The Universe of Amsterdam

The Universe of Amsterdam Treasures from the Golden Age of cartography

The Universe of Amsterdam Treasures from the Golden Age of cartography

The Universe of Amsterdam Treasures from the Golden Age of cartography

Contents

8 Preface His Majesty the King 12 The Universe of Amsterdam Robbert Dijkgraaf en AndrÊ Kuipers 20 Under the spell of Atlas: The Golden Age of Amsterdam cartography Reinder Storm 60 Heaven and Earth in Amsterdam’s town hall Alice Taatgen 92 List of works exhibited 94 Selected literature 95 Acknowledgements 96 Credits

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Preface

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Globetrotters Maps are fascinating. They reduce the world, and even the universe, to a human scale. In so doing, they give us the pleasant illusion that we can survey the world and get to know even the remotest parts of it. To allow one’s eyes to wander across a map is to become, almost without realising it, an explorer.

The Citizens’ Hall in the Royal Palace Amsterdam is a place that fires the imagination.

Those who step onto its marble floor have three vast maps of the eastern and western hemispheres and the celestial sphere at their feet. The maps testify to the boundless ambition of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, which regarded itself as the operating base from which to sail the oceans and to explore the farthest corners of the planet. Anyone who gazes at the mosaics while walking around them will soon have a sense of being an unfettered globetrotter.

The palace is open to the public for most of the year, allowing all visitors to experience this sense of adventure for themselves. In addition, it hosts special exhibitions that add an extra dimension to the building and can make such a visit more interesting still. The Universe of Amsterdam is one such exhibition. The exhibition and the book illuminate masterpieces from the heyday of Amsterdam cartography. Together with the impressive mosaics in the floor of the Citizens’ Hall, they provide a fascinating picture of the ingenuity, the vitality, the curiosity, and the pioneering spirit of the people of the Netherlands in the Golden Age.

His Majesty the King

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Alice Taatgen

Heaven and Earth in Amsterdam’s town hall

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The world lies at Amsterdam’s feet.

That was how the people of Amsterdam saw it during the Golden Age, and they displayed that view quite literally in their town hall, today the Royal Palace. Enthroned above the entrance of the large Citizens’ Hall is the Maid of Amsterdam, overlooking the maps of the world and the universe that lay at her feet. The three circular marble mosaics in the floor of the hall depict the earth’s eastern and western hemisphere and the northern night sky. Each measuring 624 cm in diameter, they are the largest maps in the world. In the middle of the Golden Age, the city of Amsterdam built a new town hall, a showcase project such as had never before been undertaken.

Amid an abundance of magnificent decorations, the maps in the floor of the Citizens’ Hall form an essential part of the ingenious message that the building conveys to its visitors.

Prosperity and peace On 28 October 1648, three small sons and a nephew of the four incumbent burgomasters laid the foundation stone for the new town hall, which would be dubbed the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ while it was still under construction. Not long before that, the peace treaty had been signed in Münster, bringing to an end the Eighty Years’ War. Amsterdam had played an important role in the negotiations. In a relatively short space of time, it had grown into the wealthiest and most powerful city in the Dutch Republic. Amsterdam’s trading

vessels sailed the oceans, bringing precious cargo back from Asia and the Americas as well as from the Baltic coast. Closer to home, land reclamation projects, such as that of the Beemster polder, yielded substantial revenue. The new economic prosperity created scope for the arts and sciences, and painting, printmaking and book publishing all flourished. The city attracted large flows of immigrants, chief among them war refugees from the Southern Netherlands, and the city’s population soared from 30,000 in 1578 to roughly 170,000 around the mid-seventeenth century (fig. 34).

It is no wonder that the great metropolis of Amsterdam wanted to build a town hall that would reflect its powerful status. The architect Jacob van Campen was commissioned by the city council to design plans for an enormous building. When the structure was finally completed, in 1667, its total floor space was around 25,000 square metres.

Rising to six storeys, it towered over the sea of the city’s other buildings: no ship approaching the harbour could be in any doubt as to where the centre of power lay in Amsterdam. But anyone who wanted to understand the entire message projected by the building would have to go in and take a closer look.

Jacob van Campen designed his town hall as a temple of civic power and a temple of peace. The building’s façade is perfectly symmetrical, with pilasters – flat columns – and a central triangular tympanum decorated with sculptures, all of which echoed Roman architecture. Van Campen’s use of features borrowed from the architecture of antiquity 63

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33. The town hall at Dam Square, with the house known as ‘De Wakkere Hond’ (‘The Watchful Dog’) on the left. For a hundred years, this was the spot where Jodocus Hondius and many other map-sellers had their businesses. Gerrit Berckheyde, 1693.

34. This ‘quartet’ showing different stages of the city’s development was very popular. Several publishers marketed the map in the seventeenth century. This one was produced by Frederick de Wit. 65

is entirely understandable: the young Dutch Republic sought to emulate the Roman Republic, Amsterdam’s burgomasters saw themselves as consuls and heirs to that ancient empire. High on the tympanum above Dam Square stands a bronze statue of Peace, over four metres high, holding an olive branch and a caduceus, the symbols of peace and trade (fig. 35). With the end of the war in 1648, Amsterdam’s town hall was also consecrated as a temple of peace, and many hoped that peace would create conditions for trade to flourish.

The counterpart of Peace, the figure of Atlas, on the tympanum of the building’s rear façade, is holding up the celestial globe on his shoulders. This mythological figure led the rebellion of the Titans against Jupiter, who punished him by forcing him to stand at the edge of the world holding up the heavens. Because of this, Atlas was seen as a representation of the centre of the universe, and on the roof of the town hall he symbolised the city’s status as the centre of world trade.

35. The figure of Peace on the tympanum.

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Divine perfection There is a second reason for Van Campen’s decision to create a design that echoed classical architecture. He strove to design a perfect building, one that would mirror the perfection of God’s Creation: the entire universe, with everything it contained. But how could such a thing be done? Like other intellectuals of his day, Van Campen sought the answer in writings from classical antiquity. The Greek philosopher Plato asserted that the universe – the macrocosm – was

reflected on a smaller scale in the human being – the microcosm. The Roman architect Vitruvius further contended that the proportions of the human body, the perfect creation, must serve as the point of departure for the perfect geometrical proportions in architecture. The human body fits precisely within a rectangle, a square, and a circle, and taking these shapes as the basic foundation, a perfect building can be designed. By applying Vitruvius’s rules as absolutely as possible, Van Campen was able to approach divine perfection in his design for Amsterdam’s town hall.

36. View of the Citizens’ Hall.

Jacob Vennekool, 1661.

A miniature universe The notion that the town hall should mirror the universe is expressed in the abundance of sculptures in the interior, designed by Jacob van Campen himself and executed

by Artus Quellinus, who was then the finest sculptor in northern Europe. His work can be seen in the heart of the building, which was accessible to all: the immense Citizens’ Hall and the galleries surrounding it. It must have been a hive of activity every day: meetings of the city council; citizens coming to arrange their affairs; merchants rushing in from Dam Square to take refuge from the rain; children playing; and visitors curious to see the eighth wonder of the world with their own eyes (fig. 36).

Enthroned above the east entrance to the Citizens’ Hall is the Maid of Amsterdam, identifiable by the three St Andrew’s crosses from the city’s coat of arms on the bodice of her dress and by the eagle that holds the imperial crown over her 67

head (fig. 38). In her hands she holds an olive branch and a palm branch, familiar symbols of peace: here, Amsterdam presents herself as the ruler who brings peace. In the spandrels above the entrances to the galleries are depicted the four elements – Air, Earth, Water, and Fire – while magnificent festoons between the hall’s windows display animals and plants from the entire world (fig. 37).

They depict the microcosm, the richness of life on earth. In the four corners of the galleries we see eight celestial bodies in the shape of Roman gods: the supreme deity Jupiter, his son Apollo (the sun) and his twin sister Diana (the moon), Mercury, the god of trade, the Titan Saturn, Cybele, goddess of fertility (the earth), and finally Mars and Venus, the deities of war and love. Together these eight make up the macrocosm that surrounds Amsterdam.

37. Earth (as one of the four elements) in the Citizens’ Hall.

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The world at Amsterdam’s feet For the Citizens’ Hall, Jacob van Campen conceived these elements as part of a larger decorative programme that placed Amsterdam squarely at the centre of the time and space of the cosmos. This part of the iconographic programme revolves around the three enormous circular maps of the eastern and western terrestrial hemispheres and the northern night sky in the floor of the Citizens’ Hall. The following paragraphs describe Van Campen’s iconographic programme, large parts of which would unfortunately never materialise.

When we look back at the Maid of Amsterdam, above the entrance to the hall, we see that she literally has the world