trumpet sounds the general call that is broadcast through people’s ears’.3 The trumpet also belongs to Gloria, who spreads fame and honour with it. The instrument would have been conceived in the same spirit here, as an ode to all the good things that the Earth brings forth. This symbolism is further elaborated in the relief on the plinth, which again shows the crown with the city walls together with a profusion of Earth’s bounty—a horn of plenty, maize, ears of wheat, flowers and farming instruments that helped bring in the abundant harvest.

1 ‘datse s’Winters ghesloten is’; Van Mander 1604, Uvtbeeldinge, fol. 125v.

2 ‘De scepter in de rechter hand, bediet de Koningrijcken, Rijckdommen en macht van de Heerschappers der Werreld’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 268.

3 ‘Trompet bediet het gemeen geroep dat door de ooren van de Menschen gespreyt wort.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 161.

4 ‘De Leeuwen, die de karre trecken, vertoonen het gebruyck van den Landbouw in ‘t saeyen, want de Leeuwen [..] zijn gewoon haere reyse door ‘t stof te doen, en dan decken zy haere voetstappen wederom met stof toe, en dat door ‘t slingeren

van haeren steert, ten eynde de Iaegers haeren wegh niet souden bespieden.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 268.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Cybele, 1653 Marble, 180 x 98 cm Location Northeast corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Fokkens 1662, pp. 158-59 Dapper 1663, pp. 357-58 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 279-81 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. R Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 42 Kroon 1867, pp. 109, 304 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 110, 113 Gabriels 1930, pp. 109-10, 112, 304 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-43 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-46 Swillens 1961, pp. 203, 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, p. 44 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-39 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217h Goossens 1996, pp. 56, 60, fig. 47 Goossens 2010, pp. 71, 74, fig. 55e Scholten 2010, pp. 23, 25, fig. 30 (modello) Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 105, 107, 118, fig. 122

 

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Lycurgus and his Nephew Charilaus five. If there was no provision in a will, the Orphans’ Chamber appointed a guardian who was responsible for managing the orphan’s estate. The Orphans’ Chamber kept guardianship and contribution registers and was thus an official guarantee of responsible stewardship of orphans’ goods.

Lycurgus, the king of Sparta, shows his new-born nephew Charilaus to the onlookers against a background of monumental palace architecture.

Eight months earlier Lycergus had inherited the throne on the death of his brother Polydectes. Polydectes’s widow soon proved to be pregnant by her dead husband. However, she indicated that she was willing to dispose of the unborn claimant to the throne if Lycurgus married her, but he managed to string the malicious woman along until the child’s birth. The story was handed down by Plutarch, whose principal work, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, was translated into Dutch again in 1644 as ’t Leven der doorluchtige Griecken ende Romeynen: ‘Now it happened that she was delivered of a son in the evening around dinner time / while he was at the table with the officers of the city / and his servants came into the room and presented him with the infant / which he took in his arms / and said to the onlookers, “See here, you gentlemen of Sparta, a king who is born to us”’.1

Holsteyn stayed close to Plutarch, who said that Lycurgus called his nephew ‘Charilaus’, or ‘joy of the people’, ‘because he saw all the onlookers very happy / praising … his magnanimous caution and his justice.’2 Lycurgus wears his crown not on his head, but around his arm, to emphasize this selflessness. The onlookers are all gathered round the table at the bottom of the scene. So that the composition would work at a height, Holsteyn cleverly painted reliefs in the background with antique triumphal processions in which the figures also look at the child. No one can fail to notice that the palace architecture is reminiscent of that of Amsterdam Town Hall. The figure at the front seems to have been inspired by the kneeling servant in Govert Flinck’s Marcus Curius Dentatus of 1656 in the Burgomasters’ Cabinet of the Town Hall. This suggests a date after that time.3 The lizards in the frieze on the mantelpiece, which according to Ripa stood for ‘protection and guardianship’, are an ingenious detail.4

Instead of giving way to the temptation of power, Lycurgus appointed himself the young half orphan’s representative, just like the board of guardians whose duty it was to look after the interests of orphans and half orphans in Amsterdam. Unless there was an explicit provision to the contrary, the Orphans’ Chamber supervised all minor young people in Amsterdam who had lost one or both parents until they were twenty1 ‘Nu gebeurde het dat sy verloste van een soon tsavonts omtrent den eten / ghelijck hy aen de tafel was met de Offeciers vande Stadt / en syn dienaers quamen inde sael die hem het cleyne kint preseteerden / dat hy tusschen sijn arme nam / ende seyde tot de omstanders: Siet hier ghy heeren van Sparta een Coninck die ons gheboren is’. Plutarch/Van Zuylen van Nyevelt 1644, fol. 17v.

2 ‘Charilaus oftewel blijtschap des volcx’, ‘om dat hy alde omstanders seer blijde sach / prijsende … sijne groothertighe voorsichticheyt en sijn rechtvaerdicheyt.’

3 The figure also closely resembles the figure in Ferdinand Bol’s Elisha and Naaman,

painted in 1661 for the Amsterdam Lazar House, which harks back to a print by Rubens. See Amsterdam 1975, pp. 14, 23, 45, figs. 7, 18, 38.

4 ‘bescherminghe en vooghdye’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 560.

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Cornelis Holsteyn Haarlem 1618 - 1658 Amsterdam Lycurgus and his Nephew Charilaus, c. 1658 Oil on canvas, 171.5 x 187 cm Location Orphans’ Chamber Selected bibliography Vondel 1655, ll. 1139-40 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 350 J. Vos, in Vondel et al. 1656, p. 199 Anonymous 1713, p. 443 Van Dyk 1758, p. 135, no. 98 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 67 Weissman 1907, p. 74 Bergmans/Weissman 1914, p. 141 Heppner 1946, p. 51 Luttervelt 1949, p. 58 Van de Waal 1952, I, p. 219 Fremantle 1959, p. 74 Buchbinder-Green 1974, pp. 144-45, 364, fig. 136 Amsterdam 1987, p. 60, fig. 33 Goossens 2010, pp. 138-39, fig. 111 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 148 - 71

Quintus Fabius Maximus Goes on Foot to Meet his Son carried through in the building of the Town Hall, and in the decoration programme, makes itself clearly felt.

The flag with the letters SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, the senate and people of Rome)—like the fasces featured elsewhere in the building—accentuates this connection once again. This painting in the Burgomasters’ Chamber refers to the deference and respect with which the Amsterdam burgomasters— who liked to model themselves on the Roman consuls (in the seventeenth century ‘consul’ was translated as ‘burgomaster’)—had to exercise their public positions.

There is also a certain republican sentiment involved in this choice of subject, concerning the dangers of the inheritance of administrative positions, specifically with regard to the stadholder.3

Quintus Fabius Maximus Cuncator (c. 280-203 BC), the Roman statesman in the ermine-caped red cloak, was a renowned general in the battle against Hannibal, the Carthaginian army commander. In the painting in the Burgomasters’ Chamber he visits his son of the same name, who became consul in 213 BC and was encamped in Suessula.1 The son, identifiable by his baton and laurel wreath, stands at the top of a flight of steps, surrounded by his lictors (guard of honour). Some of them carry fasces, a symbol of a magistrate’s authority.

Fabius had ridden on horseback to meet his son, but he saw him coming and sent a guard to order his father to dismount and approach him, as consul, on foot, as custom prescribed. Some of the bystanders—such as the old man in the red cloak on the right—appear to think that this is an inappropriate attitude by the consul towards his honourable father; they wait in suspense.

However Fabius immediately dismounts and walks with open arms to greet his son, precisely because his son’s order made it clear that he allowed the dignity of the highest office to prevail over their family ties.

The story has been passed down more or less identically by Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Titus Livius and Valerius Maximus, the last two explicitly stating that Fabius intended to test his son. There is no extensive pictorial tradition.4 Lievens appears to have based his painting loosely on Valerius Maximus, who was the only one to site the scene against an architectural background (a city wall). The suggestion that Lievens may have taken a drawing attributed to Rembrandt as his example is speculative.5

Beneath the painting is a poem by Vondel: ‘The son of Fabius ordered his own father / To dismount from his horse for the honour and respect of the City / Which knows no blood and demands that he approaches respectfully. / Thus the man of state honours the office he holds.’2 The typological connection between Ancient Rome and Amsterdam, which was consistently 1 In Antiquity a town in southern Italy. See Livy, Ab Urbe Condita XXIV, 44 (‘pater filio legatus ad Suessulam in castra uenit’). Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium II, 2.4 mistakenly states that the son was consul in Suessa. See Valerius Maximus/Walker 2004, p. 47, note 23. Aulus Gellius 2.2.13 and Plutarch, Fabius Maximus 24, make no reference to the location. Since Dapper 1663, who assumed that the son was called Suessa because of a translation error, there has been confusion about the name Suessula. See for example Fremantle 1959, p. 67 and recently A.K. Wheelock Jr, in Washington/Milwaukee/Amsterdam 2008-2009,

p. 24: ‘his son, the consul at Suesso’.

2 ‘De zoon van Fabius gebied zijn eigen Vader / Van ‘t paard te stijgen voor Stads eer en aghtbaarheid. / Die kent geen bloed en eischt dat hij eerbiedig nader. / Dus eert een man van staat het ampt hem opgeleid’.

3 A.K. Wheelock, Jr in Washington/Milwaukee/Amsterdam 2008-2009, p. 24. Ironically some years before, at the celebration of the Peace of Münster in Dam Square in 1648, a there was a performance in which Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator was compared to the stadholder, - 72

Jan Lievens Leiden 1607 - 1674 Amsterdam Quintus Fabius Maximus Goes on Foot to Meet his Son, 1656 Oil on Canvas, 203 x 175 cm Location Burgomasters’ Chamber Selected bibliography Vondel, in Vondel et al. 1656, p. 197 Vos in Vondel et al. 1656, p. 198 Fokkens 1662, pp. 124-25 Dapper 1663, p. 370 Von Zesen 1664, p. 259 Van Dyk 1758, pp. 105-6, no. 65 Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 53 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 126, 129 Weissman 1907, pp. 81-82 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 54-55 Van de Waal 1952, I, p. 216 Fremantle 1959, p. 67 Schneider/Ekkart 1973, pp. 116-17, cat. no. 102 Buchbinder-Green 1974, pp. 121-23, 344, fig. 95 Amsterdam 1987, pp. 48-49, fig. 57 Sumowski 1983, pp. 1787, 1850, no. 1211 Goossens 1996, p. 41, 70, pl. XIV Rotterdam 2001, p. 44 Washington/Milwaukee/Amsterdam 2008-2009, pp. 21-22, 35, 180, fig. 24 Goossens 2010, pp. 122, 124-25, fig. 99 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 148  

Frederick Henry of Orange. The spectacle was illustrated in a print by Pieter Nolpe. See Snoep 1975, p. 79, fig. 42.

4 David Vinckboons depicted the subject around 1610 in a drawing, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1919-65. See Schapelhouman 1987, pp. 167-69, cat. no. 99. The other half of the drawing is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

5 Sumowski 1983, p. 1787. The painting that Rembrandt supposedly made in 1655 for the overmantel (Br. 477), which is cited by Goossens 2010,

p. 125, has been rejected since 1966 (Bauch).

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Diana her nymphs. Actaeon was then torn to pieces by his own hounds. Diana also forced the Mycenaean king Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, after he killed one of her deer.3

Diana is the goddess of the moon, the nearest of the planets, who follows Earth (Cybele) in the northeast corner of the gallery. The moon on her forehead, a standard attribute, makes Diana easily identifiable.

She is also called ‘Diana Lucifera’ because she brings light into the darkness, and so she carries a torch in her right hand. Diana was the daughter of Jupiter and Latona and the twin of Apollo, the god of the Sun. According to the myth, immediately after she was born she helped her mother give birth to her twin brother.

This had a lasting impact, as Van Mander explained, because ‘she had seen so much suffering when her mother was giving birth that her father Jupiter allowed her to stay a virgin forever’.1 Unsurprisingly Diana became the protector of women in childbirth, and— with the torch—showed children the light.

Like the deer, the two fish behind Diana—and those in the lunettes above the adjacent doors—refer to the hunt and to fishing. In series of planets Diana is often portrayed as the mistress of fishing and shipping, important themes for Amsterdam.4 The masterly relief on the base (very probably by Verhulst),5 with nets and other hunting accoutrements, also refers to this. At Diana’s feet lie a lobster and a crab. They signify the constellation of Cancer associated with Diana, with which she is often portrayed. Ripa associated the crab with Inconstanza or Inconstancy: a woman who placed her foot on a large crab, with a moon in her hand.

‘The crab is an animal that goes forwards and backwards, in the same way as those who are irresolute … The Moon is likewise very changeable.’6

Diana is also the goddess of the hunt, so she carries a bow over her shoulder. The deer, which Quellinus subtly allowed to make an appearance, was an animal sacred to her. Ripa quoted Boccaccio, when he explained that Diana’s chariot was drawn by two deer because ‘the Moon’s course is completed much faster than all the other planets as it has the smallest circuit or orbit’.2 Deer also play an important role in Diana’s further adventures, the most famous, as Ovid (Metamorphoses III, 173-252) wrote, when she changed the unfortunate hunter Actaeon into a deer after he had accidently come across her bathing with 1 ‘in haer Moeders baringhe soo veel lijden ghesien, datse van haer Vader Iuppiter vercreegh eeuwich maeght te blijven’. Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 53r.

2 ‘de loop die de Maene doet veel snelder volbracht wort als alle d’andere Planeten, overmits zy de kleynste ronde of omloop heeft.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 270. Evidently he was referring to the speed of the deer here.

3 At the supreme moment Diana, in a cloud of mist, substituted a deer for the young woman (Ovid, Metamorphoses XII, 28-35).

4 See, for example, the Diana prints in the planets series to a design by Maerten van

Heemskerck (1568), Maerten de Vos (1585, c. 1600) and Hendrick Goltzius (1596).

5 Convincingly argued by Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 107-8.

6 ‘De Kreeft is een Dier dat voorwaerts en achterwaerts gaet, met een gelijcke maniere, gelijck die geene doen die losberaedigh zijn … De Maene is van gelijcken seer veranderlijck’. Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 367-68.

Van Mander 1604, Uvtbeeldinge, fol. 132r. associated the lobster with ‘Ongestadicheyt’ (Inconstancy).

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Diana, 1653 Marble, 170 x 100 cm Location Southeast corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348 Fokkens 1662, pp. 147-48 Dapper 1663, pp. 358-59 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 261-62 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. N Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), pp. 42-43 Kroon 1867, pp. 63, 109 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 110, 113, 135 Gabriels 1930, pp. 109-10, 304 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-43, 44, fig. 16 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-46, 165, pl. 41-45 Swillens 1961, pp. 203, 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 42-43, figs. 45-48 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-39 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217a Goossens 1996, pp. 34, 57, 60, pl. VI, fig. 48 Goossens 2010, pp. 70, 74-75, figs. 55d, 56 Scholten 2010, pp. 23, 26, fig. 31 (modello) Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 107-8, 115, 118, figs. 124, 135 - 75

Mercury However the billy goat is certainly uncommon. Ripa says nothing about a billy goat, mentioning only a ram on his shoulder, in the specific case of Mercury as the ‘ram carrier’.1 This is clearly not alluded to here.

Undoubtedly Van Campen had read Van Mander, who remarked, ‘Mercury … holds in his right hand a purse resting on the head of a goat, which lies at his feet’.2 Contemporary examples are rare, however—there appears to be no other apart from a fairly obscure woodcut and engraving after the ‘Augsburg Mercury’.3 Even though Van Mander gives no explanation, the goat must be linked to Mercury’s role as the god of herdsmen. We do not know why Van Campen chose to depict Mercury—like Jupiter—with an atypical attribute, but his decision may be connected to an ingenious representation of the seasons, with the goat as the personification of winter.4

At the end of the southeast gallery stands Mercury, the son of Jupiter and Atlas’s daughter Maia. Mercury was the god of commerce, which was so essential to Amsterdam, and for this reason alone he is omnipresent in the iconography of the Town Hall. He was also the god of herdsmen and thieves and the messenger of the gods. Mercury is shown here as a slim youth with his familiar winged hat and sandals. In his left hand he holds a money bag; in his right his staff with wings and snakes—the caduceus. Homer (Hymns IV, 490-549) wrote that Mercury received this staff from Apollo in exchange for his lyre, after he had stolen Apollo’s herd of cows. The caduceus became a symbol of commerce, negotiation and peace and the statue of Peace on top of the east fronton of the Town Hall therefore also carries this staff. As can be seen in Vennekool’s engraving after the design of the wall of the south gallery, Van Campen originally even wanted to place huge caduceus-shaped candlesticks in front of the planet statues—including Mercury—on the north and south sides of the galleries, which is why these statues do not have reliefs on their bases.

We do not know whether Quellinus saw Rubens’s 1636 Mercury.5 Although it cannot be denied that there is a certain likeness between the painting and the statue, it is nevertheless superficial. Given the extensive image tradition, Quellinus had a multitude of examples to choose from, some of them corresponding more closely to Mercury’s specific pose.6

In the rich image tradition that surrounds Mercury, the cockerel, seen here at his feet, is a regularly recurring creature that represents watchfulness and alertness.

1 Mercury purged the Greek city of Tanagra of the plague by carrying a ram on his back around the city wall. See Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 498. See also Van Mander 1604, Uvtbeeldinge, fol. 129r.

2 ‘Mercurius … hiel in zijn rechter handt eenen buydel, rustende op t’hooft van eenen Bock, die by zijn voeten lagh’. Van Mander 1604, Uvtbeeldinge, fol. 126v.

3 The Augsburg Mercury—an antique statue of Mercury with a cockerel and a goat— was unearthed there around 1500. The woodcut (and a copy of it) and engraving appear in books in 1520, 1534 and 1594. See Panofsky 1955, p. 251, fig. 71-74.

4 It seems as though Van Campen wanted to depict the four seasons in the four planet statues visible from the Citizens’ Hall. However, he felt obliged to keep to the planetary sequence, which was fixed and did not work for this idea (the

planets/gods concerned did not correspond to the four seasons). By picking clever attributes, he was nonetheless able to give all four statues an attribute that symbolized a season: Mercury—goat (winter); Jupiter— ram (spring); Saturn—ears of wheat (summer); Venus—apple (autumn).

See Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 477-478, Winters Sonne-stand (goat); pp. 504-5, Lentes evenaer (ram); pp. 476-77, Somer-Sonne-Stand (ears of wheat); pp. 505-6, Herfsts Evenaer (fruit).

5 Goossens 1996, p. 61; Goossens 2010, p. 75. Rubens’s painting was part of the Torre de la Parada project, and is in the Prado, Madrid.

6 Both artists must have started from Goltzius’s 1592 Mercury engraving.

The precise pose of Quellinus’s Mercury, with his left hand on his hip, - 76

Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Mercury, 1653 Marble, 175 x 97 cm Location Southeast corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 349 Vennekool 1661, fig. T Fokkens 1662, pp. 149-50 Dapper 1663, pp. 369-70 Von Zesen 1664, p. 264 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. M Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 43 Kroon 1867, pp. 63, 109 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 110, 135 Gabriels 1930, pp. 110, 304 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-43 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-46, 160 Swillens 1961, pp. 203, 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, p. 41 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-39 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217b Goossens 1996, pp. 58, 60-61, fig. 49 Goossens 2010, pp. 70, 75, fig. 55c Scholten 2010, p. 23, fig. 25 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 107  

his left leg crossed over his right and looking to the left, can be seen in the 1528 Mercury engraving by the Monogrammist IB.

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Fidelity / Mucius Scaevola resolute act during the Etruscan siege of Rome.

It was Mucius’s mission to end the siege by killing the Etruscan king Lars Porsena in his camp. However he was caught, led before Porsena and threatened with death. Without flinching he thrust his right hand into the fire as a sign of his resolve. While his hand was burning he boasted that there were three hundred just as determined men ready to kill Lars Porsena, who was shocked and immediately offered peace. The image tradition surrounding Mucius Scaevola does indeed show that he holds a sword in his right hand above the fire.6 Since the arm in the relief is a male right arm, not a female left arm, the steadfastness depicted here seems not based on Ripa’s description but comes from the story of Mucius Scaevola. This interpretation is in line with the broad perspective of the Town Hall’s iconographic programme, in which the parallel is repeatedly drawn between the Amsterdam government and the Republic of Rome. Van Mander’s explanation of the ‘tied dog’ as a warrior bound by his oath fits well here.

A brilliantly carved dog with a collar, signed in full by Rombout Verhulst, stands barking over his apparently dead master, determined to defend him.1 He represents fidelity, an essential quality for a secretary. Melchior Fokkens writes in 1662: ‘On the Dog. The faithful dog keeps watch, he is a helmet and a weapon here, / Since his loyal servant is there, the master may sleep.’2 Indeed, according to Van Mander in his Schilder-boeck, the dog was the symbol of ‘fidelity: because the dog is very faithful, and never forgets generosity. A tied dog signifies the warrior, who is faithful to his master and bound by his oath.’3 In the background we can see a burning stove with a right hand holding a sword above it. This represents the virtue of steadfastness, which is associated with fidelity. This motif is generally connected with Ripa’s description: ‘Costanza. Steadfastness. A woman, who with her right arm encircles a column, and with her left holds a naked sword above a great flame, showing that she is willing to burn her hand and arm.’4 However a 1713 visitors’ guide with descriptions of the Town Hall states that the hand is that of the young Roman infiltrator, Gaius Mucius, about whom Livy wrote (Ab Urbe Condita II, 12-13).5 He earned the nickname of Scaevola, or ‘left-handed’, after an extraordinarily

Uvtbeeldinge, fol. 128v.

4 ‘Costanza. Stantvastigheyt. Een Vrouwe die mette rechter arm een Pijlaer omvat, en met de slincker hand een bloote Deegen, boven een groote vlamme viers houd, toonende sich vrywilligh om den hand en arm te willen verbranden.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 484. See for example Goossens 1996, p. 67 and Goossens 2010, p. 106.

5 Dutch translations of Livy’s text were available in the seventeenth century. See for example Livy 1635 and Livy/Dupleix 1646.

6 See for example the engravings by Georg Pencz (1535), the Monogrammist FG (1537) and Hendrick Goltzius (1586).

1 The dog appears to be based on an etching by Antonio Tempesta, in which a dog and a cat are fighting (from the series Fighting Animals, 1600).

2 ‘Op de Hondt. De trouwe Hondt houdt wacht, hy is hier helm en wapen, / Daar trouwe dienaars zijn daar mach de meester slapen.’ Fokkens 1662, p. 131. Although it seems as if Fokkens thought that the master was sleeping, this appears to be chiefly poetically inspired. In his description of the relief on the same page he actually stated that the master was murdered.

3 ‘de getrouwicheyt: want den Hondt seer ghetrouwe is, oock geen weldaet verghetende. Eenen ghebonden Hondt beteyckent den Krijghs-man, die zijn Hooftman ghetrouw is, en aen zijnen Eedt is verbonden.’ Van Mander 1604, - 78

Rombout Verhulst Mechelen 1624 - 1698 The Hague Fidelity / Mucius Scaevola, c. 1653 Signed on the right on the stove RVHULST (RVH in ligature) Marble, c. 97 x 139 cm Location Entrance to the Secretary’s Office Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 348

Goossens 1996, pp. 67-68, fig. 60 Van der Ploeg 2004, pp. 230-31, fig. 8 Goossens 2010, p. 104, fig. 85 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 104, 108

Vennekool 1661, fig. T Fokkens 1662, pp. 130-31 Dapper 1663, pp. 272-73 Von Zesen 1664, p. 265 Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. I Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 61 Notten 1907, pp. 10-11 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 114 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 43, 45 Fremantle 1959, p. 73 Swillens 1961, p. 228 Amsterdam 1977, p. 60 - 79

Silence That Verhulst adhered faithfully to this explanation is clear from the fact that the goose is not standing (as in Ripa’s description) but is flying above a mountainous background.

A seated young woman with bare breasts holds her left index finger to her lips. While she reclines on a dolphin, whose head peers out from under her arm, on her right a goose flies by with a stone in its beak.

In the background there are houses in a hilly landscape.

This bas-relief, above one of the two entrances to the Secretary’s Office, is by Rombout Verhulst.

He joined the Guild of St Luke in 1652, probably operated independently from then on and proudly signed his work here on the left below the dolphin.1 The relief depicts silence or reticence, a fitting subject for the entrance to this important administrative office. In 1663 there were already twelve secretaries (also known as ‘confidential scribes’) working there, for whom discretion was an essential quality.2 Ripa’s Silentio is depicted as ‘an old man, who holds his one finger to his lips before his mouth; a goose stands to the side with a stone in its beak’.3 The old man has become a young woman here (‘although the understanding and disseminating of secrets seems common to most womenfolk,’ as a 1713 visitors’ guide snidely remarked).4 As far as the goose with the stone in its beak is concerned, Ripa quoted the Greco-Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae XVIII, 3: 9).

He described how during their migration large flocks of geese had to pass the Taurus Mountains, where many eagles lived. Fearful of attracting the attention of the eagles ‘by their cackling’, all the geese carried a stone in their beaks until the danger had receded.

The 1713 visitor’s guide also links the dolphin, as ‘the fish’ (irrespective of which sort)’, to Silence. Aside from the goose, however, Ripa only cites the frog and the crocodile (a beast without a tongue) as symbols for Silence. He describes the dolphin as ‘fast, skilful, clever and wise, able to carry out all difficult tasks swiftly’.5 Van Mander also alludes to the beast as such: ‘The dolphin, the fastest fish of the sea, which jumps over the highest masts, represents speed.’ Given that, aside from loyalty and discretion, skill and a quick yet accurate execution of the administrative ordinances were qualities that were highly valued in a secretary, we cannot rule out the possibility that the dolphin also refers to those merits.

1 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 104.

2 Amsterdam 1987, p. 42.

3 ‘Een oud Man, diewelcke zijn eene Vinger op de lippen, voor zijn mond houd, ter sijden sal een Gans staen, met een steen in den nebbe.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 489-91.

Ripa gives five descriptions of Silentio, one of which is a woman. Silentio is closely related to Secretezza, Silence, as the bas-relief was called by Quellinus in 1663.

However Ripa’s description of Silence (pp. 487-89) does not correspond to the ­ bas-relief discussed here.

4 ‘hoewel het snappen en verbreiden van geheimen, aan ’t meeste vrouwvolk eigen

scheind’. Anonymous 1713, p. 455. See also Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 488, which goes into the supposed indiscretion of women in detail.

5 ‘snel, vaerdigh, kloeck en wijs, om alle swaere voorvallen snellijck uyt te voeren’. Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 380.

6 ‘Den Dolphijn, den snelsten Visch der Zee, die over de hooghste masten hem opschiet, beteyckent snelheyt’. Van Mander 1604, Uvtbeeldinge, ­ fol. 132r.

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Rombout Verhulst Mechelen 1624 - 1698 The Hague Silence, c. 1653/1654 Signed lower left RVHULST (RVH in ligature) Marble, c. 97 x 139 cm Location Entrance to the Secretary’s Office Selected bibliography Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 347 Vennekool 1661, fig. T Fokkens 1662, pp. 130-31

Dapper 1663, p. 273 Von Zesen 1664, p. 265 Quellinus 1655-63, II, fig. K Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 61 Van Notten 1907, pp. 9-10 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, p. 114 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 43, 45 Fremantle 1959, p. 73 Swillens 1961, p. 228 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 60-61, fig. 73 Goossens 1996, pp. 67-68 Van der Ploeg 2004, p. 230, fig. 7 Goossens 2010, pp. 105-106, fig. 86 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 104, 108 - 81

Jupiter In Jan Vos’s Inwyding of 1655 the ruler of the gods decides to take a look inside the new Town Hall for himself. He passes the statues of the planets or gods at the ends of the galleries, ‘then the God of Thunder went through all the regions … he saw Berecynthia, the mother of all the gods, Saturn cruel by nature, the lady Venus of gentle inclination, the spiteful Mars, the nimble hunting goddess, the clever Apollo, famous with lyre and with arrows; the spry Mercury, who governs Exchange and markets; and the magnificent statue of himself’. In his description of the Town Hall of 1662, Melchior Fokkens called this showy statue ‘A strong man … naked, only a blue silk cloak full of gold stars swathes him to cover the shameful parts’. A year later, Olfert Dapper (and after him Von Zesen) said something similar: ‘He is portrayed by the poets, as he is here ... with a transparent cloak, full of glittering stars.’ However there is no evidence of the blue or the stars. It is hard to believe that the statue was ever painted. Did Dapper simply crib Fokkens’s poetic licence? In any event a century later Wagenaar also wrote that Jupiter’s loincloth was ‘sown with stars’.

Jupiter cuts a commanding figure with his powerful torso, full beard and the thunderbolts in his hands.1 At his feet there are a ram and an eagle; the bird rests one of its claws on a ball.2 This ball, which was fired by a blunderbuss (in Dutch donderbus, literally ‘thunderbox’), and the lightning are appropriate for Jupiter because, as Van Mander explained, ‘the planet Jupiter causes lightning’.3 Jupiter—associated with the element air—was always accompanied by the eagle; the ram was never one of his attributes. The presence of the animal has yet to be explained, but may be linked to the cycle of the four seasons, a subject also treated elsewhere in the Town Hall.4 Ripa wrote that the personification of the month of March, when spring starts, is depicted by a ram, and added, ‘the ancients called Spring Risum Iovis, Jupiter’s laughter’.5 However, Jupiter was associated with the constellations of Pisces and Sagittarius; Mars with Aries, the ram.

The question therefore is whether the three other planet statues visible from the Citizens’ Hall (Venus, Saturn and Mercury) refer to the other three seasons.

An attempt to establish this—guided by Ripa—proved productive and it is therefore quite possible that the ram symbolizes spring here.6

Sonne-Stand) and the month of June (p. 319). Mercury is unusually shown with an ibex, Ripa’s attribute for winter (pp. 477-78, Winters Sonnestand) and the month of December (p. 321). Venus is portrayed entirely in line with her traditional imagery with an apple in her left hand, corresponding to Ripa’s attribute for autumn—fruit in the left hand (pp. 505-6, Herfsts Evenaer)—and the month of September (p. 320).

7 ‘nu ging de Dondergodt Door al de wyken heen … Hy zagh ‘er Berecint, de moeder aller gooden, Saturnus wreedt van aart, vrouw Venus zacht van zin, De wrevelge Mars, de rappe Jagtgodin, De schrandere Apol, beroemt op lier en schichten; De wakkere Merkuur, die Beurs en markt verplichten; En ‘t pronkbeeldt van zich zelf’. Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), pp. 348-49.

1 Gabriels 1930, p. 110, suggested that Jupiter’s face was derived from Phidias’s famous Zeus of Olympia, which was destroyed in a fire in Constantinople in 475 BC. 2 Fokkens 1662, p. 151, had already called the ball a thunderhead, followed by Dapper in 1663.

3 ‘de Planeet-sterre Iuppiter den blixem veroorsaect’, Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 6r. The oak leaves on the frame are also part of Jupiter’s established iconography.

4 The theme of the four seasons is also shown in the frieze below the Maid of Amsterdam statuary group in the Citizens’ Hall.

5 ‘De Oude hebben de Lente Risum Iovis, den lagh van Iupiter genaemt.’ Ripa/Pers 1644, p. 318. See also pp. 504-5, Lentes evenaer (ram).

6 Entirely in accordance with his traditional imagery, Saturn is shown with ears of wheat, a symbol that Ripa relates to summer (Ripa/Pers 1644, pp. 476-77, Somer- 82

Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Jupiter, 1653 Marble, 183 x 105 cm Location Southwest corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), p. 349 Vennekool 1661, fig. T Fokkens 1662, pp. 150-51 Dapper 1663, pp. 360-61 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 266-67 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. L Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), p. 43 Kroon 1867, pp. 63, 109 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 110, 139 Gabriels 1930, pp. 110, 304 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-43, fig. 14 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45, 47 Swillens 1961, pp. 203, 225-27 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-40 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217c Goossens 1996, pp. 59, 61, fig. 50 Goossens 2010, pp. 69, 75, fig. 55b Scholten 2010, pp. 23, 27, figs. 32, 33 (modelli) Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 105, 107-109, 118, figs. 126, 127 (modelli) - 83

Apollo richly nuanced trophy contains musical instruments, a specific, identifiable songbook, a celestial globe, laurel wreaths and drawings or prints.4

Apollo, the son of Jupiter and Latona, and the twin brother of Diana, is shown here with a quiver, bow and lyre, with the dragon-like Python lying dead at his feet.

Apollo stands here in his capacity as the Sun, one of the eight ‘planets’ that together formed the outermost rings of the Ptolemaic universe and so decorate the galleries around the Citizens’ Hall. After the great destructive Flood, wrote Ovid (Metamorphoses I, 41651), the Sun’s heat warmed the moisture in the Earth, creating all kinds of animals, among them Python, a fearsome, hideous serpent, which ‘was so large that it covered a great part of the mountains’.1 Python did not last long, however. Not two lines later Apollo, though partially responsible for its existence, shot arrows into the monster and killed it.2 ‘Now to give some explanation of this,’ wrote Van Mander. ‘Python in Greek is decay that arises from too much moisture, and it is consumed and destroyed by Apollo the sun and his hot rays, for otherwise it would cause great sickness’.3 Apollo here is thus an allegorical representation of the benevolent, healing Sun, which fights decay.

In 1650, Apollo, sometimes regarded as the most virtuoso of the planet statues, was one of the first works supplied by Quellinus, who was paid six hundred guilders for it.5 Quellinus’s craftsmanship was lauded

by Jan Vos, ‘The cruel Python, which continually gorged itself on human blood, is trodden underfoot. Apollo defeated this creature with his steel darts. Thus does Quellinus’s chisel defeat all others.’6 Goossens points to Quellinus’s borrowing from Rubens’s Apollo and the Python, part of his great Metamorphoses series for the Spanish king Philip IV, on which Quellinus’s brother, Erasmus, worked. The Python on its back and the rendering of its claws do indeed suggest that Quellinus was familiar with Rubens’s design. While Rubens almost literally quotes the Apollo Belvedere, though, Quellinus’s Apollo, with his arm more typically bent behind his head, was inspired by Hendrick Goltzius’s engraving Apollo and the Python and by Praxiteles’s famous Apollo Lycaeus, copies and print variations of which were well known.7

Apollo was also the god of beauty, music, art and harmony. The lyre behind Python and above all the magnificent relief that decorates the statue’s base express these concepts. The beautifully balanced and 1 ‘soo groot was dat het een groot deel des gebergts bedeckte’. Ovid/Florianus 1650, pp. 21-22.

2 Hyginus (Fabulae, 140) tells how the monster tried to kill Latona when she was pregnant with Diana and Apollo, since according to the prophecy it would be killed by her offspring. Jupiter, Aquilo and Neptune prevented this happening, after which Apollo, once born, took revenge.

3 ‘Nu om hier eenighe uytlegginge van te hebben is Python op Griecx, verrottinghe welcke van te groote vochticheyt ontstaet, en wort van Apollo de Sonne door haer heete stralen verteert, en te niet gedaen, die andersins groote sieckten souden veroorsaecken.’ Van Mander 1604, Wtleggingh, fol. 7r.

4 Goossens 2010, p. 73 identifies the songbook as the Livre septième.

Vlaardingerbroek 2011, p. 107 attributes the relief to Willem de Keyser.

5 Goossens 2010, p. 73. For the payment to Quellinus see Kroon 1867, ­ p. 109.

6 ‘De wreede Python, die zich staâgh aan menschebloedt Smoordronken zoop, wordt hier getreeden met de voet. Apol verwon dit dier door zijn verstaalde schichten. Zoo doet de beitel van Quellyn all’ andre zwichten.’

7 Goltzius’s engraving is number 13 in his Metamorphoses series of 1589.

For prints after (variations on) the Apollo Lycaeus, see for example Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving of the Apollo Citharoedus of the Casa Sassi. See also Fremantle 1959, p. 160, note 2. Gabriels 1930, p. 110 pointed to the likeness to one of Michelangelo’s Slaves (Paris, Louvre).

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 Apollo, 1650 Marble, 180 x 95 cm Location Southwest corner gallery Selected bibliography Vondel 1655 (ed. 1982), ll. 1093-98 Vos 1655 (ed. 1662), pp. 349, 353-54 Fokkens 1662, pp. 152-53 Dapper 1663, pp. 361-62 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 269-70 Quellinus 1655-63, I, fig. K Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), pp. 43-44 Kroon 1867, pp. 63, 109 Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 110, 113, 139 Gabriels 1930, pp. 109-10, 304 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 41-44, figs. 13, 14 Fremantle 1959, pp. 45-46, 48, 160, note 3 Swillens 1961, pp. 183, 225-27 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 40-41, fig. 43 Bedaux 1993, pp. 38-39 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, p. 217, fig. 217d Goossens 1996, pp. 34, 49-50, 52, pl. V, fig. 43 Goossens 2010, pp. 68-69, 77, figs. 54, 55a Scholten 2010, pp. 23-24, fig. 26 (modello) Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 105-8, 115, 118, figs. 120, 125, 136 - 85

The Tribunal The centre relief shows the judgement of Solomon (1 Kings 3, 16-28). Two women went to the wise King Solomon with a new-born baby and put their case before him. They had both given birth to a child.

However, one of the two children had died and both women claimed that they were the mother of the surviving infant. Having listened to their dispute, Solomon ordered that the child should be split in two and they each should have half. While the deceiver agreed with this gruesome solution, the real mother begged him to spare the child and hand it over to the other woman. Solomon now knew the truth and gave the child to the real mother. There was an extensive pictorial tradition surrounding the judgement of Solomon, which also featured the same motifs— alongside the main scene, for example, the dead child on the floor and the soldiers in the background.

Quellinus’s particularly fine relief after Van Campen’s design, which shows Solomon on his throne while he awards the child to the real mother with his staff, largely harks back to the Solomon print by Boëtius Adamsz Bolswert, executed to a design by Peter Paul Rubens. It is not only the executioner raising his sword that was borrowed from Rubens’s design, but the old man beside Solomon who strokes his beard with his hand, the deceiving woman lifting up her skirt and the shell behind the throne. However, Van Campen opted for a frontal viewpoint, which benefits the symmetry in the Tribunal.4

The decoration programme of the Tribunal, the ceremonial room in which death sentences were pronounced,1 is without doubt one of the most ambitious sculptural works undertaken in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. The major work is on the west wall in front of which the sheriff and the aldermen sat. As could the condemned prisoner in that period and the spectators behind him (a tribunal was public so people were able to look inside from Dam Square), we can see three monumental haut-reliefs here with exemplary scenes of justice. The reliefs are separated by two pairs of caryatids flanking decorative bas-reliefs. On the left there is the horrifying story of Zaleucus, a strict but just lawgiver from Locri in Southern Italy, who had stipulated that adultery was to be punished by putting out both of the offender’s eyes. After Zaleucus’s son—seated on his left—had been caught committing adultery, his father wanted to save him from blindness, but equally the law had to be upheld. He consequently allowed only one of his son’s eyes to be put out, but had one of his own destroyed as well. A moved crowd of bystanders watch while the awful sentence is carried out with a red-hot pin.

The Zaleucus anecdote was handed down by Valerius Maximus (Factorum et dictorum memorabilium VI, 5), but was also known from Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert’s Zedekunst Dat is Wel-levens kunste of 1585, an edition of which was published in 1630.2 The scene was quite often used as an example of the lawgiver’s empathy and integrity.3 1 For a detailed analysis of the functioning of the Tribunal see Fremantle 1962.

2 Coornhert 1630, III, 5, 125 (fol. 113v).

3 For example, in prints of Justice and in the Justice Panel formerly in the town hall of Hoorn. See also the title page of the Thronus Justitiae print series by Willem Isaacsz van Swanenburg to a design by Joachim Wtewael of 1606, the print of Justice with the judgments of Zaleucus and Cambyses by Willem Jacobsz Delff and the print by Wenceslaus Hollar after Giulio Romano dated 1637. The Justice Panel in Hoorn, which probably dates from the first decades of the sixteenth

century, is now in the Westfries Museum, Hoorn.

4 Van Campen appears to have looked closely at the Solomon print by Frans Floris, published by Hieronymus Cock in 1556.

5 ‘in bywesen ende voor den aengesichte haers vaders metten anderen onhalst’, Livy 1635, fol. 16r.

6 See the woodcut by Zacharias Muentzer in Livy/Florus 1571, and the woodcut by Tobias Stimmer in Livy/Florus 1574.

7 See Q. Buvelot, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 84-85, cat. 12, 100, pl. XII. - 86

Under the architrave, which is supported by the impressive grieving caryatids, fasces have been placed on the left and the right. The eye of God in a sun with a laurel wreath, an allusion to all-seeing divine justice, appears above the Solomon relief. A Last Judgment painted by Van Campen and designed to hang above the architrave was never installed there and is now in St George’s church in Amersfoort.7 The chair of the secretary, who had to proclaim the sentence of death to the condemned prisoner, is in the niche in the north wall. On it is a relief depicting silence, an essential virtue for a secretary.8 Above the chair we again see a shell, the symbol of wisdom.9 Finally, in the niches on the east side there are statues of Justice and Prudence, which were there to remind the sheriff and the aldermen of their responsible task.

The third relief shows the execution of the sons of Lucius Junius Brutus, who in 509 BC became the first consul of Rome after he had put an end to rule of his uncle, King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. In Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (II, 3-5), various Dutch translations of which were available, we can read how a conspiracy to restore Tarquinius’s power was discovered prematurely.

The conspirators—among them Brutus’s sons Titus and Tiberius—were then put to death. As the implacable Brutus desired no preferential treatment for his children, they were ‘beheaded by others in the presence and the sight of their father’.5 The dramatic relief shows how Brutus gives the executioner the sign to behead his son, while the lifeless body of the other already lies before him. In the background Jupiter, seated in front of a plinth with the Capitoline she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, observes the bloody scene. The temple of Jupiter erected by Brutus and the Roman standards with the letters SPQR emphasize Amsterdam’s desire to identify with Rome. The story had been performed previously as a spectacle in Dam Square, during the celebration of the start of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1609. A print by Claes Jansz Visscher with this and other spectacles shows the kneeling son in a corresponding pose. Van Campen would also have been familiar with the woodcuts in a number of sixteenth-century German editions of Livy.6

8 See for the interpretation of this relief the discussion of the almost identical relief above the entrance to the Town Clerk’s Chamber.

9 Fremantle 1962, p. 233.

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Artus Quellinus 1609 - Antwerp - 1668 The Tribunal, 1650-52 Marble, each relief 245 x 180 cm Selected bibliography Vondel 1655, ll. 1063-92 Vos 1655, pp. 341-42 Vennekool 1661, figs. K-N Fokkens 1662, pp. 108-12 Dapper 1663, pp. 346-53 Von Zesen 1664, pp. 250-52 Quellinus 1655-63, I, figs. A-H Wagenaar 1760-1768, VII (1765), pp. 22-29 Kroon 1867, pp. 59-61, 107 Gabriels 1930, pp. 99-109, 303, figs. 14-15, pl. VIII-XII Brugmans/Weissman 1914, pp. 96-107 Luttervelt 1949, pp. 62-65, figs. 23-25 Fremantle 1956 Fremantle 1959, pp. 39-40, 78-86, 156-60, figs. 84-97 Swillens 1961, pp. 199-200, 203, 206-7, 210, 224-25 Fremantle 1962 Amsterdam 1977, pp. 2, 22-30, figs. 1, 17-30 E.J. Goossens, in Amsterdam 1995, pp. 215-16, figs. 214, 215 Goossens 1996, pp. 69-72, figs. 63-67 Goossens 2010, pp. 86, 88-93, figs. 71-77 Scholten 2010, pp. 28-33, figs. 35-41 Vlaardingerbroek 2011, pp. 119-20, 131-32, fig. 147 - 88

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Van de Waal 1952 H. van de Waal, Drie eeuwen vaderlandsche geschied-uitbeelding 1500-1800 : Een iconologische studie, 2 vols., The Hague 1952.

Wagenaar 1760-1768 J. Wagenaar, Amsterdam in zyne opkomst, aanwas, geschiedenissen, voorregten, koophandel, gebouwen, kerkenstaat, schoolen, schutterye, gilden en regeeringe, 13 vols., Amsterdam 1760-68.

Washington/Detroit/Amsterdam 1980-1981 A. Blankert et al., God en de Goden : Verhalen uit de bijbelse en klassieke oudheid door Rembrandt en zijn tijdgenoten, [exh. cat.] National Gallery of Art (Washington), The Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit), Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Amsterdam/The Hague 1980-1981.

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Locations Hidden Stories FIRST FLOOR

Magistrates’ Chamber Treasury Extraordinary

Chamber of Commissioners of Petty Affairs

Chamber of the Magistrates Extraordinary

Chamber of Accounts

Northwest gallery

Southwest gallery

Secretary’s Office

Bankruptcy Chamber Citizens’ Hall

Secretary’s Office

Insurance Chamber

Northeast gallery

Southeast gallery

Stairs Treasury Ordinary

Burgomasters’ Cabinet

Burgomasters’ Chamber

Execution Chamber

Council Chamber

Proclamation Gallery * Tribunal - Ground Floor

For a Virtual Tour, see: paleisamsterdam.nl/en/visit/virtualtour

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Orphan’s Chamber

Insurance Chamber

Entrance Insurance Chamber

Southeast gallery

Theseus returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne, 1657 Willem Strijcker (1606 - 1663)

Arion, 1654 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Diana, 1653 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Burgomasters’ Cabinet

Entrance Secretary’s Office

Mercury, 1653 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

The Incorruptible Consul Manius Curius Dentatus, 1656 Govert Flinck (1615 - 1660)

Fidelity / Mucius Scaevola, ca. 1653 Rombout Verhulst (1624 - 1698)

Southwest gallery

Fabricius and King Pyrrhus, 1656 Ferdinand Bol (1616 - 1680)

Silence, ca. 1653/1654 Rombout Verhulst (1624 - 1698)

Apollo, 1650 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Burgomasters’ Chamber

Northwest gallery

Jupiter, 1653 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Quintus Fabius Maximus Goes on Foot to Meet his Sun, 1656 Jan Lievens (1607 - 1674)

Mars, 1653 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Citizens’ Hall Atlas, ca. 1660-1661 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668) The Maid of Amsterdam with Power and Wisdom, 1662 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668) The Four Virtues, ca. 1661-1663 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668) The Four Elements, 1655 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668) Amphion, 1655 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668) Mercury, Io and Argus, 1655 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Venus, ca. 1653 Rombout Verhulst (1625 - 1698)

Northeast gallery Saturn, 1653 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668) Cybele, 1653 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Magistrates’ Chamber, vestibule Justice, 1662 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Tribunal The Tribunal, 1650-1652 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

Bankruptcy Chamber Odysseus and Nausicaä, 1657 Thomas de Keyser (1596 - 1667)

Orphans’ Chamber Lycurgus and his Nephew Charilaus, ca. 1658 Cornelis Holsteyn (1618 - 1658)

Entrance Bankruptcy Chamber Icarus, 1654 Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)

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Hidden Stories was published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name staged in the Royal Palace Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, 3 July to 27 September 2015. www.paleisamsterdam.nl/en Text Contributions Renske Cohen Tervaert Jasper Hillegers Eric Jan Sluijter Marianna van der Zwaag Editing Renske Cohen Tervaert Ingrid Nolet (Het Nederlands Tekstbureau) Ineke Sluiter Translation Lynne Richards Philip Clarke Design NorthernLight, Amsterdam Production Royal Palace Amsterdam Printing & Lithography Lecturis, Eindhoven Publishers Amsterdam Royal Palace Foundation Images Amsterdam Royal Palace Foundation / Tom Haartsen p. 11 (fig. 3 en 4), p. 19 (fig. 2), p. 22 (fig. 6), pp. 33, 36-37, 40-41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 88-89 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam p. 7 (fig. 1), p. 12 (fig. 5), p. 13 (fig. 6), p. 21 (fig. 4 en 5) Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam p. 23 (fig. 7) Amersfoort City Council p. 10 (fig. 2) Amsterdam City Council/ Edwin van Eis p. 18 (fig. 1) British Museum, London p. 23 (fig. 8) Alte Pinakothek, Munich p. 20 (fig. 3) ISBN 978-90-72080-54-7 www.paleisamsterdam.nl/en Š 2015 Amsterdam Royal Palace Foundation / the authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a computerized database, or made public, in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The publisher has endeavoured to settle the rights to the illustrations in accordance with the statutory requirements. Anyone who nonetheless believes they have certain rights may apply to the publisher.

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Wise Lessons in the Decorations of Amsterdam’s Former Town Hall