Wise Lessons in the Decorations of Amsterdam’s Former
Town Hall
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 My 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.
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.
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.
How Theseus was Insured and Odysseus Saved from Ruin
MYTHOLOGY IN THE INSURANCE CHAMBER AND THE BANKRUPTCY CHAMBER
by Eric Jan Sluijter
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, ...’
Fig. 1
Civil
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.
Fig. 2
Odysseus en Nausicaä, 1657
Thomas de Keyser (1596-1667)
Oil on canvas, 200 x 167 cm
Location: Bankruptcy Chamber
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.
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.
Fig.
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].
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 seventeenth-
10 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.
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.
The Four Virtues
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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’.
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.
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.
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
Icarus
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.
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
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
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
have been borrowed from one of Della Bella’s prints for the same pack of cards.
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
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
Goossens 2010, p. 142
Odysseus and Nausic a ä
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Lycurgus and his Nephew Charilaus
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
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 twenty-
1 ‘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,
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.
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
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.
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
Quintus Fabius Maximus Goes on Foot to Meet
his Son
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.
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,
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
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
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,
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).
Apollo
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.
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.
richly nuanced trophy contains musical instruments, a specific, identifiable songbook, a celestial globe, laurel wreaths and drawings or prints.4
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
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).
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
Locations Hidden Stories
Secretary’s Office
Secretary’s Office
Insurance Chamber
Theseus returns the Ball of Thread to Ariadne, 1657
Willem Strijcker (1606 - 1663)
Burgomasters’ Cabinet
The Incorruptible Consul Manius Curius Dentatus, 1656
Govert Flinck (1615 - 1660)
Fabricius and King Pyrrhus, 1656
Ferdinand Bol (1616 - 1680)
Burgomasters’ Chamber
Quintus Fabius Maximus Goes on Foot to Meet his Sun, 1656
Jan Lievens (1607 - 1674)
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)
Bankruptcy Chamber
Odysseus and Nausicaä, 1657
Thomas de Keyser (1596 - 1667)
Entrance Bankruptcy Chamber
Icarus, 1654
Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)
Entrance Insurance Chamber
Arion, 1654
Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)
Entrance Secretary’s Office
Fidelity / Mucius Scaevola, ca. 1653
Rombout Verhulst (1624 - 1698)
Silence, ca. 1653/1654
Rombout Verhulst (1624 - 1698)
Northwest gallery
Mars, 1653
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)
Orphans’ Chamber
Lycurgus and his Nephew Charilaus, ca. 1658
Cornelis Holsteyn (1618 - 1658)
Southeast gallery
Diana, 1653
Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)
Mercury, 1653
Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)
Southwest gallery
Apollo, 1650
Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)
Jupiter, 1653
Artus Quellinus (1609 - 1668)
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
Leonie Hangoor
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
© 2015 Amsterdam Royal Palace Foundation / the authors
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