Golden Age (Netherlands)

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The world map by Frederik de Wit , created in 1662 at the height of the Golden Age of the United Netherlands in the leading publishing house for maps and atlases of its time, symbolizes the economic, scientific, cultural and artistic pioneering role of the country that rose to become a world power and even cartography dominated.

The Golden Age ( Dutch de Gouden Eeuw ) denotes an economic and cultural heyday that lasted around one hundred years in the history of the Netherlands and fills approximately the 17th century . At the height of the Golden Age around 1650 there were around 700 painters working in the Netherlands, who completed around 70,000 paintings annually. This is unprecedented in the entire history of art, neither in the Italian Renaissance nor in France at the time of Impressionism. In total, the Dutch painters produced several million paintings, which is why today almost every museum of ancient art shows Dutch paintings.

The prerequisite for this bloom was the rise of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands ( Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden ) to a global maritime and trading power. The religious freedom prevailing in the Netherlands attracted a wide variety of people. They were persecuted in other states because of their beliefs and fled to the young republic, which welcomed them willingly and offered freedom of movement and sufficient work. Writers and scholars came to publish and teach freely; with the establishment of the University of Leiden and the development of the humanities and natural sciences , the country also became a major center of knowledge.

The designation " Golden Age " was coined above all for a hitherto unknown flowering of culture and art . Often the term is limited to the countless masterpieces of 17th century painting. The social and cultural change of that time is particularly evident here.

introduction

Map of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands by Johannes Janssonius (1658)

“It is the name of the golden age itself that is no good. It smells of that aurea aetas of antiquity, that mythological land of milk and honey that even as schoolboys at Ovid's we were easily bored. If our heyday is to have a name, call it after wood and steel, pitch and tar, paint and ink, daring and piety, spirit and imagination. "

- Johan Huizinga

The time of the Dutch Golden Age has been researched and discussed more intensively in the Netherlands for several years. For this purpose, for example, the Amsterdam Centrum voor de Study van de Gouden Eeuw was founded in 2000 at the University of Amsterdam , which, among other things, takes up Huizinga's work from 1941. Huizinga's understanding of history was shaped by his study of linguistics and his enthusiasm for painting. He understood historiography as a pictorial, intuitive mentality and cultural history. Nonetheless, he emphasized that the Golden Age neither suddenly “broke in” over the Netherlands, nor did the mythical ideal state “of an earth satisfying all food needs without agriculture and a society living in complete peace, general carelessness and innocence in eternal springtime” (as Ovid used the term of the Golden Age), but it was a heyday based on generations of hard work, favorable conditions, diverse conflicts and, of course, a portion of luck and chance that lacked any ideal innocence. Almost half of the time was “shaped by war and war cries”. Quite a few scientists therefore prefer to speak of a hegemony when considering this age, at least in global economic terms . Huizinga suspects that the concept of the Golden Age took hold after the historian Pieter Lodewijk Muller published his book with the working title Republiek der Vereenigde Nederlanden in haar bloeitijd 'The Republic of the United Netherlands in its heyday' in 1897 , at the request of the publisher Onze Gouden Eeuw 'Our Golden Age' . With the marriage of the future emperor Maximilian to the duke's daughter Maria of Burgundy and her early death, the Netherlands came under the rule of the Habsburgs . Even at that time the economic situation of the then Burgundian Netherlands was favorable; Especially under the rule of Charles V , agriculture, cattle breeding and fishing also strengthened trade and industry. In addition, the textile sector grew rapidly and Antwerp developed into the economic center of the region. Science and culture also experienced a time of great moments, not least thanks to Christoffel Plantijn . At the same time the era of the Reformation had dawned and Charles V and his son and successor Philip II - both devout Catholics  - ushered in the Counter-Reformation .

Conflict with Spain

Philip II of Spain around 1575, painting by Sofonisba Anguissola

When Philip II declared Calvinism a heresy , the northern provinces rebelled under the leadership of William of Orange . With his attempt to occupy Brabant , the Eighty Years War began in 1568 . In 1579 the seven northern provinces joined together to form the Union of Utrecht and in 1581 founded the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , while the Catholic southern provinces - now Belgium and Luxembourg  - remained with Spain (see Spanish Netherlands ).

The treaty concluded when the Union of Utrecht was founded gave the northern provinces, among other things, the right to control shipping on the Lower Rhine , which turned out to be very important for their further economic development. In 1585 the Spaniards conquered Antwerp, whereupon the Dutch blocked the Scheldt and thus gave Antwerp access to the North Sea. So the course was set for Amsterdam as the future regional trading center that could quickly leave its rival Antwerp behind.

In 1608 peace negotiations with Spain took place in The Hague , in which England and France also took part, and in 1609 a twelve-year armistice was agreed.

Seamen and merchants

→ Main article: European expansion ; on the power relations in the Baltic Sea trade at that time and the competition with the Hanseatic League, see: Crises and decline of the Hanseatic League (around 1400 to 1669)

With the arrival in Bantam on Java in 1596 , Captain Cornelis de Houtman broke the Portuguese monopoly of spices in the East Indies

The basis of the success of the Dutch economy lay in the Baltic Sea trade , which had been systematically pursued from the province of Holland and Amsterdam since the early 15th century and made the provinces - despite the siege by the Spanish - a flourishing trading nation. Smaller and faster ships than those of their competitors, which also required fewer staff, made the Amsterdam dealers the most flexible of their time. Amsterdam and Holland began to flourish at the end of the 16th century.

As early as 1600, Amsterdam had accumulated considerable investment capital that was available for new tasks. First ship expeditions were funded to explore trade opportunities in Asia and America. The Dutch seamen and merchants were lucky because the Hanseatic League was in decline and the other competitors were distracted by wars and uprisings elsewhere. Just one example of this is the destruction of the Spanish Armada by the English in 1588. Since the Spanish continued to concentrate on the English and French as opponents of war, the Dutch merchant ships ventured further out to sea, opened up new sea routes largely undisturbed and founded colonies. At that time, however, it was still a matter of individual undertakings, which initially led to little success.

Requirements and interactions

"How could such a small country with fewer than one and a half million inhabitants and no natural wealth become the leading economic power in the 17th century, a time of general crisis?"

- Michael North : History of the Netherlands

The economic rise of the small confederation of not even two million Dutch people, who had no raw materials and was insignificant in agricultural production, to become the leading great and colonial power of the 17th century is an amazing and fascinating phenomenon to this day. Sir William Temple , the contemporary English ambassador to the Netherlands, identified in his Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands the high population density of the country as a crucial basis for the economic success. As a result, all essential goods are expensive; People with property would have to save, those without property would be forced to work hard. The virtues, so to speak, which formed the basis of success, grow out of necessity.

In addition, however, there were a number of other favorable circumstances without which such an ascent would never have come about:

Urbanization and political system

Historical map of Amsterdam by Willem and Joan Blaeu (1652)

Indeed, the Netherlands of the early 17th century had the highest degree of urbanization and urbanization in Europe and was the most densely populated region in Western Europe. The living environment was largely shaped by the city and non-agricultural activities; almost 50 percent of the population lived in urban areas and only a third worked in agriculture. But the peasantry and farm workers also went through a drastic development. Since the basis of the peasant economy was property rights, the peasants owned up to 40 percent of the land they used themselves, depending on the province, and were thus able to freely dispose of its income. The development of rural incomes shows that a farm worker in the 17th century was much better off than a free farmer a hundred years earlier.

The confederation of states was oligarchic , but more democratic than other European countries, politically defensive and shaped by an economic system that was not based on agriculture, but on trade and shipping.

The tax burden of the Dutch population was significantly higher than that of the neighboring countries, up to twice as high as in England and more than three times as high as in France. Due to the strong commercialization of the economy, the high incomes and the easy availability of capital, the state had a broad resource base despite the small population.

Social fabric

In addition to family background and education, social status in Dutch society was largely determined by wealth and income - unusual in 17th century Europe, where personal status was still predominantly determined by the class structure , i.e. by birth.

At the top of society in the Netherlands were the nobility and regents , but the aristocracy had largely left the country together with the Spanish or had sold many of their privileges to the cities. Important Dutch regent dynasties of the Golden Century were the Boelens Loen , Hooft , De Graeff , Bicker and Pauw families in Amsterdam, the De Witt and Van Slingelandt in Dordrecht , and the Van Foreest in Alkmaar . In principle, every city and province had its own government and laws, and was ruled by closely related rulers in an oligarchic system.

While the nobility in the rest of Europe continued to form the politically and socially privileged ruling class, there was hardly any nobility by birth in the Netherlands. Even the clergy had little worldly influence: the Catholic Church was largely oppressed, the young Protestant Church divided. So here there was no king, no nobility and no clergy , but the rulers, together with the citizens of the upper class (rich merchants, ship owners, bankers, entrepreneurs, high-ranking officers) determined political and social life, followed by a broad middle class of craftsmen and traders , Boatmen, minor officials and lower-ranking officers who already assumed political responsibility in smaller towns and less important communities. Not least because of the immigration of religiously persecuted people, including numerous members of the upper class and the educated middle class, writers and scholars, the country had the highest literacy rate in Europe.

At the same time, the citizens' willingness to donate helped to cushion the rapid economic development in a socially acceptable manner. Soup kitchens, orphanages, old people's homes and other social institutions owed their existence to the charity of the citizens. Because of this - of course only rudimentary - social network, the marginalized groups, the poor and the weak were taken care of to such an extent that unrest, in contrast to the rest of Europe, was largely limited to political or religious issues.

World trade

Depiction of Dutch ships in the painting Departure of the East Indian Sailors by
Hendrick Cornelisz. Vroom around 1630-1640

“New York started out as New Amsterdam. You just have to look at the globe: From New Zealand ( Nieuw Zeeland ) and Arnhem Land in Australia via Cape Horn to Willemstad in the Caribbean, the Dutch have immortalized themselves on the world map. "

- Christoph Driessen : A short history of Amsterdam.

The Dutch East India Company ( Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC ), founded in 1602, played an important role and quickly developed into the largest trading company of the 17th century and established a Dutch monopoly in Asian trade that it would hold for two centuries. Their trade routes stretched along the African and Asian coasts with bases in Indonesia , Japan , Taiwan , Ceylon and South Africa . For trade with West Africa and America, the Dutch West India Company ( Geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie or WIC ) was founded, which administered the Dutch property Nieuw Nederland in North America with the administrative headquarters Nieuw Amsterdam , now New York . Other branches of trade were the Baltic Sea trade , trade with Russia and the straatvaart , also known as Levantvaart (trade with Italy and the Levant , the countries on the east coast of the Mediterranean ).

In 1609 the Amsterdam Exchange Bank was founded - the world's first central bank and one of the first European central banks - and in 1611 the Amsterdam Commodity Exchange . The exchange bank improved the conditions for trading and promoted payment transactions, which until then had been made more difficult due to the large number of different currencies in circulation. Low interest rates, fixed exchange rates and the Dutch banks' willingness to borrow attracted investors and financiers from all over Europe.

At the latest after achieving complete freedom of trade (international trade no longer restricted by protective tariffs) within the framework of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Dutch dominated world trade. By 1670 the republic had about 15,000 ships, five times the English fleet, which was equivalent to a monopoly of transport on the sea. Trade with the colonies in particular brought great wealth to the Netherlands. Spices, pepper, silk and cotton fabrics were imported from the Dutch East Indies , Bengal , Ceylon and Malacca . Plantation products, such as sugar , tobacco and Brazilian wood , were primarily traded with West Africa , Brazil , the Caribbean islands and Europe . Later, the slave trade was also started , from which at first it was emphatically avoided. In the course of time, greed won out because it was a very lucrative business. The justification was based on the Bible : After all, the Africans are the sons and daughters of Ham , who was cursed by his father Noah , which justifies the exploitation of the “freely” available black African labor (see Hamit theory ).

Religious tolerance

Since the United Provinces of the Netherlands arose out of resistance to religious oppression, they granted their citizens freedom of religion from the start . The news of this tolerance spread quickly and resulted in Protestants , Jews , Huguenots and other religiously persecuted people pouring into the country from Spain, Portugal and other nations - especially from the Spanish-occupied southern provinces. Calvinism became the predominant belief, but at the beginning of the century the country was divided by the dispute over the doctrine of predestination between remonstrants , the followers of Arminius , and contraremonstrants who followed the teachings of Franciscus Gomarus .

The religion-critical Spinoza reached the limits of the state tolerance of the United Provinces

Even the humanism with its most influential Erasmus Desiderius had established itself and was also responsible for the cultural and social transition from the Middle Ages to modern times as for the education movement and partly to the climate of tolerance. Maintaining this tolerance of Catholics was not easy after religion played an important role in the War of Independence. Hostile tendencies were, however, usually bridged with money if possible. For this reason, Catholics could buy the privileges to hold celebrations, for example, but they were denied public offices. The same was true of the Dutch Mennonites ( Anabaptists ) and Jews . In any case, the level of religious tolerance was high enough to attract religious refugees from other countries, with Jewish traders from Portugal in particular bringing much wealth with them (see Portuguese Synagogue, Amsterdam ). The annulment of the Edict of Nantes in France (1685) also caused numerous French Huguenots to immigrate to the Netherlands; many of them were also merchants. Anyone could immigrate to the provinces for eight guilders - which of course corresponded to the annual wage of a Dutch seaman and thus also filled the state coffers - where many of the brightest minds in Europe soon gathered.

However, tolerance had its limits. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza published his Tractatus theologico-politicus , in which he campaigns for freedom of belief and tolerance and calls for a state that safeguards the freedoms of its citizens, anonymously and with a false statement of the publisher's address because he feared ecclesiastical and state consequences. After all, Adriaan Koerbagh , a friend and follower of Spinoza, had already been arrested for allegedly publishing inciting literature and died after a year in captivity. The Tractatus was actually banned in 1674.

Heyday

"In the 17th century the Netherlands were a land of superlatives: every year 70,000 pictures were painted, 110,000 pieces of cloth were produced and 200 million guilders were earned in national income."

- Michael North : The Golden Age. Art and Commerce in 17th Century Dutch Painting.

The Netherlands were the great economic power of the mid-17th century, while competitor Great Britain only began to take on this position in the last decades of the century. At that time, economic power lay less in the possession of money than in the ability to create added value from trade in goods and financial transactions and to optimize value creation . The Netherlands demonstrated this as a geographically small, population-poor state association that has no raw materials and whose agricultural production was insignificant. Amsterdam became the most important European trading center . Theoretically, financial transfers moved vast amounts of precious metal with which the payments resulting from trading were settled; In fact, trading on the stock exchange was largely cashless using an exchange system: money remained in the places that traded with each other as financial cover for trading transactions. The greater the deliveries of goods that a trading city was able to offer, the greater its importance - that is, in short, the system that made Amsterdam's stock exchange the dominant financial center in the 17th century. The Dutch economy in the Golden Age was so strong that not even the tulip mania had a noticeable impact.

The economic strength of the country benefited the social and cultural quality of life of its citizens on a broad basis . With the rise of the bourgeoisie to the upper class , art also became bourgeois. A very trivial reason for the cultural heyday and the onset of abundance of images was the existing enormous surplus of capital, generated from speculative or risky financial transactions on the occasion of seafaring and colonial adventures, which should be invested profitably. Furnishings and decorative items, especially pictures, became a popular investment in which little people could participate.

At the same time, the whole of Europe was in the midst of an intellectual upheaval that was referred to as a " renaissance of the natural sciences" that began around 1450 and was connected with a profound change in perspective that enabled the emergence of modern scientific ways of thinking. While scholars around 1450 were still concentrating on sifting through and understanding the discoveries of antiquity , the basic scientific writings were available in various vernacular translations by 1630, as were the works of contemporary scientists who had dealt with these contents and developed them further. Book printing facilitated this dissemination of knowledge: Ancient ideas and their further developments were - printed and understandable to everyone - accessible not only to scholars but also to the less educated.

science

René Descartes (1649)
painting by Frans Hals

The extensive freedom of teaching and research that prevailed in the Netherlands and the renowned University of Leiden founded in 1575 attracted numerous scientists and thinkers from all over Europe. The French philosopher René Descartes also lived in Leiden , probably from 1628 to 1649.

Many books on religion, philosophy and science that would have been banned abroad or that would have fallen under the Inquisition could be printed in the Netherlands and freely distributed. This is how the Dutch Republic developed into Europe's “publishing house” during the 17th century. Amsterdam, which had only had its first printing company in 1500, took over the leading role from Antwerp and, in addition to Leiden, achieved a high level of fame as a printing location thanks to the Elzevir family of printers working in both locations (see below, section on the art of printing ).

Dutch lawyers were valued for their knowledge of international law . Hugo Grotius laid the foundation for modern maritime law ; he founded the concept of the Free Seas ( Mare liberum ), which was fiercely contested by the English, the main rivals of the Netherlands. In his book De iure belli ac pacis ( On Laws of War and Peace ) , Grotius also formulated legal ideas with regard to national conflicts. His colleague Cornelis van Bynkershoek is considered the father of the 3-mile zone and also achieved importance in the development of international law . In addition, there are civil lawyers who were decisive in Europe. Hugo Grotius' civil law work on Roman-Dutch law, the Inleydinge tot de Hollantsche Rechtsgeeertheit , was also given a lot of attention in Germany and was also taken into account in Spanish and South American jurisprudence through many, sometimes literal, quotations in the widespread work of Arnold Vinnius . Works by these authors, in addition to Grotius and Vinnius, Johannes Voet should be mentioned, are still considered to be the authorities in South African law due to the colonization by the Dutch.

Christiaan Huygens was a mathematician , physicist and astronomer . His merits in astronomy include the explanation of Saturn's rings , the discovery of Saturn's moon Titan, and the rotation of Mars . He was also active in the field of optics and mechanics . He invented the pendulum clock , which was a big step towards precise time measurement. He became the first foreign scientist to become an honorary member of the British Royal Society and was the first director of the French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666 . Isaac Newton praised him as "the most elegant mathematician" of his time.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek , 1686 print after Jan Verkolje

In the field of optics, Delft-born Antoni van Leeuwenhoek was the most famous Dutch scientist of the time. He further developed the microscope significantly by grinding the lenses himself and achieving magnifications of up to 270 times. He was the first to methodically explore microscopic life. Together with Jan Swammerdam, he provided the first description of red blood cells , which laid the foundation for cell biology . However, he took his knowledge of the art of lens grinding with him to the grave, so that it was only in the 19th century that these investigations could be continued with improved lenses.

Famous Dutch hydraulic engineers were Simon Stevin , who technically suggested the impossibility of the perpetual motion machine and introduced decimal numbers in daily use, as well as Jan Leeghwater from De Rijp , who, born Jan Adriaenszoon in a village in the middle of a bog , used methods for draining bog areas and for the Developed conversion of lakes into polder and designed mills for this purpose. He made low water levels out of high water levels - and consequently called himself Leeghwater, "low water". He was the founder of the modern Dutch drainage and land reclamation system.

Arts and Culture

"The Golden Age was the only epoch in which contemporary art was popular among broad sections of the population and was not only valued by the avant-garde."

- Christoph Driessen : Rembrandt and the women

During the Golden Age, the Netherlands went through a cultural development that differed significantly from that of its neighbors and is generally regarded as the high point of Dutch-Dutch civilization. While in other countries wealthy aristocrats were patrons and patrons of the arts , in the Netherlands wealthy merchants and other patricians played this role. Here the emerging, unusually broad middle class, together with the rich farmers, formed the decisive potential for the economic as well as for the social and cultural development of the country.

They all represented a huge market for the sale of industrial and artistic products. Due to their growing social prestige, traders, craftsmen, minor officials or officers felt the need to display their status in a manner comparable to that in the High nobility and clergy was commonplace. Thanks to their purchasing power, they were able to fulfill these wishes. With the general increased interest in describing the visible world, the desire for art ownership became insatiable, and the demand for secular painting blossomed like never before and nowhere else. Portraits, for example, were supposed to represent, if not raise, one's own social rank. The furniture that went beyond the essential items of furniture was viewed as a status symbol , which was expressed in the possession of magnificent oak chests, octagonal tables and expensive beds for the farmers and in precious clocks, mirrors, porcelain and cutlery for the citizens. The sometimes unheard-of growing wealth of the Dutch thus guaranteed the livelihood of the artists of the 17th century (even if only very few were able to make a living from it) and resulted in an incomparably better "art supply" for the population than anywhere else in Europe .

Art and culture, especially painting, developed together with their new "customers" into an important economic factor. Following the laws of the free market economy that were already in force at that time , the “art service industry” became more and more differentiated, for example specialist companies for certain genres of painting were formed and at the same time genres emerged whose motifs were uncharted territory for painting, such as landscape painting and that Genre of moral painting . The artistic landscape also became more and more diverse in terms of style, so that the client could even determine painting styles, be it from the Flemish-Italian or the Dutch school.

Thus, bourgeois clients determined the art production, which was based on the self- image of an early capitalist republic, which led to a higher level of realism and the preference for certain art genres such as portrait painting (individual and group portraits), genre paintings or still life painting . The schutterij , the riflemen with their rifle guild , and the rederijkers , the poets , organized in the rederijkerskamer , the poets' guild (called “Redekammer” at the time), were both cultural centers and promoters of the arts. The riflemen had organized themselves into a kind of urban vigilante group and ensured peace and order in the cities at night. All male residents were obliged to serve her. The poets' guilds were associations at the city level that encouraged and supported literary activities. The cities were just as proud of these guilds as the citizens were of their membership, which they paid a lot for. Great Dutch poets, such as Pieter C. Hooft and Joost van den Vondel , were members of a Rederijkerskamer. The individual guilds and guild members were happy to have themselves portrayed while performing their honorary duties. One example is the image of the Night Watch of Rembrandt van Rijn .

painting

Painting in the Netherlands reached such a heyday in the 17th century that it is occasionally associated with the concept of the Golden Age alone .

Art production was already high in the 16th century. In Antwerp alone, more than 300 masters are said to have worked in painting and graphics in 1560 , but only 169  bakers and 78  butchers . Now many centers of painting emerged in the densely populated country in a short time and in a very small space - in addition to Amsterdam, for example, Haarlem , Delft , Utrecht , Leiden , The Hague and Deventer . Painting and printmaking were soon ubiquitous, and the Netherlands became a huge “art factory”. Every year 70,000 pictures came onto the market, with 650 to 700 Dutch painters painting an average of 94 pictures each year, famous and less famous painters producing almost like an assembly line together with their students . Historians like Michael North estimate that several million pictures were produced, of which hardly ten percent are preserved today. In any case, statistically speaking, every inhabitant owned 2.5 images at that time.

"It was not unusual for a Leiden cloth dyer to own 64 paintings in 1643 and two other dyers to own 96 and 103 paintings in the 1770s."

The traditional ecclesiastical themes have been rejected as “Catholic” since the Reformation ( see Iconoclasm ); the Protestant citizens wanted to see their religiosity, their way of life and their own issues and problems - primarily themselves in their professional and private environment, and in the most advantageous way possible - perpetuated. This led to the development of new pictorial genres (e.g. Tronjes ) and the invention of new pictorial themes. There were actually masses of individual portraits and group portraits on which the family, the relatives, the guild members, the council or festivities and celebrations were recorded; Still lifes afforded insights into the daily life of the bourgeoisie with ostentatious, sensual interiors behind narrow town houses that are outwardly inconspicuous and classicistically austere. Vanitas motifs justified the display of wealth and power through their warning message.

  • Still life by Willem Claesz. Heda

  • Landscape painting by Jan van Goyen

  • Peasant satire by Jan Steen

  • Genre painting by Gerard ter Borch

  • Genre painting by Peter de Hooch

  • Architectural painting by Emanuel de Witte

  • Portrait painting by Thomas de Keyser

  • Portrait painting by Frans Hals

An unprecedented specialization within painting began. Willem Claesz. Heda and Willem Kalf only painted still lifes. She even reduced her “Ontbijtjes”, her “breakfast” still lifes to a few objects, which she varied over and over again with minor compositional changes. Jan van Goyen , Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindest Hobbema stood for the landscape painting, Jan Steen , Adriaen van Ostade and Adriaen Brouwer for the peasant satire, Gerard Terborch and Pieter de Hooch for the society piece (a variation of the genre picture that addresses peasant festivities), Pieter Jansz Saenredam and Emanuel de Witte for architectural painting , Thomas de Keyser and Frans Hals for portraits.

Willem van de Velde specialized in ships, Paulus Potter painted pictures of animals, soon only cattle, Philips Wouwerman horses, mainly white horses, Melchior d'Hondecoeter limited himself almost exclusively to birds, Jan van Huysum to flowers and Abraham van Beijeren to oysters, Lobster and fruit, while Pieter Claesz was the man for fine silverware.

  • Ontbijtje by Willem Kalf

  • Ships by Willem van de Velde

  • The bull by Paulus Potter

  • Mold from Philips Wouwerman

  • Melchior d'Hondecoeter's poultry

  • Flowers by Jan van Huysum

  • Seafood by Isaac van Duynen

  • Fine silverware by Pieter Claesz

The prices of the paintings, initially mostly on the street, also at fairs, were generally very low, and the growing demand was followed by a rapid increase in production and thus a steady increase in the number of painters. This excess of artists within a veritable picture industry led to the development of an art proletariat . Many painters who are highly valued today had to finance their livelihood elsewhere; very few could live from painting alone. Jan Steen ran an inn, Jakob Ruisdael was a doctor, Jan van Goyen traded in tulips, Meindest Hobbema was a tax collector, and the van de Velde family of painters ran a canvas house. Many artists also took on jobs as so-called rough painters  - i.e. house painters - when the jobs as fine painters failed to materialize. Both groups, coarse and fine painters, belonged to the same guild for a long time anyway .

Singular top performers like Rembrandt or Vermeer were by no means typical of the time and their ingenuity was recognized by only a few at the time. In contrast to their highly specialized colleagues, they made various genres their own and left behind a diverse oeuvre .

The big money, on the other hand, was earned by others, such as Gerard Dou and Gerrit van Honthorst : painters who worked for the governor's court or - like Rubens  - settled in Flanders , which had remained feudal and clerical , or became court painters in Italy , France or Spain .

With the widespread interest in painting and the beginning of the commercialization of art, a different relationship developed between painter and client; the profession of art dealer or picture broker emerged. Only easel paintings with predominantly profane themes were traded; there was no demand for altarpieces or other large-format religious paintings due to the Protestant creed. Since the mostly small-format and correspondingly mobile pictures were often not created to order, but for the free market and a constantly expanding circle of bourgeois collectors, both a lively art trade and exhibition system developed.

architecture

“A beautiful city, Amsterdam. Even the exile admires the noble, simple architecture of the old patrician houses, feels the somewhat enchanted charm of the canals. "

- Thomas Mann : 1935
The Vleeshal on the Haarlem market square, to the right of the Grote Kerk

The Netherlands also has a long tradition in the field of architecture and town planning . Stand the 16th century was largely attributed to a dispute with the Italian Renaissance , which in its Dutch implementation was interpreted often completely different, the end of the century by led Mannerism to early Baroque through (here especially the work of the municipal architect Lieven de Key with the town hall and the meat hall in Haarlem ) and at the beginning of the 17th century, a style based on Palladio , which quickly developed into the strict Dutch classicism , which with its almost puritanical will to simplify the "zeitgeist" of that time as a counter-model to baroque feudalism very accommodating.

The Royal Paleis of Amsterdam, former City Hall, around 1900

The former Amsterdam City Hall ( stadhuis ), which was built between 1642 and 1648 and now houses the Royal Palace, is a masterpiece by Jacob van Campen , the founder of Northern Dutch Classicism . It demonstrated the supremacy of the city of Amsterdam in the most influential province of Holland of the Dutch General States and is at the same time the largest building of its kind in its time - by the way, at the same time an engineering masterpiece, as 13,569 piles had to be built into the swampy ground.

The Mauritshuis in The Hague

The cities expanded rapidly due to the flourishing economy. The Amsterdam canal belt with its canal houses, created on the boggy Amstel estuary , reflects the economic and cultural prosperity that the city experienced. Here and in the other Dutch cities, the architect Hendrick de Keyser was particularly active , who built the Delft City Hall in addition to numerous Amsterdam churches, public buildings and private mansions.

The stand The Hague little after that developed the elegant diplomatic city where van Campen and Pieter Post in 1640 Maurice of Nassau's city palace Mauritshuis built (incidentally, the first in the Netherlands in ground plan and elevation purely classical building) and where Bartholomeus van Bassen Built churches, bridges, public buildings and Hofjes to accommodate some of the poorer population. Utrecht on the Rhine delta experienced a building boom with its stately gabled houses and many churches and monasteries, as did Leiden, Haarlem and Gouda . Delft, where architects such as Hendrik Swaef and Paulus Moreelse worked, also developed into a flourishing trading center in which cloth weaving, beer brewing and porcelain manufacturers were based. Only a few public buildings in the classical style were erected here, but more and more existing buildings were used. The best contemporary example is Swaef's Vleeshal (meat hall) from 1650.

It was typical for many contemporary architects that they were originally architectural painters or sculptors and also designed interiors and even furniture and thus composed the entire interior of the buildings. The interior fittings of the guild and residential houses also showed clear French, partly baroque influences.

Printing art

A contemporary scientific pamphlet from 1635

Also letterpress and book publishers flourished. The Netherlands had a leading position in the printing industry as early as the 16th century and was to maintain it in the 17th century. The focus of Dutch book production shifted from Antwerp to Leiden and Amsterdam as new printing centers. Even the later works of Galileo appeared in Leiden, and of course it was inevitable that many other authors not only had their works printed there, but also settled there in order to relocate their literary activities there. However, the standard of book printing of Christoph Plantin , whose Antwerp printing works as the “eighth wonder of the world”, could not be maintained. Rather, because of the post-war shortage of materials and the extremely high demand, a significantly lower quality of paper, printing inks and binding developed; the first paperbacks also appeared on the market.

In the chaos of war at the end of the 16th century, Plantin had moved from Antwerp to Leiden - in order to avoid massive interference by state and church censorship. Within two years, he rebuilt a large business, which he - now at an advanced age - left to his son-in-law Franciscus Raphelingus to continue, who was not so successful and in 1620 lost his appointment as an academy printer to Isaac Elzevir . Louis Elzevir had also fled Antwerp with Plantin . Since he could not raise capital for his own printing company, he opened a book shop and established good relationships with Leiden University, from which his heirs benefited after his death. His sons Mathijs and Bonaventura became booksellers, Louis the Younger took over the branch in The Hague and Joost the one in Utrecht. A few years later, nephew Isaac Elzevir (1596-1651), after he had married richly, founded a university printing company in Leiden. This printing house, which became very successful very quickly, went under in the early 18th century, whereas the The Hague and Utrecht branches of the family later gave rise to other printing houses that have kept the name known to this day.

The Elzevirs were not learned book printers like Manutius or Estienne , but they had important contacts in the scientific world of that time. So had "everything that had rank and name" printed by them: Bacon , the brothers Pierre and Thomas Corneille , Comenius , Descartes , Thomas Hobbes , Hugo Grotius , Milton , La Rochefoucauld , to name just a few names, and not too forget Molière , of which the Elzevier put out 24 plays, plus two complete editions.

In the field of cartography , however, others led the way. The great era of Dutch map art began with the Mercator maps , which were published by Jodocus Hondius , and Amsterdam also became the center of map and globe production, where the most important manufacturer, Willem Janszoon Blaeu , among others , had settled.

literature

In the Renaissance period, a humanism shaped by the Reformation developed . The strong influence of classical poets, especially Tacitus , is shown in the Nederlandsche histooriën (1642–1654) of the historian PC Hooft , who introduced French and Italian poetry to the Netherlands with his poems and also wrote pastoral plays and dramas. Classical dramas were written with the unity of place, time and plot as prescribed by Aristotle .

Joost van den Vondel , 1665 painting by Philips de Koninck

With his biblical and patriotic dramas, Joost van den Vondel is considered a poet of classical rank. His most famous works are Gijsbrecht van Aemstel (1637) and Lucifer (1654), which are still published and performed today. Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero , who was also an important poet, was valued as a comedy poet ( De Spaanse Brabander from 1617) .

Other important authors were the moralist Jacob Cats , the diplomat Constantijn Huygens , the engraver Jan Luyken , the leading contemporary poet of the Dutch south Justus de Harduwijn , the religious lyric poet Jacob Revius , the Statenbijbel , which appeared in 1637, the poet and playwright Willem Godschalk van Focquenbroch (1630–1674), the poet and illustrator Jan Luyken (1649–1712), whose works are partly published to this day, Karel van Mander , who among other things wrote Schilderboeck , a book about painting, and the comedy writer Thomas Asselijn (1620 -1701).

The universal scholar Grotius must also be named as a man of letters. His main work is the legal study De Jure Belli ac Pacis libri tres , in which he justifies war when there are no other means of dealing with a conflict and with which he lays important foundations of international law. In the study entitled Mare Liberum , he declares the seas to be international waters that cannot belong to a particular ruler. This work became the basis of modern maritime law.

The most famous work by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza , Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata , in which he used mathematics to combine the Jewish-mystical tradition and rational, scientific thinking in an all-encompassing vision, was published posthumously in 1677. Together with Descartes and Voltaire , Spinoza was one of the founders of the Enlightenment .

Until the end of the 20th century, the 17th century was considered to be the worst bibliographically accessible century, because on the one hand the long, winding titles made it difficult to record in order words, on the other hand, the prevailing censorship in Europe often caused many prints to be anonymous and without the possibility of classification such as the place or the publisher. This does not apply to the same extent for the Netherlands; As the European country least affected by the censorship of this century, the authors were able to publish largely freely and were not forced to obscure the true bibliographic data. That is why even famous foreign authors went there.

sculpture

The statue of Erasmus of Rotterdam by Hendrick de Keyser (1618)

Dutch sculpture could not benefit from the achievements of the 17th century as much as the other fine arts.

From 800 AD, sculptures were mainly used as architectural decoration for facades and tombs, and from the 11th century cult and holy images were added. While the straightforward, no-frills forms of classicism, compared to the playfulness and figure accentuation of rococo and baroque, contradicted the use of too many decorative elements, statues in particular affected the tense relationship between the Protestant church and the visual arts. Another reason for the weak demand was the aristocracy's withdrawal from the country.

Nevertheless, sculptures were commissioned for government and private buildings as well as ecclesiastical and secular outdoor areas. There was also a larger group of customers for profane art; For example, sculptures for tombstones and busts were in great demand.

The leading Dutch sculptors of the 17th century were Hendrick de Keyser , already discussed above as an architect , who created the first non-religious statue in the Netherlands, the Erasmus statue in Rotterdam, in 1618 , as well as Artus Quellinus I , Artus Quellinus II and Rombout Verhulst , everyone from the southern Netherlands. Also to be mentioned are Bartholomeus Eggers , who received an order for the Mauritshuis but otherwise mainly worked for the Elector of Brandenburg, and Johannes Blommendael .

music

The great time of music history in the Netherlands is closely linked to the Dutch School and ends with it at the end of the 16th century. Under the dominant influence of the Calvinist Church, the great forms of music -  opera , passion , cantata  - could not develop; the music was limited to the needs of bourgeois society. Influences from abroad, above all from composers such as Jean-Baptiste Lully and Johann Sebastian Bach , determined contemporary music, which did not develop a style of its own in the Netherlands.

The organ played an important role. Making music in families was also a preferred pastime in the 17th century, house music was intensively cultivated, and private music associations called Collegia musica were formed . Common instruments were the lute , harpsichord , viol and flute . Many hymn books were published, although instrumental music clearly dominated from the middle of the 17th century.

Lyric dramas, ballets and operas were performed in the Amsterdam Opera House, which opened in 1638, and were mostly of French and Italian origin. Only Constantijn Huygens , Sweelinck , organist and composer of oratorios and cantatas , Adriaen Valerius , poet of spiritual and patriotic songs, including the so-called Geusenlieder (Beggars were in the 16th century Dutch freedom fighters against the Spaniards), the bell ringer Jacob van Eyck and Constantijn Huygens, who has already been discussed as the author, with an estimated 800 pieces of music, was able to acquire a certain significance, even if it has largely been forgotten today, and set accents typical of the country.

Decline

“The dizzying rise of the Dutch in the golden age could not be sustained in the global political rivalry with the great powers. The relatively small nation of the Netherlands simply lacked the appropriate dimensions and resources in terms of country and people. You have exceeded your possibilities, the external circumstances, which were so fortunate for Holland for a while, changed again, the reality of those who were born later becomes more mediocre, the mad prices for tulips as well, and the whales are disappearing from the coasts again. "

- Helmut Kaechele : The golden age of the Netherlands and its reflex in painting
Louis XIV during the invasion of Holland on June 11, 1672 ( Rhine crossing ), contemporary painting by Adam Frans van der Meulen
The corpses of the lynched de Witt brothers, hung in the Gevangenpoort in The Hague, painting by Jan de Baen , 1672

The year 1672 is known in the Netherlands as Rampjaar , the year of the disaster. At first there was domestic political unrest. Two well-known politicians in the period when the governor was not in office, the brothers Johan and Cornelis de Witt , were cruelly murdered in The Hague. Johan de Witt had tried to get the appointment of Wilhelm III. to prevent the governor, which together with the escalating economic and colonial rivalry between the Netherlands and England led to the second Anglo-Dutch naval war . Under de Witt's leadership, the Dutch fleet inflicted heavy defeats on the English. In 1667 Charles II of England accepted the Treaty of Breda , which ended the war. Just one year later, in 1668, the former opponents of the war allied themselves with Sweden in a triple alliance against France, which had invaded the Spanish Netherlands and was forced to end the war of devolution . When the third Anglo-Dutch naval war broke out in 1672 and at the same time Louis XIV of France, together with Cologne and Munster , declared war on the Republic, the Dutch War broke out . De Witt was overthrown and, together with his brother Cornelis, lynched in The Hague by a pack of Wilhelm's supporters; William III. of Orange was appointed governor. The war was not very successful for England and ended in 1674; the war against France could not be ended until 1678 with the peace of Nijmegen .

After the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the English King James II fled to France. Jacob's daughter Maria was declared queen; she should together with her husband Wilhelm III. rule, who had been governor, captain general and admiral of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands since 1672, after the overthrow of Johan de Witt . Holland and England were effectively united in a personal union, and the republic became an integral part of the anti-French coalition under William III.

In the course of the couple's reign, the English Parliament succeeded in significantly expanding its rights against royal opposition. For example, the Bill of Rights was passed, which enforced the parliamentary accountability of ministers. The political elite began to coordinate and support economic interests. In 1694 the Bank of England was established as the first state bank; Parliament guaranteed cover for government bonds, thus creating confidence. State interest and capital interest began to be closely linked. The strengthening of England also heralded the creeping end of the Dutch Golden Age, even if the course of history cannot be so abbreviated to a thesis of rise, prosperity and decline and the beginning of the 18th century was more a time of stagnation than a decline of the Netherlands is described.

The situation for the Dutch East India Company deteriorated for the first time after 1680 . In Europe, pepper prices fell and at the same time demand for textiles from India , coffee made from mocha and tea from China increased . On the one hand, the company did not have enough precious metal to purchase these products in Asia, which led to constant borrowing; on the other hand, with these non- monopolized products , it had to deal with the English competition , which was just growing financially. The growing cost of overseas trade became a growing burden for the company, as it was for the whole country.

Other significant events happened in 1702: The outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession and the fatal riding accident of the 52-year-old governor Wilhelm III. Since he did not leave a male heir and no unequivocal successor was determined, the stadtholder was suspended and a return to the anti-centralist tradition of the urban rulers took place. It was not until 1747 that Wilhelm IV became governor of all provinces. After the Treaty of Utrecht, the regents took the position that the republic should no longer play a leading role in international politics. This decision was actually only an acknowledgment of reality, because due to the disagreement between the states and the complicated system of government, the republic had hardly been able to exert any influence on the international level since 1715.

Of course, financial reasons also played a role. One of the reasons for the poor economic situation was that rich citizens invested their money in neighboring countries and not in their own country. During this time the country was hit by two more plagues. The from the Caribbean entrained Schiffsbohrwurm taught at ships and numerous wooden posts on the dikes immense damage. Because of this, there were repeated floods. At the same time the rinderpest raged, which not only hit the farmers hard, but also brought the export of cheese and butter to a standstill.

The Age of Enlightenment , which began in France , finally reached the Netherlands, where the so-called patriots were formed, who campaigned for the modernization and democratization of the ailing republic. The social divide in the country also widened, the rulers increasingly alienated themselves from their people. Unrest, denunciation of the grievances and criticism of the system against the unlimited rule of the regents spread.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Golden Age (Netherlands)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph Driessen: Rembrandt and the women. Regensburg 2011, p. 29.
  2. ↑ Huizinga has expressed himself like this and something like that in several of his works. This quote is taken verbatim from the German edition of Nederland's beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw 'Dutch Culture in the 17th Century' , in the German translation by Werner Kaegi (page 148/149, published 2007 by Verlag CH Beck, ISBN 978-3-406 -54756-0 ).
  3. ^ Netherlandset
  4. ^ Johan Huizinga: Dutch culture in the 17th century.
  5. ^ Michael North quotes J. Riley: The Dutch Economy after 1650: Decline or Growth? In: The Jorunal of European Exonomic History. 13, 1984, pp. 521-569, according to which the Dutch population in 1550 was around 1.4 million, which in 1650 had increased to 1.95 million.
  6. ↑ Available in full text at Wikisource
  7. ↑ The text in the original:

    I conceive the true original and ground of Trade, to be, great multitude of people crowded into small compass of Land, whereby all things necessary to life become dear, and all Men, who have possessions, are induced to Parsimony; but those who have none, are forced to industry and labor, or else to want. Bodies that are vigorous, fall to labor; Such as are not, supply that defect by some sort of Inventions or Ingenuity. These Customs arise first from Necessity, but encrease by Imitation, and grow in time to be habitual in a Country; And wherever they are so, if it lies upon the Sea, they naturally break out into Trade, both because, whatever they want of their own, that is necessary to so many Mens Lives, must be supply'd from abroad; and because, by the multitude of people, and smalness of Country, Land grows so dear, that the Improvement of Money, that way, is inconsiderable, and so turns to Sea, where the greatness of the Profit makes amends for the Venture.

  8. ↑ a b Michael North: The Golden Age.
  9. ^ A b Michael North: History of the Netherlands.
  10. ↑

    “The Dutch Republic (1579–1795) is often cited as the birthplace of modern democracy. […] There is some evidence that the Dutch Declaration of Independence, the ' Plakkaat van Verlatinghe ' (1581), the US Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson in 1776, served as a template (Lucas, 1994). The republic was organized on a federal basis. The cities and the provinces had more competencies than the national level ('city law breaks state law'). The 'head of state', the stadholder , was an employee with little power. If the Estates General [...] wanted to decide something, the representatives had to go back to the provinces for consultation. "

    - Europe magazine. No. 3/2000. (on-line)
  11. ^ U. Pfister: The Netherlands in the 17th century. ( Memento from January 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at: wiwi.uni-muenster.de
  12. ↑ Michael North: The Golden Age .
  13. ↑ among others Fritz Mauthner: Spinoza ( Memento of the original from June 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , M. Walther (Ed.): Spinoza - Biographies and Documents . S. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philosophiebuch.de 48 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  14. ↑ Helmut Kaechele: The golden age of the Netherlands and its reflex in painting. (online; PDF; 110 kB)
  15. ^ Ekkehard Mai: Gillis Mostaert (1528–1598). An Antwerp painter during the Bruegel dynasty. Edition Minerva, 2005, ISBN 3-932353-93-5 .
  16. ↑ Helmut Kaechele: The golden age of the Netherlands and its reflex in painting.
  17. ↑ 't Stadthuis t'Amsterdam:
  18. ↑ Hans Zotter: Bibliography of the early prints. Graz 2000, p. 25. (online; PDF; 281 kB) ( Memento of the original from February 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zbp.univie.ac.at
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on January 22, 2008 in this version .