Celebrating in the Golden Age

Thijs Weststeijn; Anna Tummers

Anna Tummers (ed.), Celebrating in the Golden Age (exh. cat. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem), Rotterdam (NAI010 Publishers) 2011 Catalogue of exhibition on 17th century Dutch paintings of parties.

Celebrating in the golden age lenders to the exhibitions University of Amsterdam, Special Collections, Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem Trou moet Blycken Society, Haarlem His Grace the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estates Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Stichting Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam Limburgs Museum, Venlo and private collections Celebrating in the golden age Edited by Anna Tummers With contributions by Mickaël Bouffard-Veilleux Arjan van Dixhoorn Jasper Hillegers Shannon van Muijden Herman Roodenburg Thijs Weststeijn Marieke de Winkel Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem NAi Publishers, Rotterdam contents Foreword Karel Schampers 6 Pioneers, Moralists and Drunkards Celebrating in the Golden Age Anna Tummers 8 A Feast for the Eye Laughter and Lifelikeness in Seventeenth-Century Art Theory Thijs Weststeijn 20 Footwork How Seventeenth-Century Painters Made Their Merrymakers Dance Mickaël Bouffard-Veilleux and Herman Roodenburg 28 Mode, Mummery and Masquerade Dressing Up in the Golden Age Marieke de Winkel 40 Catalogue 50 Bibliography 154 Paintings in the Exhibition 158 Jan Miense Molenaer, Peasant Wedding, 1652 (detail of cat.n0. 3) foreword Celebrations were an extremely popular subject for artists in the Golden Age. Painters like Jan Steen, Dirck Hals, Jan Miense Molenaer and Frans Hals depicted a variety of merry-making folk and lively companies, from peasant fairs and carnival celebrations to lavish al fresco parties, rhetoricians’ processions and civic guard banquets. These festive scenes often have a witty yet barbed undertone. Some depict infectiously cheerful figures, costume balls and elegant etiquette, while others point up unbridled debauchery and comic contrasts between rich and poor. The function of parties and the degree to which they were permissible were the subject of considerable debate in the seventeenth century. Paintings of revelry were in demand and they also gave artists an opportunity to explore their full potential. The subject allowed them to show off their inventiveness and bravura. Successfully combining a large number of figures and achieving the right expressions and movements presented a considerable artistic challenge. Celebrating in the Golden Age presents the first ever overview of painted celebrations in the seventeenth century, and shows some of the very finest examples of the genre. Although some kinds of celebrations, such as peasant weddings, are found in sixteenth-century art, the depiction of a wide variety of contemporary revels is typical of the seventeenth century. The subject is a perfect fit with the Frans Hals Museum’s building and collection. The Haarlem painters played a major role in the development of new types of images, and there are 15 masterpieces from our own museum in the exhibition. The museum, moreover, is housed in a building that owes its existence to a rhetoricians’ feast – the 1609 Landjuweel. On the initiative of the Haarlem chamber of rhetoricians De Pellicaen (better known under its motto Trou moet Blycken), a celebration was organized for the benefit of the old men’s home. The proceeds of a great lottery paid for the building – one of the earliest old people’s homes in the world. Today it is a splendid setting for the museum’s antique art collection. The exhibition, which highlights the culture of celebrations and the innovations in painting so convincingly, was conceptualized and organized by Anna Tummers, the Frans Hals Museum’s curator of old masters. She put together a team of specialists who made an impressive contribution to the research into these works: Mickaël Bouffard-Veilleux, Arjan van Dixhoorn, Jasper Hillegers, Herman Roodenburg, Thijs Weststeijn and Marieke de Winkel. The book sheds new light on the clothes, poses and gestures of the figures, the painters’ artistic challenges and – more 6 generally – the seventeenth-century view of humour and the culture of celebration. Three interns also made an important contribution: Nadia Baadj assisted with the selection of the paintings and the preliminary research that formed the basis of the exhibition; Shannon van Muijden carried out further research and compiled the bibliography, and Sophie Rietveld helped with the final editing. We owe a great debt of gratitude to NAi Publishers in Rotterdam, especially to Barbera van Kooij for her supervision of the accompanying publication. We express our compliments to Bregt Balk for the brilliant design. Our thanks go to Lynne Richards for the excellent translation she provided for the English edition. The exhibition brings together important masterpieces that are highlights in the collections of famous international museums and private collectors. Many of the paintings are on panel and are particularly fragile, but everyone involved was nonetheless prepared to lend their masterpieces for this exhibition, and we are immensely grateful to them. Our particular thanks go to Wim Pijbes, Taco Dibbits, Huigen Leeflang, Gregor Weber and Pieter Roelofs, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Judikje Kiers and Annemiek van Soestbergen, Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam; Bernd W. Lindemann, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; Erik de Groot, Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft; Emilie Gordenker, Quentin Buvelot, Epco Runia and Ariane van Suchtelen, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague; Peter Schoon and Sander Paarlberg, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht; the heads of the Trou moet Blycken Society; Christiaan Vogelaar, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden; Johnny Van Haeften Gallery, London; Klaus Schrenk, Marcus Dekiert and Mirjam Neumeister, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Thomas P. Campbell and Walter Liedtke, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gilles Chazal, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Timothy Rub and Lloyd DeWitt, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Sjarel Ex, Jeroen Giltay and Friso Lammertse, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hans Walgenbach and Carl Nix, Atlas Van Stolk, Rotterdam; Ad van Pinxteren, Limburgs Museum, Venlo; His Grace the Duke of Bedford, the Trustees of the Bedford Estates and Chris Gravett, Woburn Abbey; Eric Domela Nieuwenhuis, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage. We are also extremely grateful for the generous cooperation of those lenders who wish to remain anonymous. The special exhibition in the Frans Hals Museum was made possible thanks to the generous contributions from VSBfonds, Stichting Zabawas, J.C. Ruigrok Stichting, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds (the Netty van Doorn Fund), ABN AMRO Private Banking, Haarlem, Haarlem Local Authority and the Dr M.J. van Toorn & L. Scholten Stichting. Three paintings were restored especially for this exhibition: Cornelis van Haarlem’s spectacular civic guard painting (cat. no. 42), Jan Miense Molenaer’s sparkling Peasant Wedding (cat. no. 3) and Richard Brakenburgh’s Twelfth Night Feast (cat. no. 32). We are greatly indebted to the paintings’ conservators Liesbeth Abraham, Mireille te Marvelde, Herman van Putten and Jessica Roeders, and to the generous donors who made this possible. We would also like to thank the other members of the Frans Hals Museum staff, in particular Anneke Bakker, Anna Brolsma, Susanna Koenig, Anke van der Laan, Monique van Royen and Charlotte Wiethoff. Karel Schampers Director Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 7 pioneers , mor alists and drunkards Cel ebratin g in th e Gol de n Age Anna Tummers David Vinckboons, Elegant Company in a Garden, 1619 (detail of cat. no. 13) 8 Dutch painters of the Golden Age were pioneers in picturing festivities. They showcased a greater diversity of contemporary celebrations than had ever been done before. It was no coincidence that it was in the Netherlands – and not elsewhere – that so many parties were painted. Art flourished on an unparalleled scale in this period and there was a market for paintings of recognizable figures and situations drawn from everyday life. Capturing the atmosphere of festivities presented artists with interesting artistic challenges. But – perhaps even more significantly – an awful lot of partying really did go on. In the first instance, the image of the seventeenth century evokes weightier associations. It was the age of overseas trade, of the colonies, of unprecedented prosperity and the first Bible in the vernacular. The German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) brought the Golden Age to the attention of the world, describing the combination of pursuit of profit and austerity as ‘innerworldly asceticism’.1 He identified the seventeenth-century Netherlands as a crucial link in the genesis of the ‘spirit’ of capitalism. In brief, his theory boils down to the notion that Protestant morality meant that people worked very hard but nonetheless lived plainly and soberly. The reward for their hard work – they had been taught – came after death. In consequence they worked harder than was necessary simply to satisfy their daily needs, and often ploughed the profits back into their businesses – a process that led inadvertently to a capitalist mentality. Making profits became a sort of symbol of pious effort and – ultimately – an end in itself. Hard work and Christian morality were certainly very important in the Dutch Golden Age – as the innumerable sermons and the moralistic literature of the time testify. It is therefore not surprising that when it came to interpreting paintings of festivities, art historians often thought first in terms of admonitions. For a long time, for instance, Judith Leyster’s captivating painting of Pekelharing – a popular stage and carnival character famed for his prodigious drinking – was seen as a warning against overindulgence in alcohol (cat. no. 22). Pictures of elegant companies al fresco were long seen as a sort of indictment of licentiousness (cat. nos. 10-19). In recent decades contrary views have been suggested and there has been a much greater appreciation of the humour contained in many paintings of revelry.2 After all, extreme behaviour that oversteps the bounds is often funny. There is also a question as to the extent to which artists wanted to encourage good behaviour in their viewers. The seventeenth-century trope of the dissolute artist encapsulated in the saying ‘hoe schilder hoe wilder’ (the truer a painter is to his nature, the wilder he is) does not lead us to suspect that all painters were moral crusaders.3 A Weakness for Pleasure and Drink As far as partying was concerned, the Dutch already had a considerable – if somewhat ambivalent – reputation even before the dawn of the Golden Age. Something the illustrious humanist Erasmus (1467–1536) said is revealing in this regard. He described the Dutch character thus: Where morals and customs are concerned there is no nation that is more open to humanity and congeniality and less inclined to uncivilized and violent conduct. It is straightforward, is a stranger to disloyalty, deceit and serious vices, save perhaps that it loves entertainment and above all loves to celebrate. 4 According to Erasmus, this came about as a result of the ‘abundance of everything that can tempt one into pleasure’: the flood of imports into the Netherlands and the natural fertility of the land. Erasmus expressed surprise that the country had relatively few great scholars, but thought that this might have come about precisely because of the luxurious lifestyle, or because the Dutch cared more about ‘moral excellence’ than ‘excellence in scholarship’. Erasmus’s emphasis on the ‘refinement’ and ‘moral excellence’ of the Dutch on the one hand and their love of parties on the other appears – at least at first sight – rather inconsistent. Richard Brakenburgh, The Twelfth Night Feast, 1691 (detail of cat. no. 32) 9 He was not the only one to remark on these two sides to the Dutch character. Foreign tourists, in particular, often found the combination confusing. Specifically, they were surprised by the licence that respectable Dutch women allowed themselves. Women greeted their acquaintances with a kiss in public, were outspoken, went walking without an escort, involved themselves alongside the men in all sorts of revels and parties and sometimes celebrated all night without apparently damaging their reputation in any way. At the beginning of the Golden Age, the Englishman Fynes Moryson (1566–1630) was shocked to see that Frisian women sometimes partied the whole night through in inns that could be 15 or 20 miles from their homes. At the same time they did this without bringing down on themselves even a hint of impropriety: And this they do out of a customed liberty without prejudice to their fame whereas the Italian women, strictly kept, think it folly to omit every opportunity they can get to do ill.5 Dirck Hals/Dirck van Delen, Festive Company in a Renaissance Room, 1628 (detail of cat. no. 17) 10 This is not, of course, to say that parties never got out of hand or that everyone approved of the various celebrations and their associated customs. On the contrary, opinions about the point and acceptability of the different festivities were divided, and the same applied to the heavy drinking that was generally regarded as typical of the Dutch. The eminent lawyer Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) called the Dutch love of liquor a ‘national failing’. He explained this away to some extent by pointing to the roots of the custom in Roman times. The Roman writer Tacitus (c. 56–117) had already observed that no people abandoned themselves to parties and pleasure more than the Germanic people and that they did not regard uninterrupted drinking as a vice. ‘And so following that,’ concluded Grotius, ‘the Hollanders – ordinary town-dwellers and countrymen, and the eminent and wealthy alike – gave themselves over to drink.’6 Foreigners were usually less charitable about Dutch drinking habits. In 1614 the Spaniard Alonso Vásquez asserted that the Hollanders could not think clearly because of their addiction to drink, which in his view helped to explain their revolt against the Spanish occupiers. (The Dutch fought their Spanish oppressors from 1568 to 1648, ultimately resulting in their own democratic constitutional state.) If we are to believe Vásquez, babies were brought up on liquor in the Netherlands: ‘When they lay their little ones down, the mothers give them a calabash filled with wine or beer and the children suck on it as if it were a breast, and drink the wine like milk.’7 At home, drunkenness was castigated by religious leaders and moralistic writers. Two Haarlem clergymen, Daniel Souterius (1571–1634) and Samuel Ampzing (1590–1632), warned of the dangers of the excessive consumption of alcohol. Souterius devoted a separate pamphlet to the causes and consequences of drunkenness entitled Den nuchteren Lot (1623). In 1633 Ampzing published a more exhaustive exposition on a whole range of sinful temptations including alcohol, tobacco and gambling, Spigel, ofte Toneel der ydelheyd ende ongebondenheyd onser eeuwe, voorgestelt in Rymen (Mirror or Theatre of the Vanity and Unrestrainedness of Our Age), to which he gave the telling subtitle ‘for instruction and improvement’. Alcohol did, though, have its beneficial sides. It was generally agreed that drink brought people together. It could be useful in sealing business transactions and settling disputes. This was why some civic guard units made it a rule that members who had a quarrel should sit down and drink a glass of wine together. 8 Contracts of sale were often sealed with a tankard of beer in the tavern or a glass of wine the next day (known as a wyncoop or sweetener; see cat. no. 42). A glass of wine could be equally useful in love; it gave the lover courage and – provided it was taken in moderation – set the heart aflame according to Minne-kunst, a 1626 manual on the art of love.9 In his book Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673), the Englishman William Temple (1628–1699) wrote that most of the Dutch were convinced that alcohol was good for their health. Temple added that in his view excessive drinking had a positive effect on the Dutch – unlike Southern peoples. Drink was known for making a man more quick-witted and that, he felt, benefited the naturally cold and slow temperament of the Hollanders and their sluggish powers of imagination.10 Cornelis van Haarlem, Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard (during restoration), 1583 (detail of cat. no. 42) Celebrations in Painting As we shall see, virtually all the seventeenth-century festivals and celebrations pictured by Dutch painters were controversial in one way or another, as were the customs that accompanied them, such as dancing, feasting to excess and dressing up. The general reputation of the Dutch when it came to partying, coupled with more specific differences of opinion about the point and acceptability of particular festivities, provide a context within which to interpret the different images of celebrations in this exhibition. Pictorial traditions and trends shed further light on the works. We start to see worldly subjects like village weddings appear in art around the second half of the sixteenth century – when the 11 landscape and the still life also developed into pictorial genres in their own right. First of all – particularly in Flanders – all sorts of traditional festivities and customs were recorded as anecdotal details in prints and paintings that often had a broader subject, such as the four seasons or the months of the year. Images of winter, for instance, often include carnival scenes, while spring will feature lavish al fresco parties (fig. 1). The earliest paintings that feature a contemporary celebration as their main theme are about peasant life. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) painted extraordinarily colourful and dynamic scenes of peasant weddings and country fairs or kermissen (fig. 2). The story has it that he had joined the peasants and celebrated with them.11 However, his carefully finished paintings were intended for much wealthier buyers. The Flemish festivities were often seen from a distance – literally and figuratively. Artists usually opted for a bird’s-eye view, a high vantage point that enabled them to include a great many figures and details in their paintings. Figuratively speaking, they often gave the scenes context by choosing an allegorical or symbolic approach. The feast of St Martin, for instance, was illustrated by contrasting St Martin, who cut his cloak in two so that he could share it with a poor man, with a seething crowd of humanity tumbling over one another to drink wine in honour of his name day (fig. 3). We also see wealthy companies in imaginary ‘gardens of love’; these were not so much illustrations of actual festivities as ideal images of courtly love, a familiar theme in art since the fifteenth century. In the seventeenth century, pictures of festivities became hugely popular. All sorts of new types of image were developed and more contemporary celebrations were depicted – not just merrymaking peasants and country fairs, weddings and carnival celebrations, but elegant al fresco gatherings, stylish masquerades, chamber of rhetoric ceremonials, typical May parades, street parties at night, and more intimate domestic festivities to celebrate births, Twelfth Night and the feast of St Nicholas. Fidelity to reality also became much more important in many respects than it had ever been. In practice this meant that the bird’s-eye perspective was replaced with a much lower viewpoint. The viewer was as it were placed among the merrymakers, while the painters ‘zoomed in’ on smaller groups. The use of colour and the portrayal of emotions also became more subtle. Allegorical scenes such as ‘gardens of love’ gradually fell out of fashion after 1610, making way for celebrations inspired by real life. Realism was generally regarded as an important characteristic of Dutch painting at the time. Time and again foreigners criti- cized Dutch artists because they did not idealize things enough in their compositions. Lifelike colours and a subtle use of light and shade, on the other hand, were seen as one of the main strengths of Dutch artists.12 Dutch sources reveal a similar image. Realism was an important objective for painters both in their use of colour, light and dark and in the expression of inner and outward emotions. No other European language had so many terms to describe the correct use of colour and tone whereby painters could create a successful illusion of three-dimensionality. At least as much attention was focused on the convincingly lifelike representation of movement and facial expression. This was considered to be one of the ultimate challenges in painting. In a lecture he delivered to the Leiden artists’ guild in 1639, for instance, the painter Philips Angel praised his colleague Rembrandt at length for the way he had depicted the biblical story of Samson’s wedding feast (fig. 1 on p. 21): fig. 1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Wedding Dance, c. 1566, oil on panel, 119.3 x 157.4 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts Hans Bol, Spring (Merry Company in a Garden of Love), 1573, pen and ink on paper, 17.6 x 25.8 cm, Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (detail) fig. 3 12 fig. 2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Wine of St Martin’s Day, c. 1565-68, oil on canvas, 148 x 270.5 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid (before restoration) 13 . . . as all the Guests differ in their natural inclinations, so he made [figures] who were happy . . . smiling and raising a glass of wine aloft; others engaged in kissing, in sum, it was a joyful Wedding and, no less fine, the movements were just like those that are found in our present-day celebrations.13 De Hollandsche Lys Met de Brabantse Bely (1629), which pillories the bad behaviour of the young people of Haarlem and illustrates it in a series of etchings: young delinquents dance and throw up in the street, celebrations get out of hand, and the infants that result from their immoral antics are brutally drowned.14 In contrast to these moralistic illustrations, the paintings of rich people making merry seldom if ever show the unfortunate consequences of their behaviour: no vomit or unwanted babies here. Nevertheless, for a long time they were interpreted as admonitions.15 Seventeenth-century moralists would undoubtedly have had plenty to say about the luxury they portrayed: they regarded eating and drinking to excess and flaunting opulent clothes as a sin, and they condemned dancing too – according to one clergyman, even watching people dance was unbecoming of a true Christian.16 It is therefore very much open to question whether these moralists would have condoned people’s even looking at paintings of these sinful temptations, as Elmer Kolfin rightly observed. In any case, by no means everyone took such a strict moral line.17 The most recent interpretations of the festivities are consequently more light-hearted, more humorous and point to parallels with the attitude that emerges from the song books: ‘Everything has its time: it is praiseworthy that a man/ is wise in his profession, and merry with the jug’ (fig. 4).18 In a poem about the parties held by the wealthy folk of Haarlem in the Haarlemmerhout just outside the town, Karel van Mander also put things into perspective. They were like kermis celebrations, said Van Mander, and he did not mean this pejoratively, for, he continued, a man – like a garment – has to be aired from time to time.19 The artist and writer Karel van Mander (1548–1606) had previously praised the painter Cornelis van Haarlem in similar terms for the innovative, lively way he had pictured a Haarlem civic guard banquet (cat. no. 42): some of the militiamen with glasses raised, others hand on heart – each according to his nature and with an eye for variety and the individuality of every man. (Variety – varietas – was another important quality in seventeenth-century painting.) In short, celebrations presented painters with a plethora of artistic challenges. They were ideal subjects with which to demonstrate their ingenuity. Gallant Companies Among the earliest festivities in the Northern Netherlandish art of the Golden Age are those painted by the Amsterdam artist David Vinckboons (1576–c. 1633). He is one of the few painters to depict both peasant celebrations (with a Flemish-style bird’seye view) and sumptuous al fresco parties (with a much lower vantage point) (cat. nos. 1, 10, 13). These latter works, in particular, make him an important figure in art history – he was in fact the first artist to make these sorts of elegant gatherings the main theme of his paintings and is thus a crucial link in the development of a new type of picture – the ‘gallant company’ – a genre that subsequently reached great heights in Haarlem in the early decades of the seventeenth century thanks to painters like Esaias van de Velde, Willem Buytenwech and Dirck Hals. Each of these artists developed an individual manner in the portrayal of young upper-class people celebrating. Van de Velde focused on predominantly silent moments either when the revelries had not yet got going or when the tipsy behaviour of the gentlemen was causing a degree of reluctance among the ladies (cat. nos. 11 and 14). Dirck Hals, in contrast, painted elegant gaiety. He focused on the festivities when they were at their height and had his women, in particular, smiling infectiously (cat. nos. 16-19). The fun and games indulged in by the young and wealthy were also illustrated in song books and moralistic literature. The latter category includes books that explicitly denounce the immoral conduct of the young gentry, such as Gillis Jacobsz. Quintijn’s fig. 4 Jan van de Velde, Merry Company, 1621, etching, 9.5 x 15.9 cm, in J.J. Starter, Friesche Lust-hof (Amsterdam 1621), Royal Library, The Hague Peasant Festivities Peasant celebrations like the kermis remained a popular subject for painters throughout the seventeenth century. Here, too, each painter gave the subject his own twist and contributed different innovations. Whereas in Bruegel the upper classes were only indirectly ‘present’ at peasant festivities (after all, they were the viewers, the buying public), in the seventeenth century elegant visitors make an emphatic entrance into the compositions themselves (cat. nos. 6, 7, 8, 20). In paintings, as they did in real life, they turned up at country fairs and village celebrations – which sometimes led to comic situations. In Vinckboons, alcohol and jollity bring people together, and in one unique case (cat. no. 1) the gentry actually mix with the common folk in a highly unconventional manner as an aristocrat dances with the peasants.20 Esaias van de Velde, Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air, 1615 (detail of cat. no. 11) Dirck Hals, Garden Party with a Company Dancing and Making Music, c. 1630 (detail of cat. no. 18) 14 15 the simplicity of peasant customs, in which expensive clothes and courtly manners played no part, and contrasted this with the desire for luxury that had found its way into the Northern Netherlands from Flanders at the beginning of the Golden Age. The Haarlem pastor Augustijn Bloemaert, for instance, presented the simple peasant mentality as typical of their Dutch forefathers, the Batavians. They, said Bloemaert, were simple, honest, pious and brave. They were strangers to courtly manners, lies and deceit, while they may have worn a peasant smock they put ‘all their heart’ into it, and they were sincerely cheerful at their kermis. This outlook, believed Bloemaert, was their greatest legacy to their descendants.23 The parallel Karel van Mander drew between the al fresco parties of the well-to-do and the peasants’ kermis may have an equivalent in painting. One of the few known sources to refer to the way these types of paintings were hung in the seventeenth century suggests that the collector Daniel Rogge hung merrymaking peasants and a gallant company side by side – probably because the subject matter was complementary.24 Jan Steen (1626–1676) likewise presents a comic confrontation of different mores. In his painting The Dancing Couple, a rustic asks a more elegantly dressed lady to dance against the background of a kermis. The man is already prancing enthusiastically. The lady smiles as she takes his hand, but remains rather primly and hesitantly rooted to the spot (cat. no. 5). Other artists made a sharper distinction between the classes. In Adriaen van de Venne’s Peasant Shrove Tuesday, two elegant couples come to watch the village carnival procession and one of the gentlemen points meaningfully at a small group of peasants misbehaving in the foreground (cat. no. 20). Although they must have found it entertaining to watch the carnival procession (hence their presence) the aristocrats at the same time distance themselves from the peasants by criticizing their bad behaviour. In a curious painting, the Delft painter Cornelis de Man appears to want to point up a similarly sharp distinction (cat. no. 6). He shows us a well-dressed couple attending a village party where a vulgar game – la main chaude or hot cockles – is being played. In the right foreground a man is bent double, his head in a woman’s lap. He is about to receive a playful slap on his backside or – the more respectable version – on the hand he holds behind his back. He then has to guess who hit him. The elegant couple remain ostentatiously aloof – the woman points to onlookers peering in through the window and laughing at the game, the man laughs at the people watching the game – not at the game itself. It would seem that they want to underline the fact that they are not amused by this common entertainment. A painting by Philips Wouwerman in which a stylish couple have come to watch a village celebration, where couples on horseback are engaged in the game of ‘herring-pulling’, is very different in tone (cat. no. 7). A peasant couple are playing: the woman grasps the man firmly around his waist while, teeth bared, he tries to bite the fish, which is still alive, dangling from a rope high above. The elegant lady smiles as she watches this popular village entertainment – a type of sport fiercely condemned by clergymen at the time.21 In Wouwerman’s painting, however, there is no hint of such criticism. The literature of the day likewise reflected a wide range of views on peasant festivities. A widely-quoted source is the poem ‘Peasant Company’ from the Groot lied-boeck (1622) by Gerbrand Bredero, in which the author describes attending a village party where things got out of hand, culminating in a fight in which people were killed. He goes on to warn ‘pious and valiant citizens’ to avoid peasant revels, and instead to come and drink a rummer of wine with him.22 Other authors, however, extolled Jan Steen and the Range of Celebrations The fact that so many different celebrations were recorded in paintings in the Golden Age is due in no small measure to Jan Steen. Aside from his many kermis scenes (cat. nos. 5 and 8), he also repeatedly painted other peasant celebrations and weddings (cat. no. 4), chamber of rhetoric ceremonials (cat. nos. 40 and 41), a handful of more elegant al fresco gatherings (cat. no. 28), baptisms, Twelfth Night celebrations (cat. no. 27), May festivals like the Whitsun procession (cat. nos. 24 and 25), and the feast of St Nicholas in December (fig. in cat. no. 30). The last two celebrations were so controversial that they were actually banned in the seventeenth century – which makes Steen’s decision to paint them even more remarkable (see cat. nos. 24 and 30).25 The range of celebrations Steen depicted is unequalled by any of his contemporaries, and the quality of his work is likewise exceptional. He excelled in creating humorous narrative compositions and gave his figures extraordinarily lifelike and well-observed poses and expressions (as we see in the painting discussed above, The Dancing Couple). What’s more, tradition has it that Jan Steen’s own lifestyle made him the ideal artist to paint festivities. Like Bruegel, he knew from experience what happened on these occasions. The same is true of Frans Hals, the other unsurpassed master of seventeenth-century celebrations, particularly civic guard banquets (cat. no. 43).26 Cornelis de Man, Hot Cockles, c. 1660 (detail of cat. no. 6) 16 17 It was highly unusual in the seventeenth century for one artist to paint a great diversity of celebrations. In the last decades of the Golden Age, Richard Brakenburgh painted a similarly wide range of festivities, drawing his inspiration directly from Steen’s work (cat. nos. 29, 30, 32). It was much more common, however, for artists to specialize in a particular type of party (like the painters of ‘gallant companies’) or, by way of exception, to paint a celebration linked to their specialism. For instance, Egbert van der Poel, a specialist in nocturnal scenes, painted an exceptional night-time event in Delft, possibly to celebrate the end of the Eighty Years’ War (cat. no. 35), the famous painter of horses Philips Wouwerman elected to paint a village festival featuring a game played on horseback: herring-pulling (a rarity in his oeuvre and at the same time one of his greatest paintings) (cat. no. 7), and, just once, the celebrated court painter Adriaen Hanneman painted a princess dressed for a costume ball (cat. no. 26). Fancy dress parties and masquerades, like the ones in this exhibition, are also relatively rare. This explains in part why so many different types of celebration were captured on canvas – artists specialized in very diverse subjects. This is not to say, though, that every type of festival that was actually celebrated in practice was also depicted by painters. The elegant receptions at the stadholder’s court went almost entirely unrecorded, as did domestic gatherings for such occasions as birthdays, name days and all sorts of feast days that were celebrated with a shared meal (like the typical feast of St Martin, when people ate roast goose). It would appear that artists liked above all to portray festivities that were accompanied by a degree of licentiousness. It would certainly not have escaped their notice that these festivities were controversial – they probably chose them for this very reason. It gave them an opportunity to make the viewers laugh and to impress them with a whole gamut of pictured emotions. It was these parties that could cause a stir and generate – even now – food for debate. 1994, p. 321. 9 ‘De wijn, de wijn maeckt moed: en mildelijck geschonken, / Verhit het vrolijck hert, en doet het vlammigh voncken, / Dan komt het soet gelach, de staetigheyd vertreckt, / Het veynsen is gedaen, ’t verholen werd ontdeckt.’ ‘Wine, wine gives courage: and poured in moderation/ Warms the cheerful heart and sets it all aflame,/ Then comes the sweet smile, solemnity departs,/ Pretence is done with, what was concealed has been discovered.’ Van Heemskerck 1626, p. 14. 10 Temple 1972, p. 90. 11 See the essays by Van Weststeijn, pp. 20 ff. and Roodenburg/Bouffard-Veilleux, pp. 28 ff. 12 See Tummers 2011, chapter 6. 13 ‘… ghelijck alle Gasten niet tot een en de selve saeck gheneghen en sijn, soo had’ hy [figuren] ghemaect die verheucht waren ... steeckende een Fluyt met Wijn al lachende om hoogh; andere doende met kussen, in somma, het was een vroylicke Bruyloft en niet te min schoon de beweginge soo ware, als die in onse hedendaechse Feeste ghevonden werden.’ Angel 1641, p. 48. See also the essay by Van Weststeijn, pp. 20ff. 14 Nevitt 2003, pp. 34-36 and fig.12, Kolfin 2005, pp. 219-221 and figs. 174 and 175, p. 228. See also Kolfin 2001. 15 For an overview of interpretations see Nevitt 2003, note 79, pp. 238-239. 16 Kolfin 1999, see also the essays by Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff and by De Winkel pp. 40ff. 17 See also the essay by De Winkel, pp. 40ff. 18 ‘Elck dingh heft synen tyd: ‘t is pryslick dat een man,/ Is wys in syn beroep, en vrolyck by de kan.’ Starter/Strengholt 1974, p. 7, Kolfin 2005, fig. 157. 19 Rugers van der Loeff 1911, p. 22, quoted in Alpers 1975-76, note 44, p. 126. 20 See the essay by Bouffard-Veilleux/ Roodenburg, pp. 28ff. 21 Rogier 1947, p. 792; Kassel/The Hague 2009-10, p. 92, note 69. 22 ‘Ghy Heeren, ghy Burgers, vroom en wel gemoet, / Mydt der Boeren Feesten, sy zijn selden soo soet / Of ‘t kost yemant zijn bloet, / En drinckt met mijn, een roemer Wijn, / Dat is jou wel soo goet.’ Bredero 1622. 23 Bloemaert 1649, 367. 24 Kolfin 2005, p. 183. 25 In 1657 celebrating the Feast of St Nicholas was prohibited in Dordrecht. An Arnhem ordinance of 3 December 1662 banned people from putting out shoes and baking St Nicholas biscuits. See also Schama 2011 ( 1987), pp. 192-193. 26 According to seventeenth-century art theory, painters could only portray festivities convincingly if they had been present themselves, see the essay by Weststeijn, pp. 20ff. 1 Weber 1904/1905. 2 See also the essay by Van Weststeijn, pp. 20ff. 3 Van Mander 1604, fol. 3r. 4 ‘Wat zeden en gewoonten betreft is er geen volk dat meer open staat voor medemenselijkheid en vriendelijkheid en minder geneigd is tot onbeschaafd en gewelddadig gedrag. Het is recht door zee, kent geen ontrouw of bedrog noch ernstige ondeugden, behalve misschien dat het graag plezier maakt en vooral graag feestviert.’ Erasmus/Mann Philips 1964), p. 211; Mout 1993. 5 Schama 1987, pp. 402-403, quote on p. 403. See also Dekker 1997, p. 108 and note 25, p. 185, with further literature references. 6 ‘En zo hebben ook nadien de Hollanders – gewone stedelingen en landlieden evenals aanzienlijken en rijken – zich aan de drank overgegeven’, De Groot/ Meerman 1801-03, volume 2, pp. 50-53; Meijer Drees 1997, p. 33. 7 ‘De moeders geven den kleintjes, als zij hen neerleggen, met wijn of bier gevulde kalebassen en de kinderen zuigen daaraan alsof het een tiet was, en drinken den wijn als melk.’ Vasquez 1614, quoted in Brouwer 1933, pp. 89-92. See also Meijer Drees 1997, p. 103. 8 Knevel Jan Steen, The May Day Festival, c. 1663-65 (detail of cat. no. 25) 18 19 a feast for the eye Laughte r an d Lifelik e n ess in Se ve ntee nth -Ce ntur y Ar t T h eor y Thijs Weststeijn In 1642 the Leiden artist Philips Angel praised The Wedding of Samson, a work by Rembrandt (fig. 1). The master had observed the revelries in his own time so well that ‘the sentiments were just such as are found in our present-day festivities’.1 Angel was referring here to a recurrent theme in seventeenth-century treatises on painting. The depiction of a group of figures united in a festive setting – a meal, drinking party or gathering in the open air – is probably one of the most challenging tasks for a painter. He has to be able to capture the different gestures, features and expressions in an animated conversation, and chronicle the various stages of merriment and drunkenness. The art literature of Rembrandt’s day insists that this cannot be learnt from theory or by copying the work of other artists. Personal observation is essential.2 The authors even go so far as to say that unless the painter himself is an experienced reveller, he will not succeed in conveying gaiety and conviviality to the viewer. If an artist is to portray a convincing drunkard, it can do no harm if he himself has one too many now and again. As early as classical antiquity, the alcoholic frenzy was associated with the creativity of the poet and his ability to portray his characters in such a lifelike way that his audience believed that they had actually been part of the vivacious company.3 The Amsterdam playwright Gerbrand Bredero, who had trained as an artist, was very familiar with this notion. As he explained to his audience, when he brought roistering peasants into his work, he had joined in their carousing himself in order to render their uninhibited behaviour and uncouth accent in a lifelike and ‘picturesque’ manner. 4 Art historians have debated this pronouncement at length: was the interest in rustic festivals evinced by seventeenthcentury Dutch gentlemen prompted by their desire to wallow in debauchery, or did they always have a moralistic motive at the back of their mind so that they contrasted their own refinement with the lower class’s libido and fondness for drink? Both views probably contain a grain of truth.5 When we read what was written on the subject in seventeenth-century art literature, it becomes clear that the observation of human passions and strong emotions, of which laughing and crying are the main forms of expression, is one of the painter’s principal tasks. According to Franciscus Junius’s influential treatise De schilderkonst der oude (The Painting of the Ancients, 1641), the artist who watches a group of people gains a much greater insight into human behaviour than he could from reading a learned book.6 Dancing and drunkenness are consequently recurring themes in the art literature of the time. Although Dutch city dwellers disapproved of such lack of inhibition in their own conduct, they fig. 1 Rembrandt, The Wedding of Samson, 1638, oil on canvas, 125 x 147cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatlichte Kunstsammlungen, Dresden appreciated the multitude of emotions displayed at peasant weddings. As Bredero wrote: Who isn’t sickened by the feast and peasant kermis? All they do is guzzle, swill and get bloated, They fiddle, caper and dance, play the bagpipes and the fife, And before they get fuddled out come the knives.7 The importance of classical examples is manifest: they lent carousing and revelry a degree of respectability. Junius’s treatise on painting describes festivals in antiquity in which Bacchus, the god of wine, accompanied by satyrs and maenads, plays a central role. The author mentions the sculptors Lysippus, ‘greatly praised because of a drunken flute-player’, and Myron, who portrayed an equally dissipated woman with ‘considerable wittiness’. Moreover, ‘the ancient sculptors were wont to portray Hercules with a tankard in his hand and as staggering, thus giving us to understand that this great hero was frequently known to reel and totter from excessive drink’.8 Maarten van Heemskerck painted a procession of such figures, followers of Bacchus (fig. 2). Arnold Houbraken’s famous lives of Netherlandish artists (1718–1721) likewise go in depth into the Bacchanalia of antiquity, inspired by a text on the subject written by the Leiden scholar Daniel Heinsius. He cites Heinsius’s ode to the god of wine as an Jan Steen, Twelfth Night Feast, c. 1670-71 (detail of cat. no. 27) 20 21 and a little basket of dried figs, and finally a phallus, which is an imitation of manhood.’ He was referring here to the Bacchanalia where a statue of Priapus, god of fertility, was honoured. These ancient revelries were later represented with ‘gold and silver vessels, magnificent costumes, processions of horses and carriages, and masquerades’ – classical festivities were simulated with the aid of decorations and masks.16 Van Hoogstraten treated these notions within a broader theory of the function of art which, as a well-known seventeenthcentury expression had it, served to teach and delight. The artist could educate his public by means of ‘histories’ – edifying scenes from the Bible and history. This well-defined category of paintings was the most important in his view. However, some artists preferred not to focus on intellectual subjects and would rather just provide entertainment for their public. This second category, so the author believed, covered diverse subjects, among them festivities, carnivals and masquerades. We see that the ancient woodland deities, the satyrs, were Van Hoogstraten’s model for modern scenes: fig. 2 Maerten van Heemskerck, Triumph of Bacchus, c. 1536-37, oil on panel, 56 x 106 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna example to painters, a written work of art, to portray ‘the elegance of the festival customs of the olden days’.9 He also advises artists who want to paint lively companies to read a Dutch translation of Virgil’s classic text on satyrs and maenads. This ‘pen portrait’, he said, rendered the emotions of the revellers in a true to life fashion and provided subject matter for a whole series of paintings as it was: . . . charming, bustling, full of passions, full of changes and so rich in ideas that one could store up different pictures from it, and each subject is pointed out in it, as if with a finger. . . . The beholders of such a scene should certainly find things to laugh at.10 Some Dutch humanists were fond of such essays on feasting and drinking which, as the American art historian Noël Schiller recently argued, both wallow in the description of the drinking spree and contain a warning about intemperance.11 Samuel Ampzing, the author of a famous urban topography of Haarlem, described his dissipated contemporaries in his book Ongebondenheyd onser eeuwe (The Dissipation of our Age, 1633) (fig. 3); in the same year Dirck Pieters Pers published Suypstad of dronkaerts- 22 leven (Drink City, or a Drunk’s Life), a portrait of a town full of drunkards ‘painted’, according to the author, ‘in lifelike colours’ and probably inspired by a serious work about Haarlem.12 On the one hand these works contain moralizing pronouncements. On the other, they looked to classical literature for support for the carousing the authors themselves indulged in – Heinsius was particularly notorious among his students in Leiden as a valiant toper, and was said to ‘vomit in Latin’!13 His text on Bacchus, illustrated by the Haarlem artist Jacob Matham, was written on the occasion of an actual celebration: a carnival at Petrus Scriverius’s house. This schoolmaster (likewise from Haarlem) himself wrote a work about a Shrove Tuesday evening, Saturnalia, which apparently involved a great deal of smoking (fig. 4).14 The humanists’ learned statements recur in the bulky discourse on painting published by one of Rembrandt’s pupils, Samuel van Hoogstraten, in 1678. His views warrant particular attention because he described many artists of his own time, including the ‘Haerlemmers’.15 However, classical antiquity was the standard for Van Hoogstraten, too. He cites Virgil’s text on Silenus to describe a drinking-bout as a model for painted scenes. In antiquity, people were accustomed to celebrate festivals ‘simply and cheerfully. They carried a goblet of wine, a garland of vines The second group comes up with thousands of fantasies, and plays with cabinet paintings of all kinds. Some of them portray Satyrs, forest gods, and Thessalian shepherds in delightful Tempe, or lead the Arcadian Tityrus and Laura out of the woods. . . . Others make nocturnes, and fires, Shrove Tuesday eve and masquerades . . . and deserve the name of rhyparographer, just like the ancient Pyreicus.17 The word rhyparographer, derived from the Greek, means ‘painter of trash’: Van Hoogstraten borrowed it from his scholarly predecessors, probably to describe paintings without any intellectual overtones that were designed to make people laugh. The ancient artist Pyreicus was particularly important to Dutch artists because he was the role model for those who painted scenes in this category – including revelries. Jan Steen was said to have modelled himself on Pyreicus in his work and his life. Houbraken, who made this comparison, believed that Steen was only as successful at portraying riotous gatherings, dancing and drunkenness as he was because this was the life he himself lived: it went so far that Steen eventually descended into alcoholism. As Houbraken observed, ‘“He that touches pitch,” says the old Dutch proverb, “shall be defiled therewith.” . . . In general I must say that his paintings are as his way of life, and his way of life as his paintings.’18 Houbraken’s judgement appears to accord with Steen’s own self-image and am- fig. 3 Frans Hals, Portrait of Samuel Ampzing, c. 1630, oil on copper, 16.2 x 12.3 cm, private collection fig. 4 Frans Hals, Portrait of Petrus Scriverius, 1626, oil on panel, 22.2 x 16.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York, H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Mrs H.O. Havemeyer Bequest, 1929 23 bitions. In various of his paintings of revelry, after all, the artist pictured himself as a drunkard, as a prominent participant: slumped in the foreground with his trademark broad-brimmed hat, sometimes looking directly at the viewer (cat. nos. 8 and 28). The notion that the artist must have been a prodigious merrymaker is made much of in the treatises on painting. The primary intention in the category of paintings Van Hoogstraten describes is a comic one. An essential aspect of this is that the viewer recognizes the figures as familiar, everyday characters. In Van Hoogstraten’s theory, the painter consequently has not only to picture an event ‘as if he saw it happen’, he also has to convey to his public ‘the movements of the feelings and the bodies, and the people, as if one knew them’.19 This is, of course, one of the prerequisites of humour: it has to be contemporary. Unworldliness and humour are mutually exclusive, as a modern example demonstrates. When the popular Dutch cartoonist Peter van Straaten recently wanted to make an anthology of his satirical drawings about everyday life, he found that he could not reuse the great majority of them because, even though they were only a few years old, they did not mean anything to modern readers. Franciscus Junius makes the same point: if you want to make people laugh and paint jolly situations in a lifelike fashion, you must be a ‘hands-on’ expert. If an artist is to paint nightlife convincingly, he has to be a habitué of the tavern who gets involved in a brawl now and again. Someone who wants to write comic texts has to have ‘reasonable experience of the things he writes about’: he has to hang out with ‘roistering idlers’ and come to blows ‘for a pretty girl’s favours’.20 Artists took this view literally, as the surviving biographies tell us. Jan Steen’s behaviour echoed that of Leonardo da Vinci who, when he wanted to paint laughing peasants, threw a banquet for a group of rustic characters: the jokes they heard that evening left them helpless with laughter. Leonardo observed them so accurately that, having withdrawn from the party, he was able to capture the revellers’ expressions and gestures from memory.21 The underlying idea is obvious: when the painter depicts the festivities as an eye witness, the viewer will be given the impression that he is there himself. We are to take this literally, too. The viewer not only sees the painted figures as if they are moving, he hears their conversation: Junius says that ‘we recognize the particular figures pictured in the work before us . . . as if we had to do with the living presence of the things themselves, and not with their simulated likenesses.’22 The author repeatedly stresses the importance of the classical poet Philostratus, who had described a painting of a celebration in this way.23 The guests had abandoned themselves to drink, dancing and masquerade. His remarks are reminiscent of the night scenes that were so popular with Dutch artists (cat. nos. 2, 34, 40). Philostratus asks the viewers of the work of art: Do you not hear the castanets and the flute’s shrill note and the disorderly singing? The torches give a faint light, enough for the revellers to see what is close in front of them, but not enough for us to see them. Peals of laughter rise, and women rush along with men, wearing men’s sandals and garments girt in strange fashion; for the revel permits women to masquerade as men, and men to put on women’s garb and to ape the walk of women. Their crowns are no longer fresh but crushed down on the head on account of the wild running of the dancers . . . The painting also represents in a way the din which the revel most requires; the right hand with bent fingers strikes the hollowed palm of the left hand, in order that the hands beaten like cymbals may resound in unison.24 Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, c. 1676 (detail of cat. no. 8) Jan Steen, Merry Company on a Terrace, c. 1670 (detail of cat. no. 28) The idea formulated in the artistic theory that the viewer of a work has the impression that he not only sees the festivities but also hears the sounds of revelry, echoes in the exhibition in the pictures that feature musicians in a prominent role. In other paintings, merrymakers look directly at the viewer, inviting him to join in (cat. nos. 15, 16, 18, 28, 29, 40, 41, 42, 43). They hold their goblets upside down to show just how far the carousing has progressed, and sometimes raise their glasses to the viewer (cat. nos. 15, 28, 42). Writing about a civic guard portrait by Frans Hals, Houbraken says the sitters ‘look as if they want to speak to the beholders’ – the suggestion of sound is not far off. Like Steen, Hals himself was notorious as a man who ‘was generally drunk to the gills every evening’.25 One interesting difference between the civic guard portraits and other works is that, although many of the guests have already emptied their glasses, none of them bare their teeth as they smile: evidently passions were kept in check here because of the civilized nature of the gathering (cat. nos. 42 and 43). Seventeenthcentury treatises devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to the way laughter had to be portrayed. This is an equivocal subject: laughing or smiling broadly was something for the young and the lower classes, but, as the Alkmaar painter Simon Eikelenberg believed, it also made women prettier.26 In the final analysis, Frans Hals, Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard, 1627 (detail of cat. no. 43) 24 25 what’s more, laughter is infectious and that dictates in part the function of many of the paintings of people laughing: the viewer who himself bursts out laughing is, like the guests at a real celebration, cured of his melancholy mood. Van Hoogstraten writes: One sometimes gains new strength . . . by eating together and drinking deeply, indeed to the point of inebriation: not to drown ourselves in wine, but to wash away troubles. For wine drives out cares, and lifts the spirits from below; and just as it cures some sicknesses, so it also drives out sadness.27 The portraits of the proverbial drunkard Pekelharing painted by Frans Hals and Judith Leyster are vivid examples of how paintings could conjure up the sensation of really being in company, at a ‘present-day revelry’ in Philips Angel’s words (cat. no. 22; fig. 5). As Schiller argued, they bring together different views about the abilities of the artist and the function of paintings in the seventeenth century. The painter himself or herself, like the classical poet, was a drunk who knew nightlife inside out. Only thus could he or she create the sensation in viewers that they not only saw the wine sparkling in the glasses but could also watch the dancers whirling and hear the sounds of the revelries. The sketchy brushstroke typical of Hals and Leyster engages with this notion. On the one hand this looseness seems to allude to the bravura of the artist and the dissipated character of the model. On the other, the viewer, whose mind’s eye fuses the loose brushstrokes into a convincing visual image, is more intimately involved in the picture. Schiller suggests that the theory here was linked to seventeenth-century practice: looking at collections of paintings was not only frequently accompanied by making music, but also by drinking wine. One can imagine art lovers raising their glasses to Pekelharing as they admired the work. In Leyster’s work we, the viewers, are granted a glimpse into the open tankard, so that we ourselves become kannenkijkers – drinking companions.28 It is as if we, like Bredero, hear the reveller speak in his seventeenthcentury vernacular. Angel’s remark about Rembrandt’s ability to render a wedding realistically proves to be rooted in a more general endeavour on the part of artists to paint festivities such that the viewer felt as if he were there himself, could hear the music and start a conversation, whetting his appetite for wine. The exhibition underscores this: face to face with the militiamen or the wedding guests, who could fail to appreciate the painter’s efforts to present the figures ‘as if one knew them’? Fig. 5 Frans Hals, Peeckelhaering, c. 1628-30, signed f. hals f., oil on canvas, 75 x 61.5 cm, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Schloß Wilhelmshöhe, Kassel 1 ‘De [gemoeds]beweginge soo ware, als die in onse hedendaechse feeste ghevonden werden’, Angel 1642, p. 48. See also the introductory essay by Tummers, pp. 8ff. 2 See Weststeijn 2008, pp. 200-205. 3 For the Bacchic inspiration (furor alcoholicus, ‘edification through wine’) of the painter, see e.g. Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 200, and Davis 2006. 4 Bredero described his poetry as ‘picturesque’ when it treated everyday themes in a lifelike fashion, and said ‘As a painter I followed the painterly motto which says “They are the best painters who come close to life”’ (ick heb als een schilder, de schilder-achtige spreucke gevolcht, die daer seyt: “Het zijn de beste Schilders die ’t leven naast komen”’), Bredero 1975, pp. 17-18 5 The discussion of Bredero’s peasants was conducted primarily between Svetlana Alpers and Hessel Miedema: Alpers 1975-76, Miedema 1977, Alpers 1978-79. 6 ‘Een wijs ende verstandigh aenmerker der dinghen diemen behoort nae te volghen, houdt sijne ooghen geduyrighlick geslagen op die menschen onder welcke hy leeft; achtende dat hem de lesse, die hy te leeren heeft, in elck bysonder mensche, als in een klaer en leesbaer Boeck, op’t aller duydelickste voorghespelt is.’ (‘A wise and prudent observer of the things that men are wont to do keeps his eyes constantly on the people among whom he lives, aware that the lesson that he has to learn is most plainly discernible in each individual, as if in a clear and readable book.’) Junius 1641, p. 221. 7 ‘Wie sal niet vande feest en boerenkermis walgen? / Men doeter anders niet als vreten swelgen balgen: / men vedelt springt en danst, men sackpijpt en men fluijt, / en eer de kennis scheid soo raekt het mesken uijt’, Bredero 1622, title page. Translated by Michael Hoyle in Miedema 1977, p. 213. 8 ‘d’Oude Ghiet-konstenaers plaghten Hercules veeltijds met een kanne in de vuyst ende als striemelende te maecken, daer mede te verstaen ghevende dat dien grooten Held door’t overmaetig drincken meenigmael bekent was te suysel-bollen en te waggel-beenen’, Junius 1641, p. 292. 9 ‘den oudtydschen zwier dier Feestgebruiken’, Houbraken 1718-21, vol. III, p. 145. 10 ‘bevallig, woelig, vol gemoedsdriften, vol van veranderingen, en zoo ryk van gedachten datmen’er verscheiden tafereelen van zou konnen opslaan, en waar in yder voorwerp, als met den vinger, word aangeweezen. ... Zeker de aanschouwers van zulk een tafereel zouden mee stof vinden om te lachen’, Houbraken 1718-21, vol. III, p. 152. 11 Schiller 2006, pp. 211-273. 12 Pers 1628; Pers/Verlaan/Grootes 1978. The text may have been a parody of Ampzing 1628, see Schiller 2006, p. 266. Ampzing 1633. 13 Heinsius sometimes had to miss a lecture because of his drinking bout the day before; his students would hang a note on the door. One such note appears in Constantijn Huygens’s character sketch, The Professor: many people recognized Heinsius in the intemperate scholar described in it. Huygens’s text was actually intended for his Otiorum libri sex, The Hague 1625, but it remained unpublished until the twentieth century (manuscript in Leiden University Library ); translation in Huygens 1976. 14 Heinsius/Rank 1965; Scriverius 1630; originally Scriverius 1628. 15 Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 365. 16 ‘Men droeg’er een beker Wijn, en een Wijngaertrank, en een korfje met drooge Vijgen, en eindelijk een Fallus, dat is een nagebootste manlijkheit’; ‘goude en zilvere vaten, prachtige kleederen, gerit van paerden en wagens, en mommeryen’, Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 80. Van Hoogstraten himself also wrote plays featuring Bacchus and other classical gods, including one intended for a wedding (Hof-krakkeel, The Hague 1669). They were sometimes performed by his apprentices. 17 ‘De tweede bende komt met duizenderley verzieringen te voorschijn, en speelt met Kabinetstukken van allerley aert. Sommige brengen Satyrs, Bosgoden, en Thessalische harders in het lustige Tempe, of voeren d’Arkadische Tityr en Laura ten bosch uit. ... Andere komen met nachten, en branden, vastenavonden, en mommeriën her voor ... en verdienen den naem van Rhyparographi, zoo wel als d’oude Pyreykcus’, Van Hoogstraten 1678, pp. 77-78. 18 ‘“Die met pek omgaat,” zeit het oude Hollantsche spreekwoort, “wort’er door besmet”. ... In’t algemeen moet ik zeggen, dat zyn schilderyen zyn als zyn levenswyze, en zyn levenswyze als zyne schilderyen’, Houbraken 1718-21, III, p. 7. 19 ‘Hier zult gy … een geschiedenis … als zaegt gyze gebeuren, zien afgebeelt. … Hier wederom zijn de beweegingen des gemoets en des lichaems, en de persoonen, als of menze kende’, Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 195. 20 ‘[S]o is het mede onmogelick dat yeman[d] de minste bequaemheyd soude hebben om behoorelicker wijse daer van te oordeelen, het en sy saecke dat hy menighmael met de nachtloopers en ravotterende slampampers op de been tijende altemets om een moye meyds wille teghen de vuyst loopt en andere altemets vuystloock te eten geeft’, Junius 1641, p. 342. 21 Lomazzo 1584, Book II, Chap. i, pp. 6-7. 22 ‘[D]at wy de bysondere figuren, die ons in’t werck sijn voorgestelt … insien, als of wy met de levendighe teghenwoordigheyd der dingen selver, ende niet met haere gekontrefeyte verbeeldinghe te doen hadden’, Junius 1641, p. 335. 23 Junius recommends Philostratus’s text to his readers with particular emphasis in Junius 1641, p. 87. 24 ‘Imagines’, in Philostratus/Philostratus/Callistratus 1931, book I (Comus), chapter I, par. 2, trans. Arthur Fairbanks. 25 ‘Hoe krachtig en levendig [Hals], door zyn penceel den natuurlyken zweem des menschelyken wizens heeft weten na te bootzen, getuigen de menigvuldige Pourtretten, die men nu noch van hem ziet. Te Delf [sic] in de oude of Kolveniers Doelen is een groot stuk van hem, waar in eenige Hoofden of Bevelhebbers der Schuttery, levens groot in staan afgebeelt, en zoo kragtig en natuurlyk geschildert zyn, dat zy de aanschouwers schynen te willen aanspreken.’ (‘How powerfully and vibrantly [Hals] managed to capture with his brush the natural semblance of human beings, witness the many portraits by him that one still sees. In Delft [sic] in the old or Arquebusiers’ Headquarters there is a large work by him in which some Officers or Commanders of the Civic Guard are depicted standing, life size, and painted so powerfully and naturally that they look as if they want to speak to the beholders’), Houbraken 1718-21, I, p. 92. Houbraken’s reference to Delft is probably a mistake, he meant Haarlem; cf. the reference in Ampzing 1628, p. 371: ‘Daer is van Franz Hals een groot stuck schilderije van enige Bevelhebbers der Schutterije in den ouden Doelen ofte Kluyveniers, seer stout naer ’t leven gehandeld.’ (‘There is a large painting by Franz Hals of some Officers of the Civic Guard in the old Arquebusiers’ Headquarters, treated very well from life.’) This is probably the work, dated 1627, that still bears Hals’s signature (cat. no. 43). 26 The ideal woman ‘is always cheerful with everyone; not that she laughs too heartily and shows her teeth beyond what is proper, but laughs at them in a friendly fashion: she is also amusing with suitable jests that do not wrong anyone, but bring jollity and raise a smile ... her demeanour is always ready to laugh’ (‘is altijt by yder een vroolijk; niet dat zij te hartelyk lagt, en buyten fatsoen de tanden laat zien, maar de zelfde vriendelijk toelagt: zij is ook vermakelyk met bekwame klugjes, die niemant te kort spreken, maar kortswijl bijbrengen en wat lachen doen ... haar Aansigt staat altijt na’t lachen’). S. Eikelenberg after Pietro Aretino, quoted in Verberckmoes 2001, pp. 87-102, esp. 93; cf. Goedings 1986. Eikelenberg also wrote a manuscript of technical notes about painting, Aantekeningen over schilderkunst (1679-1704), Regional Archives, Alkmaar, MS nos. 390-394. 27 ‘Men verkrijgt somtijts nieuwe kracht … door met malkanderen te eeten, en ruimelijk te drinken, ja tot beschonkens worden toe: niet om ons in den Wijn te verdrenken, maer om de bekommernissen af te spoelen. Want den wijn verdrijft de bekommeringen, en beweegt den geest van onderen op; en gelijk zy eenige ziekten geneest, zoo verdrijft zy ook de droefheit’, Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 200. 28 Schiller 2006, pp. 272-273. ‘Kannenkijker’ literally means someone who sees the bottom of his tankard (a bit too often). Judith Leyster, Pekelharing, 1629 (detail of cat. no. 22) 26 27 foot work How Se ve ntee nth - Ce ntur y Painte rs Made T h e ir Me r r ym ak e rs Dan ce Mickaël Bouffard-Veilleux and Herman Roodenburg In 1707 the artist Gerard de Lairesse published his famous Groot Schilderboek, in which he brought together much of the knowledge of painting amassed by his own generation and the generations before it. Other artists, among them Karel van Mander and Samuel van Hoogstraten, had already trodden the same path. Like them, he urged upon young artists the importance of paying attention to what art historians usually describe in terms such as contrapposto, but Van Mander and his colleagues generally referred to as welstand (literally: standing well). They had to give the figures they depicted a certain elegance in their poses and their movements alike. Where De Lairesse parted company with his predecessors was that he focused above all on the social differences in welstand, and how a painter could make such distinctions visible. De Lairesse included a number of drawings by way of illustration (fig. 1). It is not befitting for a queen, for instance, to grasp a glass with her whole hand. She should hold it by the foot with three fingers. He also explained that a simple peasant eats bending forward, with his mouth suspended above his plate. And then, when he stands, he always has a bent back, while the weight of his body rests ‘on both legs with the toes in line, the knees slightly bent and the feet turned in’.1 Beside him we see a better educated peasant: his stance is more upright and he has shifted his weight on to one leg, which is also turned out slightly. The artist always had to take care, though, that such a figure remained recognizable as a peasant, and the same applied to portrayals of the elite: ‘If one has to put an office holder or fine citizen among them, he must be recognizable among them all by his well-bred gait and civil manners.’ A member of the upper class, like the woman in the centre opposite the two rustics, stood up straight with self-assurance and a measure of grace.2 De Lairesse had another practical tip: if a young artist did not have access to fashionable society, he had to look carefully all around him, in church, at the theatre or simply walking along the street. There he would be able to see enough elegant people who moved gracefully. Before his acceptance into such circles (which he mentions with pride), De Lairesse always had a sketchbook in his pocket. Painters like Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1610–1668), Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), Isaack van Ostade (1621–1649), Jan Steen (c. 1626–1679) and Adriaen van de Venne (1589–1662), as well as a later artist such as Cornelis Dusart (1660–1704), were only too happy to avail themselves of hints like this in their very popular scenes of village life. Their greatest exemplar was probably Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569). As he did, they always painted fig. 1 Gerard de Lairesse, Groot Schilderboek, 1707, Amsterdam Cornelis Dusart, Village Feast, 1684 (detail of cat. no. 9) 28 29 fig. 1 Gerard de Lairesse, Groot Schilderboek, 1707, Amsterdam their characters – all those drinking, dancing and even urinating peasants and their women – in bent, contorted positions. The revellers (for that is almost all we ever see) are usually bent over, their shoulders are hunched and they turn their heads in all directions – another ‘rustic’ habit. Steen’s The Fair at Warmond (c. 1676; cat. no. 8) is a case in point. Behind the squatting woman relieving herself at the edge of the stream, Steen has placed a more cultured group. The elegance of these figures – note their upright but relaxed stance, their slightly turned-out feet and their arms hanging loosely by their sides – is in sharp contrast to the bent peasants around them. Note, too, the basket seller beside the fashionably-dressed gentleman in brown. He stands foursquare, feet firmly planted on the ground, not gracefully disposed one in front of the other. Other artists, notably Dirck Hals (1591–1656), Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630) and David Vinckboons (1576–1629), preferred to focus on other merry companies, on al fresco parties with exquisitely dressed, mostly young people of the upper class. They are De Lairesse’s elegant people, dressed in magnificent clothes, often the latest fashion, and unmistakably well-bred. Whether they sit, stand or dance, they radiate elegance. They stand upright with poise, they do not twist their heads in all directions, and heaven forbid that they should ever lean their elbows on the table or bend double with their chins virtually in their plates. It is only love or drink that may sometimes relax them a trifle too much. All these painterly codes were well known, particularly by the buyers of works like these (and they were certainly not the villagers depicted in them). They were so familiar, in fact, that comic painters like Steen could really go to town with them. The art historian Mariët Westermann, for instance, pointed out how Steen would sometimes give the seductresses in his paintings – the anything but respectable women – the most refined gestures. It is they who hold a wineglass genteelly by the foot. Other artists, like Pieter de Hooch and Frans van Mieris, also played with the codes. It was all part of the fun. There have been publications before about the gestures and poses in all these paintings.3 In the present essay we should like to look first and foremost at all the movement – at the dancing or, more precisely, at the feet – the ‘footwork’ captured in paint. How did these seventeenth-century artists succeed in reflecting the social distinctions even in the dance steps of the rustics and the gentry? And did they subvert the codes here, too? Like history painting, with its figures from the Bible and Classical mythology, genre painting was all about movement. How does 30 Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, c. 1676 (detail of cat. no. 8) Adriaen van Ostade, The Dancing Couple, c. 1635 (detail of cat. no. 2) an artist make his characters move in the right way? And, perhaps most difficult of all, how does he convey a dancing body in a medium that is by definition unmoving, that can only freeze motion? Painters have been exploring different solutions since Antiquity. They have often chosen that specific moment when the body is no longer in balance, when the dancer has already lifted one leg. The viewer feels that the body is moving because the law of gravity dictates that this unstable position must flow into a different position. This is why countless painters have favoured precisely this step – with the moving body supported on one foot – out of all the real and imaginary dance steps there might be. Here again, Bruegel’s work was probably a major influence. In his Peasant Dance of 1568 (fig. 2), for instance, the dancing men have flung their legs up with abandon. In both cases the body tips forward and one of the two is dancing with his back bent. The lifted knee forms a right angle, as does the ankle, while the toe points straight forward. Adriaen van Ostade’s Dancing Couple of 1635 (cat. no. 2) is another typical example. It is hard to tell whether the peasants really did dance like this or if Bruegel and Van Ostade simply wanted to create an impression. We do not have any descriptions that can enlighten us in the same way as the dancing instructions written for the upper classes, in which the dances are often explained in considerable detail. Towards the end of the century, for instance in a Village Feast painted by Dusart in 1684, the rustic dancer is still in evidence (cat. no. 9). He is also often present in the work of David Teniers fig. 2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Dance, 1568, oil on panel, 114 x 164 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (detail) 31 the Younger (1610–1690). In Vinckboons (cat. no. 1) he sometimes holds a hat or cap in one hand. Was that a new element in the dance or just a painterly invention? Yet again, the sources are of no help. Thanks to a number of treatises on dance published in the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, we are much better informed about the dances of the elite. Nevertheless we must be careful if we want to identify a particular dance or specific dance step in a painting on the basis of these manuals. Different interpretations are often possible. This applies, for example, to two al fresco gatherings that Vinckboons painted around 1610. In these works we see a well-bred young man dancing with one foot raised (cat. no. 10). Is this an actual dance? In any event we find a similar step in Le Gratie d’Amore (1602), a dance manual written by the Italian dancer and choreographer Cesare Negri (c. 1535–c. 1605; fig. 3). But we can also find the step before this, in the manual Orchesographie (1589) by the Frenchman Thoinot d’Arbeau (1519–1595), where it is called grève or pied en l’air (fig. 4) and used in the galliard and other dances. Vinckboons’s well-bred young ladies, meanwhile, hold a handkerchief in one hand as they dance, as we see in two other Italian handbooks of dance, Il Ballarino (1581) and Nobilità di Dame (1600), by Fabritio Caroso (1526/35–1605/20; fig. 5). The costumes worn by these women, particularly their collars, look very like the ones in the latter work. In the first decades of the seventeenth century, dance was developing rapidly: dancers turned their feet out more and more often, and when one leg was lifted, the toes were pointed and the instep was arched. We see this in Vinckboons but not yet in Caroso, where the dancer does not point his toes, or in D’Arbeau, where the feet remain parallel during the dance. It would seem that Vinckboons was very familiar with the latest innovations in the dances of the elite. This would have made his paintings controversial among the clergy of the time. Constantijn Huygens’s father, for instance, was reprimanded by his friend, the Amsterdam minister Werner Helmichius, because he had given his sons Constantijn and Christiaan dancing lessons. Dancing was evidently still a contentious matter. Huygens defended himself by pointing out that he had simply wanted to teach the boys, then 14 and 15, an upright, graceful carriage. And this, indeed, was one of the aims of all dancing lessons. 4 At the same time, in contrast to the new, ‘elevated’ style, the bent ankle and the parallel feet were increasingly used as typical of the peasant dance and the commedia dell’arte. When we consult the different sources available to the historian of dance – as well Thoinot d’Arbeau, Orchesographie, 1589, Langres fig. 5 Fabritio Caroso, Nobilità di Dame, 1600, Venice David Vinckboons, Elegant Company in an Ornamental Garden, c. 1610 (detail of cat. no. 10) fig. 3 32 fig. 4 Cesare Negri, Le Gratie d’Amore, 1602, Milan 33 as the dance manuals and the paintings and drawings, there are also surviving choreographic notes and sketches of ballet costumes – we find that this striking social distinction in footwork continues until around 1800. In precisely the period when Vinckboons was painting his companies in the open air, French dancing masters working in their own country and at the English court developed a dance style of unprecedented perfection – at least, that was what they themselves thought. This new style, anticipating the innovations under Louis XIV, was codified in François de Lauze’s Apologie de la danse (1623) and before that in the Louange de la danse (1619, largely copied from an earlier version of the Apologie) by Barthélémy de Montagut, dancing master to the Duke of Buckingham. In her enlightening introduction to the recent reissue of Montagut, the English literary historian Barbara Ravelhofer lists the four most important innovations about which De Lauze writes.5 The first was the matter of turning out the toes. De Lauze advised dancing masters to begin by teaching their pupils to walk with the point of the foot turned out.6 This would make them more nimble when dancing and, above all, give them a more selfassured deportment with which to join or receive any company with grace.7 What mattered to the Huygens family and, in fact, to all well-to-do families in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century was to present oneself with elegance, in the dance and beyond it. Dirck Hals’s Company Making Music (1633; cat. no. 19) shows the two most usual positions, at least in the iconography. The man in the foreground has his feet positioned at an angle of ninety degrees, with the heel of the right foot placed in front of the ankle of the left. There is space between the feet, as we also see in the positions for fencing at the time, which developed equally rapidly. 8 The second man, standing obliquely behind the first, has adopted the other position. His feet are so close together that they appear to touch. What held true of these gentlemen in company applied even more when it came to dancing. What was important, said De Lauze, was that the point of the foot, whether it was raised or resting on the floor, should be turned out.9 Vinckboons and other painters painted their gentlemen in this way. A second innovation was that at the commencement of the dance, the man would first bend his knees in a plié and then rise on to his toes. We see this in various dance scenes by the Flemish painter Hieronymus Janssens (1624–1693; fig. 6) and in Molenaer’s Marriage of Willem van Loon and Margaretha Bas (1637), where the man dancing in the background is doing just this: accurate in terms of the choreography, but less successful as a rendition of movement. The break with earlier Renaissance choreography was widened by a third innovation in which the arms were permitted to move, and their movement was harmonized with the steps of the dance. In the Italian and French Renaissance styles, the arms hung by the sides, but in De Lauze and hence in Vinckboons, too, the arms accompany the footwork. The fourth striking innovation was the removal of the hat during the bow before the courante. Hat in hand, the man had to bow his head and upper body slightly, kissing his own hand before taking the woman’s.10 According to Ravelhofer, the origins of this gesture, depicted in Van de Velde’s Garden Party before a Palace (fig. 7), go back to at least 1593, to an Italian convention. The gesture is also depicted in other Flemish and North Netherlandish paintings. The Flemish artist Louis de Caullery (c. 1580–1621) used it repeatedly. But as a print by Jacques Callot (1592–1635) suggests, it was also regarded as a cultivated gesture in everyday life, not just in the dance (fig. 8). There are a number of interesting depictions of the court ballets in which Louis XIV himself took part in the 1650s. We see the innovations introduced by De Lauze: the out-turned feet in the character of Ris (laughter), performed by one of the professional dancers at the court, in the Ballet royal de la nuit (1653; fig. 9) and, in the same ballet, an unidentified character using his arm in the dance. We find the same moving arm in Janssens’s Ball on the Terrace of a Palace. Although a degree of caution is called for, it would appear that Vinckboons’s figures anticipate the dances we encounter at the French court some decades later. If this conclusion is correct, we can say that they picture the prototype of the contretemps ballonné or the demi-contretemps – steps that remained popular until well into the eighteenth century. Finally, let us look again at paintings of masquerades in which the masked dancers show off the same graceful steps. Pictures like these were produced primarily in Amsterdam by, among others, Pieter Codde (1599–1678), Willem Duyster (1599–1635) and Pieter Quast (1605/6–1647).11 They were probably of wedding celebrations. The masked men were known as mummers or maskers. In 1633 the poet and Bailiff of Muiden Pieter Cornelisz Hooft (1581–1647) associated masquerades with the wedding festivities of his youth.12 Hooft was the son of the Amsterdam burgomaster Cornelis Pietersz Hooft (1547–1626). And it is certainly true that at the end of the sixteenth century small groups of mummers (mommers or mombers) would burst into wedding celebrations, for example those of Paulus Vrancken van Heemskerk and the burgomaster’s daughter Anna Cant. As Reynier Cant, the father fig. 7 Esaias van de Velde, Garden Party before a Palace, 1624 (detail), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (detail) fig. 8 Jacques Callot, La Noblesse, 1624, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris Dirck Hals, Company Making Music in an Interior, 1633 (detail of cat. no. 19) fig. 6 34 Hieronymus Janssens, Ball on the Terrace of a Palace, 1659, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille (detail) 35 of the bride, had to explain to the Amsterdam church council, the mummers had descended on the party uninvited (as was always the case). Music had been played and there was dancing – all of which he had forbidden.13 The mummers were clearly controversial, although it is not clear what annoyed the church council most: the disguises, the dancing or the music-making, all three in evidence in the paintings by Codde (cat. no. 23), Duyster and Quast. That the masked figures were acquaintances or at least members of the same social group is clear from the shoes Duyster gave them. The foot of the dancing mummer is turned out, the toe is pointed and the knee is slightly bent (fig. 10). Mumming was probably popular because, like all masquerades, it made it possible to subvert the conventions. The elite in the Republic often owned a translation or edition of the Libro del cortegiano, published in 1528 by the Italian courtier Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529).14 One of the characters, Messer Federico Fregoso, has some particularly interesting things to say. He tells us that: There are various other kinds of recreation, such as dancing, that can be enjoyed in public and in private. And I consider that the courtier should take great care over this; for when he is dancing in front of a crowd and along with many others it is fitting, or so I think, that he should maintain a certain dignity, though tempered by the lightness and delicate grace of his movements. Messer Federico goes on to explain that when the courtier dances in public he must not venture to display footwork that is too fast unless he is in disguise. Then it is permissible. After all, ‘masquerading carries with it a certain licence and liberty, and this, among other things, enables the courtier to choose the role at which he feels himself best’. He must, though, always remain recognizable – that was the game. A young man could, for instance, play a greybeard, but he should wear loose garments ‘so as to be able to show his agility’. A knight might likewise play a country shepherd, but riding a beautiful horse. In the same way, a prince could play one of his inferiors, while remaining identifiable to the onlookers.15 Let us also look at a painting in which an opulently-dressed dancer does not so much subvert the codes for his own ends (he is not masked) as dim-wittedly shatter them to the amusement of the viewer. We have already seen how Vinckboons, as De Lairesse 36 fig. 9 Anonymous, Ris in the Ballet royal de la nuit, 1653, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris fig. 10 Willem Duyster, Shrove Tuesday Merrymakers Dancing in an Interior, c. 1628, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (detail) later recorded, had a keen eye for body language of all kinds, for the precise social differences in carriage and gesture. He reveals it again in his Village Fair (c. 1608; cat. no. 1). In the centre foreground we see a disorderly peasant dance in which every man and woman has only one foot on the ground. It is a dance like the ones repeatedly portrayed in the Northern and Southern Netherlands ever since Bruegel; the backs are curved, the knees are bent and the feet are parallel. Another group, elegantly dressed, stands just behind them. They hold themselves self-confidently, standing tall, feet turned out and hands resting on a sword or gracefully on hip. One of their number, however, recognizable by his expensive clothes and his sword, has allowed himself to be swept up into the dance, leg raised behind him, head bowed and shoulders hunched. And this in public! We can tell from the appalled expressions of the couple behind him that this was a real faux pas. Their jaws have dropped and their arms, too, convey dismay. Castiglione was quite clear on the subject. According to Count Lodovico da Canossa, another character in his book, ‘it would be unbecoming for a gentleman to honour by his personal appearance some country show, where the spectators and participants were common people’. To which the young signor Gasparo Pallavicino replied that in Lombardy, where he came from, the custom was precisely the opposite: ‘Many of our young gentlemen are to be found, on holidays, dancing all day in the open air with the peasants, and taking part with them in sports such as throwing the bar, wrestling, running and jumping.’16 The dispute was then settled by Messer Federico: one might dance peasant dances, but only when disguised – and Vinckboons’s man was not. And a final example: in Jan Steen’s Dancing Couple (cat. no. 5), we see a different inversion of social conventions. Here it is a peasant, the dancing man in the centre, who forgets his place. He looks utterly rustic, with one leg lifted and his hat in his hand. We saw just such a peasant in Vinckboons’s Village Fair. But in Steen’s Dancing Couple there seems to be more going on. The man’s foot is turned out just that bit more elegantly. His pose is very like that of the character in the Ballet royal de la nuit: the feet are turned out, the upper body tips forward, the head is tilted back. Intriguingly, there is an almost identical, but reversed Dancing Couple in the National Gallery in Washington. Infrared research has shown that Steen exchanged the cap in the hand we see in the painting in the exhibition for a more fantastical hat with feathers on the dancer’s head.17 In the same way he exaggerated the shirt collar. The dancer’s shoes look more like those of the upper classes or the mummers, while Willem Duyster’s mummers wear the same plumed hats and the same, overlarge clothes as David Vinckboons, Village Fair, c. 1608 (detail of cat. no. 1) 37 Steen’s peasant. The open fly (that too!) is immediately reminiscent of the mummers by Pieter Codde (see Merry Company with Masked Dancers, 1636; cat. no. 23). It would appear that the version in Washington was originally identical to the one in the exhibition, but Steen added elements to make the figure appear more grotesque. Perhaps he wanted to convey more explicitly through the costume what the posture had already suggested – that the peasant was trying in vain to ‘elevate’ his dancing style. Or was he perhaps dressed up, was he just dancing the peasant? That, too, is possible. We have seen how capturing festivities and the moving figures associated with them was a formidable challenge and how a few talented painters like Vinckboons and Steen added to that a double meaning by playing with the prevailing conventions. Deportment and ways of moving were, in short, essential in communicating social status, both in everyday life and in art. Dance occupied a position all its own in this dynamic. On the one hand there was a growing interest in dance among the upper classes during the Golden Age; on the other many of the clergy castigated what they saw as a sinful pastime, and so the elite, above all, had to be careful not to abandon themselves to dancing in public. The rules of etiquette were also in play here. Peasants could dance wildly, but wealthy ladies and gentlemen had to avoid too much fancy footwork in public, unless they went in disguise. And it was here that the comic artists could let their hair down. 1 ‘op beide de beenen die met de toonen eevenwydich van malkander zyn, de knien wat geboogen en de voeten binnewaards’, De Lairesse 1707, pp. 54-55. 2 ‘dat indien men een amptman of fraay borger daar onder moest plaatzen, hy aan zijn welgemanierde beweging en burgerlyke zeden, onder hen alle gekend diende te worden’, De Lairesse 1707, pp. 58-59. 3 See e.g. Roodenburg 1991; Spicer 1991; Westermann 1997. 4 Roodenburg 2004, p. 86; on the seventeenth-century clergy and their objection to dance see Naerebout 1990. 5 Ravelhofer 2000, pp. 30ff. 6 ‘la pointe des pieds ouverte’. 7 ‘un maintien plus asseuré pour aborder, ou recevoir de bonne grace quelque compagnie’, De Lauze 1623, p. 27. 8 See Roodenburg 2004, pp. 92-102. 9 ‘la pointe tant du pied qui sera en l’air que de celui qui sera à terre [seront] ouvertes’, De Lauze 1623, p. 29. 10 ‘... baissant un peu la teste avec le corps [il] faut baiser [sa] main pour prendre celle de la femme’. De Lauze 1623, p. 31. 11 Kolfin 2005, p. 110. 12 ‘gelijk eertijds de mommen op onse bruiloften plagten te doen’, Hooft ed. 1738, p. 309; this comes in a letter to Maria Tesselschade, born in 1594. 13 Roodenburg 1990, p. 326; there was a second, almost identical case in 1591. 14 For the reception of Castiglione in the Republic, see Roodenburg 2004, pp. 35-76; Roodenburg 2010. 15 Castiglione ed. 1976, pp. 118-119. 16 Castiglione ed. 1976, p. 100. 17 Wheelock 1996, pp. 364-369. Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple, c. 1662 (detail of cat. no. 5) 38 39 mode, mummery and masquer ade Dressin g Up in th e Gol de n Age Marieke de Winkel At the end of the Golden Age, the clergyman Jacobus Koelman condemned the unabating popularity of the widespread culture of revelry of his day: Is it not lamentable in the extreme that there are still so many Reformed Christians who so enthusiastically keep Kermis, or go to the Kermis? That the abominable Bacchus festival of Shrove Tuesday eve is still celebrated, without concern, in our homes, even in the very greatest, and in public hospitals and orphanages? That the invention of St Nicholas, that Popish Feast, is still of such consequence here; and is celebrated more than in the midst of the Papacy? What a disgrace it is to us and to the Reformation . . . that we cling so to the Popish high days.1 Koelman (1632–1695) was, admittedly, regarded as a fundamentalist even in his own circle – he was regularly dismissed from his post – but he was by no means alone in his view that true believers should shun revelries, drink, theatrical performances and other ‘lewd and improper dancing’.2 Diametrically opposed to this was the view of the Leiden student Johannes van Heemskerck (1597–1656), who might be considered as something of a ‘hands-on’ expert when, in 1621, he urged young bachelors and spinsters to attend as many festivities and weddings as possible, not just to meet potential marriage partners, but simply to have fun.3 He advised the young people of Amsterdam to hone their skills at both dancing and playing cards. Sunday, he said, was a good day for flirting (particularly in church!) because, ‘in general girls wear their finest clothes, and prettily adorn their well-turned limbs’. Above all, though, going to the theatre was an ideal way of meeting people of one’s own age. ‘For there you can see and have your pick of many . . . one sees maidens invited by this person or that showing off their finery at such plays. They come to see, and to be seen.’4 To Van Heemskerck, the young people’s elegant clothes were an expression of a new luxury and ‘good breeding’ that had taken root among the plainly-dressed, blunt Hollanders of the past. Whereas he felt that attracting the attention of a potential marriage partner by wearing opulent, alluring clothes was quite legitimate, in the eyes of the clergy flaunting oneself like this was an abomination. Koelman ranted about ‘whores’ garments, unnatural and licentious clothing in which women even appear on the stage’ – most probably referring to elaborate ornamentation and provocative décolletages.5 In 1620 a kindred spirit, the Reverend Willem Teellinck (1579–1629), condemned the habits of the young when they were courting – particularly their clothes. Girls who displayed ‘their breasts more or less bare’ created, he wrote, a devilish trap into which ‘foolish and heedless young men might fall’.6 Although the exposed décolletage caused a great deal of controversy in sermons and satires around 1620, it is notably absent in the paintings of gallant companies in this period. Perhaps the most conspicuous exceptions are the ladies in the company painted by Buytewech in 1616–1618 (cat. no. 12), whose startlingly low-cut necklines are framed by upstanding French collars, perhaps a fashion that was worn at court. A second aspect that upset Teellinck was the highly colourful nature of young people’s clothes: those who decked themselves out ‘colourful as a magpie’ in blue, green, yellow or red clearly revealed that they had a ‘vain and frivolous heart: these colours are just Satan’s manoeuvres to enflame the passions in indecent desire’.7 And although he concedes that it is proper for princes and courtiers to dress so colourfully, this certainly does not apply to the common citizens, who would do better to take as their example the soberly clad regents! Van Heemskerck also advises young girls to wear black, but for a very different reason: ‘Black sets off the white’ – of the complexion. 8 His advice that the petticoat should be the same colour as the sleeves reveals great sophistication. The middle-class girls in the merry company painted by Isaac Elias in 1629 (cat. no. 15) seem to have taken this advice to heart. They wear a black bouwen or overgown (a close-fitting bodice with an attached skirt that marked out the spinster) in combination with sleeves and a petticoat in the same colour.9 The colours and styles of the clothes in this painting are very different from those in the portraits of Dutch burghers. Nevertheless, written sources confirm that clothes like this really were worn. Peasants The festive dress of the peasants was likewise extremely colourful, but also very old-fashioned. At least this is how it is always described in the many kermis poems from Bredero’s Boerengeselschap of 1616 onwards. In it, young men ‘still dress in the old fashion: in red in white in green, in grey in dun in purple in blue’.10 It is striking that the types described in poems like these dovetail so perfectly with the figures in the equally popular pictures of country fairs (see cat. nos. 1 and 8) of this time. The bright colours of festive dress and the preference for red, blue and purple are found in both visual and written sources (fig. 1). The festive clothes worn by young peasants are described at length in Jacobus Rotgans’s Peasant Kermis of 1708. Girls showed Willem Buytewech, Banquet in the Open Air, c. 1615 (detail of cat. no. 12) 40 41 off in pristine white caps and gold hairpins, and ‘the chains of coral shone around their rosy necks, to cut even more of a dash’.11 A bunch of keys and a silver chatelaine swung from a chain at their sides. Under the blue bodice ‘glowed a skirt, cut from scarlet cloth, which may not have seen sun or moonlight in a year, but, saved for this festival, lay thus long forgotten in Grietje Goris’s chest’.12 With this they wore in lieu of mules half-worn-out clogs and ‘white gloves covered their ruddy arms, half cooked, burnt by the sun’.13 The young men were turned out in breeches laced up with ribbons. They had two silver buttons on their shirts, over which they wore a waistcoat or vest with trimmings (braid) which they left half open. Their doublets did not fit and their hats were tilted on their heads. They wore sashes around their waists as a special kermis favour. This rustic finery was undoubtedly a source of great amusement to town dwellers. Many of the garments were archaic (the doublet, the hat and the chain with silver accessories had already been out of fashion for 50 years or more) and they were apparently only fetched out of the chest once a year. The fact that some of these items – such as the girls’ laced bodices and the young men’s vests – were worn as outer garments, whereas they were underclothes in the town, must have contributed considerably to the comic effect (as we see in the centre of Jan Steen’s Kermis in Warmond, c. 1676; cat. no. 8). So, too, must the length of the clothes: for practical reasons peasant women (particularly those in Waterland) wore their skirts shorter, while the men wore their trousers longer than the townsfolk (Cornelis Dusart’s Village Feast; cat. no. 9). The women’s short skirts, in particular, captured the attention of the sophisticated townies, to the extent that they were explicitly mentioned by Constantijn Huygens in his famous 1653 comedy Trijntje Cornelis. It follows the fortunes of the newlymarried Trijntje Cornelis of Zaandam, dressed to the nines for a visit to Antwerp: ‘Thus she arranges her cap and hair, as if it was carnival at home: the bridal outfit is put on.’14 This bridal outfit consists of her best silk bodice with two best worsted petticoats, silk stockings and an apron. Evidently Trijn’s wedding clothes served her for ‘best’ for many years thereafter – worn for the kermis and other high days and holidays. It was not only among rural women that it was customary for the wedding dress to do duty for special occasions for a long time afterwards. Among the middle classes in towns, the bride’s outfit was usually made up of a black over-dress, the vlieger, with a finely embroidered stomacher and a skirt. In the first three decades of the century the vlieger was only worn by married women, and so it fig. 1 Adriaen van de Venne, Dancing Peasants, c. 1626, drawing from his Album, British Museum, London David Vinckboons, Village Fair, c. 1608 (detail of cat. no. 1) became the trademark of the urban matron.15 In a 1622 farce, two Amsterdam neighbours sum up the trousseau of the bride Martijntje: first she has a vlieger made of grosgrain (half silk, half wool) with fine legaturen (brocatelle) facings to wear at Easter, Whitsun and Christmas. Then she has another cloth vlieger altered from her very best bouwen, to which she has had a pair of borato (halfsilk) facings attached for Sundays. She also has two jackets: one made of honschoten (a light woollen fabric) for weekdays and another of verset (coarse velvet), for ‘saint’s days’ (holidays during the week).16 This list reveals the hierarchy not just of the various garments and fabrics, but of the high days and holidays, too. Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, c. 1676 (detail of cat. no. 8) Bridal Dress The outfits worn for weddings by brides in the country and in the town were essentially their best dresses, sometimes with a flower corsage but always with a special bridal crown or bruidskroontje (see cat. nos. 3 and 4). A rare surviving example, worn by Brigitta Stuyling in 1667, is made from silver wire, covered with spangles, flowers and tiny glass babies (fig. 2). Ladies in the very highest circles wore a similar headdress, but theirs would be adorned with diamonds, pearls and other costly materials. At her wedding to the Count of Brederode in The Hague in 1638, Countess Louise Christine of Solms (the sister of Amalia of Solms, wife of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange), wore ‘on the back of her head a coronet of pearls and precious stones estimated at a value of a hundred thousand écus’ (equivalent in today’s currency to approximately five million euros).17 While peasant brides wore their coloured clothes and town brides wore black, in the Golden Age only noble brides were privileged to marry in a dress of white cloth of silver with a train.18 Like today’s wedding dresses, this was a special gown that was only worn on the wedding day. Isaac Elias, Celebrating Company, 1629 (detail of cat. no. 15) 42 43 Left: Jan Miense Molenaer, Peasant Wedding, 1652 (detail of cat. no. 3) Right: Jan Steen, The Village Wedding, 1653 (detail of cat. no. 4) fig. 2 44 Bridal crown worn by Brigitta Stuyling, 1667, Amsterdam Museum, loan from the Backer Foundation, Amsterdam Mummeries The many images and poems reveal both mockery and a degree of fascination with the peasants’ festivities on the part of town dwellers. We see this, for instance, in Rotgans’s admission that he dressed up in rustic clothes so as to be able to immerse himself wholly in the revelries that he wanted to describe from an insider’s perspective.19 At one point Rotgans recognizes a wildly dancing peasant girl as the bailiff’s daughter in peasant garb. The pair act as though they do not know each other. By dressing up in rustic clothes they can take part incognito in the often rowdy and uninhibited celebrations, something that would have been impossible in their everyday clothes. Similar considerations were probably also the reason for the unabating popularity of the fancy-dress parties at Shrovetide. The danger of this ‘mumming’, as it was known, was all too keenly felt, to judge by the fire-and-brimstone sermons of the clergy and the many bans imposed by the authorities: masks and disguises gave an anonymity which, when combined with drunkenness and general high spirits, could easily lead to risky and undesirable excesses, sexual and otherwise. There were similar warnings in the Nieuwen ieucht spieghel of 1617 (fig. 3). The illustration shows a group of Shrovetide merrymakers wearing disguises and masks entering a room where a couple are playing tric-trac. The caption reads: ‘Loose whores with bold villains need mummery and dishonest play.’20 Why does someone ‘disfigure’ his God-given face ‘with the trappings of mummery’; what pleasure can he take in such ugliness except that he wants to have his way with a girl anonymously and dishonourably and make a whore of her? All the mummers in the print are masked. The man in the centre with his costume of leaves or hair resembles a wild man. Beside him are a couple who, in view of his pantaloons and her typical hairstyle with two little horns, can be identified as Venetians. Shrove Tuesday was not the only occasion to involve mummery – it was also an established part of wedding celebrations. In the same year, 1617, in his comedy Warenar, P.C. Hooft described a certain Ritsert (rits means lecherous), who raped a middle-class girl. His excuse was that he had been to a wedding with a gang of friends and got very drunk: ‘Grietje Goosses was the bride, so I was in disguise: I had a Polish coat on, a bow, and a quiver full of arrows, a sabre at my side, and a cock’s feather in my hat . . .’21 Nobody could recognize him dressed like that, and so it was easy for him to do the deed. In most pictures of mummers and Shrovetide celebrations, the usual form of dress is long trousers or pantaloons. In Judith Leyster’s painting of Merrymakers at Shrovetide (fig. 4), for instance, fig. 3 Crispijn de Passe, mummers in Nieuwen ieucht spieghel, 1617 two figures are dressed in a sort of loose tunic over long, straight trousers, and a beret with a feather in the same colour. Long trousers were not normally worn in the seventeenth century. They were traditionally a practical garment, usually worn by the very lowest classes. Travellers were often surprised to see the long trousers worn by the Venetian proletariat. In Italy the Venetians had the nickname of Pantaloni (after San Pantaleon or Pantalon, a very popular saint there) and the name Pantaloon became synonymous both with the garment and with the well-known character in the commedia dell’arte who represents the Venetian. The pantaloons worn by Leyster’s unmasked Shrovetide merrymakers have little in common, however, with the traditional costume of this Pantaloon – a bent old man who always wears a mask with spectacles and a beard, and has a full, black coat over his long, tight trousers. 45 aristocracy themselves and designed by artists like Jean Berain and Inigo Jones.26 With the arrival of the Stuart princesses Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia) and Mary, the bride of the future Stadholder William II, similar ‘ballets’ were performed at the Dutch court. When the 10-year-old Princess Mary came to the Netherlands in 1642, her father-in-law Frederick Henry spared no expense and effort to stage a ‘grand ballet’, danced by the young bridegroom himself. His performance, however, according to the French and English who witnessed it, was no more than mediocre.27 The surviving descriptions of the celebrations for the wedding of Louise Christine of Solms in 1638 are far more detailed. The nobility held a tournament with various troops, opulently clad as ancient Batavians, Teutons and Romans.28 We can see what these costumes were like from a portrait of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, who was married to Frederick Henry’s eldest daughter. On the occasion of the marriage of his sister-in-law Albertina Agnes to the Frisian stadholder in 1652, he hosted and organized extensive festivities in Cleves. On 6 May there was a parade of troops of noblemen. He himself was dressed as Scipio, the Roman general (fig. 6).29 Another notable went as Hannibal, while the Count of Waldeck (blacked up for the occasion) was the chief of the Indians. This was a self-evident choice, because the Stadholder of Cleves, Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (nicknamed the Brazilian), had been Governor-General of Dutch Brazil until 1644 and was fascinated by the country. In 1659, at the wedding of Henriette Catharina of Orange in Groningen, he had his attendants perform a dance ‘dressed as Indians’.30 And it was not only the men who dressed up as Indians, as we see in Hanneman’s portrait of Princess Mary (cat. no. 26). Save for the lining, the cloak looks so authentically South American that it seems likely that Johan Maurits brought it back with him from Brazil and lent it for the small-scale masquerades at the court in The Hague. As well as presenting Indians and brave heroes of Antiquity, The Hague performances were also known for poking fun at the ordinary Dutch citizens. In 1638, we are told, the procession for Louise Christine of Solms’s wedding included a real live dromedary dressed as a bourgeois Dutchwoman, complete with ruff and other accessories.31 The same witness noted disapprovingly that the haughty and ill-tempered young Princess Mary was not loved by the people, because she constantly spoke disparagingly about Dutch housewives, particularly their clothes, hairstyles and customs.32 She would probably have been amused by the subject chosen for a ballet performed for her in 1655, entitled Ballet de la Carmesse de La Haye.33 It featured a number of comic types Mummers also wear long trousers in paintings by Willem Duyster and Pieter Codde (fig. 5; cat. no. 23). Some wear them in combination with a sort of tunic, but in many cases it is a tightfitting suit with the trousers and an attached top. In the Netherlands an outfit like this was known at the time as a Hansop, after a comic character that was very popular for a long time. He was Jean Potage (‘Jack Soup’), a clown closely related to Hans Beuling or Hans Worst.22 The mummers in Duyster’s and Codde’s paintings do wear masks. It is striking that most masks of this period seem to be red or brown, perhaps because they were made of leather.23 These masks and the hansops were hired for the occasion. Although this practice must have been widespread, there are few tangible sources that provide any information about it. The inventory of one Margaretha van Beek is a rare exception. In July 1706 she had a stock of ‘masquerade costumes’, probably for hire: 3 [embroidered] ditto Polish men’s coats 2 women’s cymars [robes] 5 women’s bodices, embroidered and other 3 women’s trains 6 ditto peasant costumes 3 children’s peasant costumes 6 suits of Scaramouche costumes with hats 6 pairs of Harlequin costumes 2 pairs of peasant women’s costumes with caps A ditto child’s costume.24 This list is a good summary of the favourite disguises among the citizens of Amsterdam: peasants, foreigners (Poles), ladies and comical characters from the commedia dell’arte. Masquerade Masquerades had already had a long tradition in noble circles. But unlike the burghers, the aristocracy had the valuable costumes that they would wear just once or twice made especially for them – often at huge expense. Early evidence of this can be found in the 1567 inventory of Vianen Castle. As well as ‘seventeen “faux visages”’, in other words masks, Count Hendrik van Brederode owned four costly ‘mummers’ costumes of red and white silk, trimmed with cloth of gold’.25 In comparison with foreign courts, the Dutch court’s culture of celebrations was relatively modest. The English and French courts went to immense expense organizing ‘masques’ – allegorical spectacles to glorify the monarch that were danced and sung by the young members of the 46 fig. 4 Judith Leyster, Merrymakers at Shrovetide, private collection fig. 5 Willem Duyster, Shrovetide Merrymakers Dancing in an Interior, c. 1628, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (detail) Pieter Codde, Merry Company with Masked Dancers, 1636 (detail of cat. no. 23) 47 found at the kermis in The Hague who came forward to address the princess. Evidently the kermis had its attractions for all social classes at the time. It is striking that the festive dress of the various classes described in the seventeenth-century literature and in archive sources can be identified so readily in the paintings – for the nobility in their portraits in masquerade costumes and for the bourgeoisie and peasant class in genre painting. It is significant to the iconography of the pictures of these ‘gallant companies’ that in the majority of them the women are dressed in a bouwen and so are clearly identified as spinsters. And the strange hansops of the Shrove Tuesday merrymakers, which look at first sight as if they sprang from the imaginations of the artists, really were worn too. gekleed./ étoit habillé en Pantalon, en Harlequin’. Marin 1701, s.v. Hanssop. The term ‘hansop’ is still used in the Netherlands for a practical one-piece sleep suit for children. 23 See the widening of the concept of ‘masque’ in Marin 1701, ‘Masque, ou faux visage pour se déguiser. Grins, mom aangezigt. Un masque grotesque. Een koddige grins, een kuurig, drollig momaangezigt. … De gemaskerde of vermomde persoonen hebben veel vryheid. Sommes nous dans la Saison des masques? les masques courent ils les rues? Zyn wy in de tyd van de Vasten-avonds gekken? loopen de grinsdraagers, de hansoppen over straat?’ 24 3 [geborduurde] dito Poolse mans rocken; 2 vrouwe samaaren; 5 vrouwe leyve geborduurt en anders; 3 vrouwe sleepen; 6 dito boere klederen; 3 kinder boere kleeties; 6 pak Schooremoetsieskleere met mutsen; 6 paar Harlequins kleeren; 2 pak boerinne kleeren met mutsen; Een dito kinder kleetie’. Stadsarchief Amsterdam, notary I. Beukelaar, Notarial Archive 7063, July 1706, pp. 81-90, inventory of Margareta van Beek, wife of Jan Gerards Schröder, pp. 85-86. 25 ‘seventhien fauvisaigen’; ‘mommeclederen van root ende witte syde, mit goude laken geboort’. In De Navorscher no. 22 1873, pp. 331 and 241. 26 See Orgel/Strong 1973 and De la Gorce 1986. 27 Borkowski 1898, pp. 78-79: ‘pendant cet hiver ... on lui donna un grand ballet, où dansa le Prince et toutes les jeunes gens de la première qualité. Il parut fort magnifique pour de pays-là, mais non pas assez pour les Français et pour les Anglais hors les dèpenses qui tombaient à la charge du Prince; mais ce qui concernait les particuliers, ne brillait que médiocrement.’ 28 Becker 1998, pp. 209-253. 29 Description in Royal Archives, The Hague, no. A25 II 20 Willem Frederik. See also De Werd 1979, p. 348. 30 ‘M. le P. Maurice fust faire quelques entrée de Balet par ces valets, vestus a l’Indienne.’ According to an anonymous eye-witness account in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin. GStA PK BPH Rep. 35 No. U2, fols. 77-78. 31 Borkowski 1898, p. 43 : ‘Lui-même était monté sur un dromedaire vivant, coiffé comme les damoiselles bourgeoises de Hollande avec une de leurs frèzes et autres affiquets semblables.’ 32 Borkowski 1898, p. 76: ‘son humeur peu caressante, la coutume, qu’on avait à sa cour de railler d’une manière même assez grossière les bonnes Hollandaises sur leurs habits, sur leurs coiffures, sur leurs révérences et sur leurs discours faisaient que peu de gens s’en retournaient satisfaits d’auprès d’elle.’ 33 Akkerman/Sellin 2004. 1 ‘Is het niet ten hooghsten te beklagen, dat’er noch soo vele Gereformeerde Christenen gevonden worden, die soo geerne Kermis houden, of ter Kermis gaen? Dat het grouwelyke Bacchus-feest van de Vasten-avonden, noch in onse Huysgesinnen, selfs in de allergrootste, ook publyke Gast-huysen en Wees-huysen, sonder achterdenken onderhouden wordt? Dat den versierden St Nicolaes, en dat Paapsche Feest, by ons noch in sulken aensien is; en meer dan in het midden des Pausdoms gevierdt wordt? Wat een schande is het voor ons, en voor de Reformatie, … dat wy aen de Paepsche Hooghtyden soo vast blyven.’ Koelman 1682, p. 6 2 See also the essay by Tummers, pp. 8ff. 3 Van Heemskerck 1622 (foreword dates from 1621), pp. 7-8. 4 ‘de meysjes in ’t gemeen haer dan op ’t fraeyste kleden, en toyen netjes op haer wel-gemaeckte leden’. ‘Waer dat ghy hebben kond’t gesicht en keur van veelen … soo siet-men ’t Maeghde-rey (van dees’ of die ghebeden) Gepronckt en op-getoyt na sulcke spelen treden. Sy komen om te sien, en om gesien te zyn.’ 5 ‘Hoerenghewaedt, vreemde en lichtvaerdige kleedinge waer mede de Vrouwen selfs op het Tonneel verschijnen.’ 6 ‘hare borste veel of weynig bloot ten thoone stellen’; ‘dwase, ende onvoorsichtighe jonghelingen mochten comen te vallen’, Teellinck 1620, p. 39. 7 ‘ydel en lichtveerdig herte: dese Coleure zijn enckel aenritselen des Satans om de gemoederen te doen ontbranden in onkuysche begeerte.’ Teellinck 1620, p. 37. 8 ‘Op ’t swert steeckt ’t wit wel af.’ Van Heemskerck 1622, pp. 106-108. 9 For more detail see De Winkel 2007, pp. 67-68. 10 ‘gekleed nog op het oud fatsoen: in ’t rood in ’t wit in ’t groen, in ’t grijs in ’t grauw in ’t paars in ’t blauw’. 11 ‘de keten van koraalen, blonk om den rossen hals, om met meer zwier te praalen’. 12 ‘gloeide een rok, gesneên uit roodt scharlaken, die mooglyk in een jaar geen zon- of maanlicht zag, maar, tot dit feest gespaart, zo lang vergeeten lag in Grietje Goris kist’. 13 ‘De witte handtschoen dekt den purpren arm, half gaar, gebraden door de zon.’ 14 ‘soo schicktse muts en haer, Als of ’t thuijs kermis waer: ’t Bruijds pack wordt aengetrocken’. 15 See De Winkel 2007, pp. 67-68. 16 Hooft 1622, p. 39. 17 ‘Au derriere de sa teste elle portoit une petite Couronne de perles & de pierreries estimée à cent mille Escus’, in Anonymous 1638, pp. 1-2. 18 See De Winkel 1999. 19 As is observed in the essays by Weststeijn (p. 20ff) and Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg (p. 28ff); Van Mander also reported something of the kind about Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569), who with his patron, the German merchant Hans Franckert, ‘often went out with the peasants, to the kermis and to weddings, dressed in peasants’ clothes, and passed themselves off as peasants so as to better observe their dress and customs’ (‘dickwils buyten by den Boeren, ter Kermis, en ter Bruyloft, vercleedt in Boeren cleeren voor boeren uitgaven om zo hun kleding en gewoonten beter te observeren’),Van Mander 1604, fol. 233. 20 ‘Loose Hoeren met stoute Boeven, ’t Mommen en Tuysschen wel behoeven.’ 21 ‘Grietje Goosses was de Bruydt, daer zou ick veur mom gaen: ’k Had een Poolsche rock aen, een booch, en een koocker vol schuts, Een sabel op zy, een Haneveer op mijn muts…’ 22 In his dictionary of 1701, Pieter Marin gives the following synonyms in the entry for Hanssop: ‘Hanssop (Jean Potage), Hans-Beuling (Hans Wurst). Toneel-gek. Pantalon, Arlequin, Saltimbanque, Farceur, bouffon de Theatre. Hy was als een Hans-op fig. 6 Friedrich Wilhelm van Brandenburg dressed as Scipio, 1652, Museum Kurhaus, Cleves Adriaen Hanneman, Portrait of Mary Stuart with a Servant, c. 1664 (detail of cat. no. 26) 48 49 vill age festivals and fairs 52 gall ant companies 72 masquer ades and fancy dress celebr ations 94 celebr ations in a domestic set ting 110 street parties at night 126 rhetoricians’ celebr ations 132 festive portr aits 148 catalogue vill age festivals and fairs People flocked to fairs in the seventeenth century. Young and old, rich and poor dressed in their best clothes for the occasion. Fairs and peasant weddings had been popular subjects in painting since the late sixteenth century. They gave artists the chance to paint rustic traditions and behaviour, particularly the revellers’ lack of inhibition and their expressive body language. In the sixteenth century painters literally and figuratively kept their distance. Often, for example, they showed a bird’s-eye view of the festivities and left well-to-do citizens out of the picture. In the seventeenth century, wealthier townspeople do appear in paintings of village feasts and fairs. Their presence often provided humorous contrasts, as in the painting The Dancing Couple by Jan Steen (cat. no. 5), in which a man in peasant dress asks a lady from the town to dance. Artists also succeeded in capturing their figures with unprecedented fidelity, using subtle light and colour nuances. Increasingly, a low vantage point places the viewer at the height of the revellers, enhancing the suggestion that one could experience seventeenthcentury merriment and licentiousness at first hand. Philips Wouwerman, Village Festival with Herring-Pulling, c. 1652-53 (detail of cat. no. 7) dav id v inck boons Village Fair 1 The kermis or fair was an important occasion for all strata of society in the seventeenth century, and certainly in Amsterdam, where David Vinckboons lived. Even though ‘I scold her so that I foam at the mouth with rage, she does not obey,’ says the miller’s wife about her maid in Bredero’s farce, Klucht van de Meulenaer, written in 1613. ‘If I want her to do anything I have to promise her a kermis.’1 The Amsterdam kermis, which in terms of popularity was no match for the Valkenburg fair, attracted visitors from far and wide. Vinckboons’s composition shows many facets of the fairs of his time, but he also drew on the Flemish pictorial tradition of the fair, which dates back to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569; fig. 2 on p.31). Traditionally, kermis scenes focused on the licentiousness of the peasantry.2 Vinckboons’s painting shows a fairground bordered by houses and an inn against the background of a church, which reminds the viewer of the religious origin of the kermis, from time immemorial the celebration of the consecration of the church. Quacks peddle their wares, peasants fight with one another, and there are crowds around the stalls. A procession of rhetoricians, with a standard bearer, a drummer, a blazon carrier and all manner of figures in disguise, such as a devil and an angel, attracts a great deal of attention. Peasants, for the most part decked out with cockerel feathers (a well-known symbol of lust), amuse themselves eating and drinking outside the inn. One tankard of beer after another is emptied; a drunken peasant gropes under a woman’s skirt and causes a row. With some justification, surgeons enjoyed the fair season.3 In the left foreground a man throws up in the foliage assisted by his wife; another runs away from his angry wife and tries to jump into a boat. Vinckboons placed all these activities around a rambunctious scene of peasants dancing in a ring, observed from a distance by a group of well-to-do people. The time-honoured theme of Vinckboons’s Village Fair is obviously the moral decline among peasants and the rabble, seen from the satirical point of view of the urban bourgeoisie – Vinckboons’s buyers – for whom such works also contributed to the definition and confirmation of their own middle-class identity. But although the peasants are censured for their foolish behav- 1 ‘kijf ick dat ick schuymbeck’; ‘Wil ick wil [plezier] van heur hebben ick moeter ien kermis beloven.’ G.A. Bredero, Meulenaer, in Bredero/Daan 1971, p. 164, ll. 223-224. 2 Briels 1987, pp. 116-133. 3 Van Gils 1917, pp. 123-124. 4 Alpers 1972-73, esp. 54 pp. 171-174, fig. 8; Alpers 1975-76, esp. p. 129, fig. 5; Miedema 1977; Renger, in: Munich 1986, pp. 25-30, fig. 13. See also the essay by Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff. 5 ‘geheele steden, plaetsen ende dorpen ghelijck als in oproer vol gheraes iour, a well-to-do young man from the city has joined them in their round dance – to the horror of his companions. The painter uses this comic device to bring home to his audience the current decline in morals, and in so doing appears to be warning them. 4 In the seventeenth century the kermis was a particular thorn in the side of the Reformed church. In 1661, for example, the Reverend Wittewrongel complained that the fair had not even begun before people saw ‘entire towns and villages alike in tumult, full of noise and hullabaloo . . . vanity of vanities, dancing, jumping, gambling, playing dice, carousing and drunkenness . . . all kinds of foolishness and comedies.’5 In spite of this the church did not condemn the kermis as such, and its displeasure only occasionally led it to ban the fair outright – for instance in the disastrous year of 1672, when the Dutch War began.6 JH en ghetier . . . ydelheyt der ydelheden, danssen, springhen, tuysschen, dobbelen, brasseryen, dronkenschappen . . . allerhande guychelspelen ende comaediën.’ Wittewrongel 1661, II, p. 1061, quoted from Roodenburg 1990, p. 333. 6 Van Deursen 2010 (Mensen van klein vermogen), p. 133; Roodenburg 1990, p. 333. 1 David Vinckboons (Mechelen 1576 – Amsterdam before 12 January 1633) Village Fair, c. 1608 Oil on panel, 42.5 x 60.8 cm Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie im Neuen Schloß Schleißheim, Munich 55 a dr i a en va n osta de The Dancing Couple A group of peasants – six men and two women – amuse themselves in a barn with music, dancing, smoking and drinking. There is no obvious cause for celebration, but the mood seems high-spirited, particularly for the couple dancing. On the right a standing peasant drinks from a pasglas, which he has to drink down precisely to the next line with a single gulp. If he can’t manage it he has to try again. However there seems to be little interest in this game and the viewer’s attention is drawn first and foremost to the music and the dancing. The Dancing Couple is regarded as one of Van Ostade’s early masterpieces, and one in which he had already shown himself to be highly adept at ordonnance, or the arrangement of the composition, and above all the houding, or associated organization of space by means of colour, light and shade. The atmospheric three-dimensional effect is created by the clever chiaroscuro. Van Ostade must have taken a good look at the work of the young Rembrandt, whose subject matter, however, he did not adopt.1 Van Ostade must have loosely based his painting on a drawing now in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett. This study, generally regarded as one of Van Ostade’s first sheets and stylistically linked to study sheets by Adriaen Brouwer, likewise depicts an inn interior with dancing peasants.2 Although the composition is different, he copied the dancing peasant from the drawing in mirror image. The fiddler on his barrel is also recognizable. Van Ostade used the pose of the peasant woman dancing straddlelegged again in a sheet dated 1636 in Teylers Museum in Haarlem.3 According to the artists’ biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719), Van Ostade studied in Haarlem with Frans Hals (fig. 5 on p. 26; cat. no. 43), together with the slightly older Adriaen Brouwer (1605/06 –1638) from Oudenaarde in Flanders. If it was indeed Hals who introduced him to vulgar and jocular themes in Haarlem, little of his style can be recognized in Van Ostade’s work. It was Brouwer’s early peasant companies with their brown ochre tonality, the lighter accents of the clothing and their subject matter that were the examples for the young Van Ostade, whose work went on to underpin Northern Netherlandish peasant genre painting. However, whereas Brouwer placed the emphasis 1 Schnackenburg 1970, p. 167. 2 Dancing Couple in the Inn, pen and brown ink over pencil, brown wash, 125 x 189 mm, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. KdZ 3874. See Schnackenburg 1981, cat. no. 12, and pp. 38, 39, 47. 3 Schnackenburg 1981, cat. 56 no. 8, and p. 259, fig. 26. See also New York/Chicago 1989, cat. no. 94. 4 De Bie 1661, p. 91. 5 Schnackenburg, in The Dictionary of Art 23 (1996), p. 610, even refers to idealization. 6 ‘Boere hutjes, keetjes, stalletjes . . . ook de beeltjes 2 predominantly on the rough individual expression of his figures, Van Ostade focused on their movement and interaction, arrangement and lighting. This carefully composed work is a splendid example. According to the Flemish artists’ biographer Cornelis de Bie (1627–c. 1712/15), Brouwer was able to show his public the stupidity or folly of existence in the guise of mocking satire. 4 The Dancing Couple also appears to contain such a moral message, which in Van Ostade’s later depictions of peasant life receded into the background when he focused not so much on the licentiousness as on the simplicity and devoutness of peasants.5 However, the unruliness shown here indicates that it could be laughed at too. As Houbraken said of Van Ostade: ‘Peasant huts, sheds, stalls . . . and the figures dressed up, and all sorts of goings-on, so naturally rustic and funny that it is amazing how he managed to think it all up.’6 JH in hunne bekleeding, en allerhande bedryven, zoo natuurlyk boers en geestig, dat het om te verwonderen is, hoe hy ’t heeft weten te bedenken.’ Houbraken 1718-21, I, pp. 347-348. 2 Adriaen van Ostade (Haarlem 1610 – Haarlem 1685) The Dancing Couple, c. 1635 Oil on panel, 38 x 52 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 57 ja n miense molena er Peasant Wedding This painting by Jan Miense Molenaer, restored especially for the exhibition, is of a village wedding.1 The marriage has just been performed – perhaps in the church in the background – and the groom and his companions are waiting for the bride and her retinue at the inn where the feast will take place. The bride, modestly lowering her eyes, approaches from the right, accompanied by a woman scattering petals, some musicians and two maids of honour. Molenaer is depicting a traditional custom, as Simon van Leeuwen reported in 1667: It is also our custom that the bridegroom and bride, between two maids, who are called playmates . . . are led to the place where the marriage was performed, and from there again to the house where the wedding feast is held, where the bride is welcomed by the bridegroom.2 3 gorged themselves, and this could go on for days. In consequence, wedding feasts were rather controversial. According to the wellknown jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the wedding feasts that lasted for days showed the generosity of the Hollanders, but in the seventeenth century by no means everyone agreed with him.5 In 1655 Amsterdam city council went so far as to impose restraints on wedding feasts. Weddings where more than 50 guests a day were present were not allowed to carry on for longer than two days on penalty of heavy fines, the second course was not allowed to contain any ‘sweets, caster or fine sugar’ and the guests had to ‘be gone at the latest in the morning before the gate bell . . . on penalty of twenty-five guilders for each person’.6 SvM/AT The ‘playmates’ were responsible for the decorations for the wedding, such as the bride’s crown. Molenaer’s work is part of a tradition of humorous peasant scenes that were introduced in the sixteenth century by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (figs. 2 and 3 on p. 13) and built on by the Amsterdam painter David Vinckboons (cat. no. 1). As Mariët Westermann has pointed out, in his depictions of peasant life Molenaer places the emphasis on the comical.3 In this painting it is not just the jaunty pose of the bridegroom that is remarkable (like a gentleman, elbow out and hand on hip), but the appearance of a high-spirited, laughing priest (right) in a rather dated Catholic outfit (with the traditional alb, cincture and stole). On the bench in the centre foreground sits a man with a child on his lap watching the bride. He is so engrossed in the spectacle that he does not realize that he is being robbed by the small boy on the left. Once the whole company had arrived at the inn, the feast could begin. According to tradition, the bride had to sit motionless with hands folded during the celebrations and was not allowed to eat or drink anything. 4 Everyone else, however, danced and 1 With thanks to Jessica Roeders, paintings conservator, Frans Hals Museum. 2 ‘Soo is ook by ons de manier dat de Bruydegom ende bruyd tussen twee van de naaste Magen, die men Speelgenoten nomt . . . geleyd werden naar de plaats daar 58 de trouw werd voltrokken, ende van daar wederom naar het huys daar de Bruyloft werd gehouden, daar de Bruyd van den Bruydegom werd ingehaalt.’ Van Leeuwen 1667, p. 491. 3 M. Westermann, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer in the Comic Mode’, in Raleigh/Columbus/Manchester 2002-03, pp. 43-61. 4 Raleigh/Columbus/Manchester 2002-03, p. 172. 5 De Groot/Meerman 1801-03, vol. 2, pp. 19-22. 6 ‘gentiljessen, gegote, of fyne suiker’; ‘ten langsten ’s morgens voor de poortklok … gescheiden zyn, op [straffe van] 25 gulden voor yder persoon’. Van Alkemade/Van der Schelling 1732, pp. 191-201, esp. p. 194. 3 Jan Miense Molenaer (Haarlem 1610 – Haarlem 1668) Peasant Wedding, 1652, signed and dated lower centre on the bench Jmolenaer 1652 Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 106 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 59 ja n steen The Village Wedding In his earliest true masterpiece Jan Steen shows the viewer a village wedding, or to be precise the ‘welcoming’ of the bride after the wedding service when, the focus of attention, she arrives at the house in which the marriage is being celebrated, while a girl scatters flowers and her brand new husband stands ready to receive her. The bride – magnificently spotlighted in the centre of the composition – is accompanied by her speelgenoten, chaperones responsible for the wedding décor. In the Rhineland it was usual for the bride and groom to be accompanied by their friends to and from the place where the wedding was solemnized.1 Jan Miense Molenaer had previously depicted the same moment (see cat. no. 3). Steen may have borrowed the subject from him. This painting by Steen or one like it was called The Spanish Bride as early as 1709.2 Seventeenth-century viewers would have associated the bridegroom’s wide puffed sleeves, flamboyant cape and exaggerated ruff with a Spanish lover, a vain, comic character recognizable from the stage.3 The ironic, theatrical Rembrandt, The Pancake Woman, 1635, etching, 10.6 x 7.7 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1 Van Leeuwen 1667, p. 491. 2 Braun 1980, cat. no. 56. See also Washington/ Amsterdam 1996, cat. no. 6; Westrheene 1856, cat. no. 26. 3 This figure was inspired by a caricature of the Spanish soldier and is related to the Capitano from the Commedia dell’arte. See Washington/ 60 Amsterdam 1996, cat. no. 6; Lammertse 1998, cat. no. 57; Braun 1980, cat. nos. 56 and 326. 4 Washington/Amsterdam 1996, cat. no. 6; Lammertse 1998, cat. no. 57. There is also a comment about the oldfashioned looking headdress and the other clothes worn by the chaperones. 4 character of the work is confirmed by the high-spirited musicians playing in the window of the room where the celebration is taking place. 4 According to tradition sweets are being thrown from the window, which is why the children on the far left are holding up their hats.5 The sunflower on the portico, the ivy and the dog were well-known symbols of marriage and fidelity. Whereas the well-dressed wedding party are already entering, the common folk remain outside, probably also waiting to be admitted to the party. This could cause problems. Two troublesome boys are already being chased off. The bride or groom were often ‘blocked’ on the way back from the ceremony, held up by friends who barred the way with a rope, offered the newly-weds drink and expected something in return, usually an invitation to the party, ‘which in due time led to great expense for the ordinary household and, because of the mob and rabble that tagged along, fostered inconvenience and displeasure’.6 However, the bride and groom themselves could also have the inappropriate urge to want too lively a wedding. Weddings could get so out of hand that many statutes placed restrictions on the number of guests, the length of the service, the degree of exuberance and even the sweetmeats that were served. It was a particular thorn in the side of Jacob Cats, himself a supporter of a wedding celebration with ‘well-behaved folk and in a small circle’. Steen appears to be responding to associations like these surrounding marriage customs. In so doing, he cleverly finds the balance between sociosatirical commentary and the genuine festivity appropriate for a wedding day. He also manages to conceal a quote from a famous etching by Rembrandt in his work (fig. left) – something seventeenth-century art experts undoubtedly appreciated. JH 5 The sweets appear to be hanging on red strings. The same motif can be seen more clearly in a work by Steen which is a variation on this work, now in Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, inv. no. 1934.24 (Braun 1980, cat. no. 41). 6 ‘Het welk alsoo mettertijd tot al te grooten kosten liep van den gemene Huysluyden, ende door het bylopende Grauw ende Geboefte tot ongemak ende ongenugt gedijde’. Ordonnantie Baljuw en Mannen Delfland 16 June 1604, taken from De Beschrijvinge van Zuyd-Holland, p. 558, in Van Leeuwen 1667, p. 492. 4 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The Village Wedding, 1653, signed lower left JSteen 1653 (JS in ligature) Oil on canvas, 64 x 81 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage 61 ja n steen The Dancing Couple The Dancing Couple by Jan Steen, on public view here for the first time in more than 50 years, was described in a sale catalogue dated 1801 as ‘this charming composition depicting a peasant wedding beneath a vine outside a country house . . . this witty painting is one of the best by this artist’.1 The art historians Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863–1930) and Sturla Gudlaugsson (1913–1971) also thought it was a wedding.2 However, a bride’s crown, which would identify the central female figure as a bride, is conspicuous by its absence.3 The happy scene is not a wedding but the celebrations associated with a country fair or kermis. This is revealed by the tents in the background, which clearly indicate the fairground. The girl on the left behind the balustrade is holding a little windmill that she undoubtedly got at the fair. The company, which has settled on the terrace after visiting the fair, observes the actions of the protagonists with amusement. A jocular young man invites a girl from a higher social class, certainly a city dweller, to dance with him. 4 She gives the viewer a knowing look. Even though a fair was certainly not just a celebration for peasants and country folk, Steen makes numerous references in the painting Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple, 1663, oil on panel, 102.5 x 142.5 cm, signed and dated JSteen 1663 (JS in ligature), National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, Washington, inv. no. 1942.9.81 (677) 1 ‘Deeze bevallige Ordonantie verbeeld voor een Buitenhuis onder een Wyngaard, een Boere bruiloft … dit geestige Schildery is van de beste vandeezen Meester.’ Amsterdam, Schley, 13 April 1801 (Lugt no. 6231), lot 66, ‘op paneel, hoog 22, 62 breed 30 duim’, (on panel, 22 inches high, 30 inches wide). 2 Hofstede de Groot 1907-28, I (1907), p. 128, no. 479; for Gudlaugsson’s interpretation see Broos in The Hague/San Francisco 1990-91, cat. no. 59, pp. 419-423, esp. pp. 422-423. For 5 to the foolishness of the situation in which she finds herself. The prominently placed pipe between the couple requires no explanation and the barrel in front of them reminds us of the proverb ‘empty vessels make the most noise’, which alludes to the empty chatter of stupid people, whereas wise people ‘conduct themselves with a quiet and appropriate demeanour’.5 The cut flowers on the ground in the front on the right and the boy on the left blowing bubbles symbolize the fragile transience of existence. There is an autograph mirror-image version of the work dated 1663 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (fig. left).6 A number of motifs have been added to this larger version, which is painted on canvas, undoubtedly to point up the contrasts. For example, the dancing peasant now has his funny hat complete with feather on his head and the looker-on behind the balustrade suddenly has a basket of birds – vogels – on his head. No one would have failed to notice Steen’s allusion to the word vogelen (to lime – catch – birds), which was a seventeenth-century synonym for copulation. In 1833 John Smith thought he could identify the work in Washington as the original, although he added that the panel shown here had been painted in ‘a more neat and careful manner’. While Gudlaugsson interpreted the panel as the first version in 1958, Broos expressed his doubts about it in 1990. An X-radiograph of the work in Washington, however, makes it unequivocally clear that Steen initially copied the composition of the work discussed here for that work, and introduced changes to it later. JH other descriptions of this painting as a wedding celebration, see London, Sotheby’s, 4 July 2007, lot no. 36, p. 114, no. 7. 3 See the essay by De Winkel, p. 40ff. 4 See the essay by BouffardVeilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff. 5 ‘Een vol vat en bomt niet’; ‘met een stil en bequaem wesen henen gaen’. See Wheelock 1995, pp. 364-369, p. 369, note 8, with reference to an emblem in Roemer Visscher’s Sinnepoppen of 1614. 6 See Wheelock 1995. 5 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The Dancing Couple, c. 1662, signed lower left JSteen (JS in ligature) Oil on panel, 55.7 x 77.2 cm Private collection 63 cor nelis de m a n Hot Cockles 6 A seated gentleman dressed in opulent black and a standing lady are in an inn surrounded by a crowd of high-spirited villagers. Outside there is music and singing, on the right people are playing the curious game of hot cockles, in which a young man whose head rests in a woman’s lap is about to get a playful slap on his backside or on the hand he holds behind his back. The painting takes its title from this game, from the French La main chaude. The earliest mention in 1866 refers to the work as Noce de village, and places the emphasis on the peasant wedding that the work appears to depict.1 According to the caption, the village dignitary and his wife are honouring a local peasant wedding with their presence. It remains unclear where the bride and groom are. The art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot was the first to identify the game depicted. In 1895 he called the work La main chaude and focused attention on the tapestry on the rear wall and the marriage crown hanging in front of it, the traditional decoration at a seventeenth-century wedding celebration.2 Even though we cannot make out a bride or bridegroom in the painting, the scene must indeed be a wedding. The iconography of the wedding or marriage crown and the wall hanging is obvious. The crown, decorated with leaves and flowers, originally belonged to the chaste bride. In his poem Houwelick (Marriage), Jacob Cats addresses the bride, who: ‘From a longing for purity suppresses desires, and after she dons this crown becomes her husband’s crown: the party takes its course.’3 The wedding crown, clearly visible in the title print of Cats’s poem, is often depicted in wedding iconography, usually hanging above the newlywed couple against the background of a wall hanging. Nevertheless the attention in this painting focuses on the game of hot cockles that spices up the occasion. 4 Spectators take turns hitting the kneeling youth’s backside or hand until he guesses who it was that dealt the blow. In the painting two young men stand ready to strike with a hand and a shoe. The evidently popular game was frequently depicted by artists such as Adriaen van de Venne, Rembrandt and Jan Miense Molenaer, who painted the subject at least nine times. Cornelis de Man depicted the game hot cockles again in a painting in Museum Boijmans Van 1 Sale Paris, Galerie de feu M. Herman de Kat, 2-3 May 1866 (tableaux anciens), lot no. 47, Noce de village (Lugt no. 29104). See also sale Paris, collection de M.M.[ason], 1 February 1875, lot no. 43, Noce de village (Lugt no. 35321). 2 Bredius/ 64 Hofstede de Groot 1895, pp. 222-223, no. 91 (200). 3 ‘Doet, uyt een reyne sucht, de lusten in den ban/ en wort nae dese kroon, de kroone van den man/ De feest gaet haeren gang’. 4 See also Amsterdam 1976, cat. no. 37. 5 Oil on canvas, Beuningen in Rotterdam.5 The game has a manifestly negative connotation in Johan de Brune’s Emblemata of zinne-werck of 1624. The Calvinist state advocate from Zeeland linked a hot cockles print designed by Van de Venne to the motto, ‘a whore’s lap is the devil’s boat’. Cornelis de Man may also have wanted to criticize the game in his painting. The fashionable couple in the middle of the scene, in any event, totally ignore the game. From their clothes and bearing we can deduce that they are upper class. The woman does not appear to find the game remotely amusing; her husband smiles at the people who are laughing at the game outside the window, not at the game itself. JH 68.5 x 100 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. 1486. See Lammertse 1998, cat. 32. 6 ‘Een hoeren schoot is duyvels boot.’ 6 Cornelis de Man (Delft 1621 – Delft or The Hague 1706) Hot Cockles, c. 1660, signed K. De Man Oil on canvas, 69 x 84 cm Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague 65 philips wou w er m a n Village Festival with Herring-Pulling This masterpiece by Wouwerman depicts a village festival where a game of haringtrekken – herring-pulling, herring-biting or herring-riding – is being played. The game was identified as such in the 1801 sale catalogue of the famous Tolozan Collection: It (the painting) shows the central square of a typical Dutch village on a feast day in winter where the population has gathered to compete on horseback to win a prize by using their teeth to catch a herring hanging on a rope.1 After Shrove Tuesday, the last day of the carnival, Ash Wednesday heralded the beginning of the 40-day period leading up to Easter in which no meat could be eaten, just fish, particularly herring. This festive game was played in several places after church on Shrove Tuesday. The aim was to bite or pull off the head of the herring, which was hung from a rope.2 Sometimes the herring also appears to be hanging in a doorway for the same purpose. The herring-pulling in Wouwerman’s work takes place on a superbly rendered atmospheric winter’s day against the background of a village on the banks of a seemingly frozen body of water on the right. A fluttering flag indicates that it is a feast day. Watched by young and old, locals and townspeople, a man with a woman behind him rides up to the fish, which is hanging on a rope stretched between the chimney of a house and a leafless tree. As the horse is urged on with a whip while a man tugs on the reins, the horseman turns his head to the right. At least six other couples on horseback are preparing to try their luck. One woman almost falls backwards off her horse. Behind the horses, a woman with a child on her back, accompanied by a little boy in a yellow hat, looks on. This motif is reminiscent of a beggar and her son in a print Rembrandt made in 1648, some years prior to Wouwerman’s work. This may have been Wouwerman’s way of introducing the traditionally important element of charity on feast days into his painting. 1 ‘Het [schilderij] toont het centrale plein van een typisch Nederlands dorp, op een feestdag in de winter, waarop de inwoners zijn samengekomen om een wedstrijd te paard te doen, en een prijs te winnen, door met de tanden een haring te pakken die aan een koord hangt.’ Sale Tolozan, Paris, 23-26 February 1801 (Lugt no. 6204), lot no. 142 (26 February), see also Lugt 66 no. 2652 (lot no. 87, 25 March). See also Schumacher 2006, cat. no. A550 (without mention of Amsterdam/Boston/ Philadelphia 1987/1988, cat. no. 120). 2 Schrijnen 1930, I, pp. 195-196. 3 Oil on panel, 74.9 x 106 cm, monogrammed and dated SvR 165(.), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 71.75. See Liedtke 2007, II, cat. no. 189. Ruysdael had already 7 Wouwerman painted this work in the early 1650s. Around the same time, his older colleague from Haarlem, Salomon van Ruysdael, depicted a similar village feast in the painting Drawing the Eel (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).3 We can see the same type of game in it, also taking place in a village by a frozen body of water. The participants, once again couples on horseback, are in teams distinguished by their coloured shawls. Wouwerman painted a variation of the game with a cat around 1655. 4 Games like these, invariably involving a bound animal, were played during carnival and on Shrove Tuesday. Hen-pulling or throwing was also popular on these occasions, as was goose-pulling, where the greased goose’s head had to be ripped off.5 Various images reveal that these cruel games, goose-pulling in particular, were also practised during summer feasts, both on horseback and by sailing under the goose in a boat.6 JH painted the game once in 1633 in a similar composition. See Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2005, lot no. 23. 4 C. 1655, ICN, Amsterdam/Rijswijk, inv. no. NK 3065. See Schumacher 2006, cat. no. 534. 5 Schrijnen 1930, I, pp. 192-193. A Rhineland statute of 1584 forbade these Shrove Tuesday games, though not from animal welfare considerations, but from the point of view of wastefulness. See Van Leeuwen 1667, pp. 484-485. 6 See for example Willem Isaacksz Swanenburch after David Vinckboons, Peasant Kermis with Goose-Pulling, c. 1602, Goossens 1954, p. 67, fig. 31; Barent Gael, Village Feast with Goose-Pulling, Christie’s, London 15 April 1992, lot no. 117A. 7 Philips Wouwerman (Haarlem 1619 – Haarlem 1668) Village Festival with Herring-Pulling, c. 1652-53 Oil on canvas, 64.5 x 82 cm Private collection 67 ja n steen The Fair at Warmond 8 In his 1864 novel Jan Steen. Historisch-Romantische Schetsen, Tobias van Westrheene, known as Steen’s first modern biographer, introduces the painter when his neighbour invites him to the Warmond kermis: ‘An invaluable opportunity to acquire a year’s stock for your skilful brush at a country fair. We are counting on you!’ Steen refuses. Flat broke, he is keeping his head above water with shoddy work: ‘I don’t give a damn when fine sanctimonious hypocrites criticize me for going to taverns and fairs. But . . . I do think back with sorrow to the days when I took the time to finish my pictures with care.’1 In the margin, the author refers to Steen’s The Fair at Warmond. In fact there is no definitive proof that the large picture actually is of Warmond, where Steen lived between 1658 and 1660. However, the work bore the title well before 1771, when it was sold as such from the estate of Leonard van Heemskerk, grandson of the Leiden wool merchant and glass engraver Willem Jacobsz van Heemskerck (1613–1692), from whom he had undoubtedly inherited it.2 This suggests that the title goes back to the seventeenth century. When the work was sold in 1789 as part of the household effects of the Leiden fig. 1 Rembrandt, A Woman Making Water, 1631, etching, 7.9 x 6.3 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam fig. 2 Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, detail of woman with jug (photograph from Abraham Bredius, Jan Steen, The Hague, 1927, p. 56) 1 With thanks to Marieke de Winkel for the dating of this painting on the basis of the fashion depicted in it. 1 ‘Ene onbetaalbare gelegenheid om op eene boerenkermis wel voor een jaar voorraad op te doen voor uw konstig penseel. Wij rekenen op u!’, and ‘dat fijne kwezels 68 2 mij nahouden dat ik drinkgelagen en kermissen naloop – dat raakt mij de koude kleêren niet. Maar … met smart denk ik aan de dagen, toen ik er den tijd voor nam mijne tafereelen zorvuldig af te penseelen’. Van Westrheene 1864, pp. 125-130. There is a reference in the margin to the painting described here. For the biography and burgomaster Hendrick Twent, it was copied by Pieter Leonard Delfos (1766–1792) and also identified as a ‘Warmond fair’.3 Peasants accompanied by a fiddler and a man playing a hurdygurdy dance in a ring in front of an inn. There is drinking and smoking, a child takes a swig of beer. A woman urinates watched by a grinning man (a quotation from a Rembrandt etching; fig. 1). 4 Apparently this scene (still visible in Delfos’s drawing) was later deemed too risqué for the kermis and was overpainted (fig. 2). Behind this couple an expensively-dressed, somewhat drunkenlooking gentleman offers his hand to a young girl, who is chaperoned by an old woman. A man on horseback points this scene out to a fashionable woman and her children, possibly the gentleman’s family, who have just arrived. In the left foreground there is a family with two children on the grass, seemingly aloof. While the father, with beer and pipe, negotiates with a pedlar, his little son eats cherries. Westrheene took them to be the Steen family, an identification that was adopted by later authors. Perhaps, as Westrheene romanticized, the Catholic Steen did indeed visit fairs and taverns in the neighbourhood in search of inspiration for his painted narratives. In any event he provides a satirical commentary on extravagant behaviour in this painting. The peasants are not watching their children and are behaving foolishly, but the same can be said of the gentleman with his hat adorned with cockerel feathers, who is blatantly making advances to the young girl. The dogs behind him, one of them sniffing the other’s backside, lead us to suspect the worst. JH catalogue raisonné, see Van Westrheene 1856, pp. 120 -121, no. 94. 2 Leiden, Delfos, 2 September 1771 (Lugt no. 1958), p. 3, no. 9. For the persuasive suggestion that the work was previously owned by the grandfather, see Van Gelder 1940, p. 184. 3 Leiden, Delfos, 11 August 1789, as De Warmond’sche Kermis. Pieter Leonard Delfos after Jan Steen, De Warmondze Kermis, black chalk on paper, 45.3 x 63.5 cm, Rotterdam, Atlas van Stolk, inv. no. 10930 (Van Stolk no. 2066). On the verso annotated ‘De Warmondze Kermis’. 4 With thanks to Wouter Kloek for this observation. 8 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The Fair at Warmond, c. 1676, signed lower centre JSteen (JS in ligature) Oil on canvas, 111.8 x 177.8 cm Private collection, New York 69 cor nelis dusa rt Village Feast 9 Cornelis Dusart, one of Adriaen van Ostade’s last pupils, took over his master’s studio on his death in 1685. Like his teacher, Dusart specialized in scenes of peasant life. At the end of the seventeenth century, when Classicism became popular and many painters devoted themselves to more idealized figure scenes, peasant scenes nevertheless remained in demand.1 Speelmannen (strolling players) were particularly controversial. The classical painter and art-theoretician Gerard de Lairesse went so far as to include them in a list of figures and scenes that a respectable painter should avoid: ‘Beggars, brothels, public houses, tobaccosmokers, musicians, dirty children on the pot, and anything that is even filthier and worse.’2 Dusart, however, used just such a musician as the starting point for one of his most festive compositions. An elderly man dances in front of an inn to the sound of a fiddle. He has taken off his hat. He waves one arm high in the air, while he tries to hop from one leg to the other. The fiddler who has stirred him into action plays with his mouth open and is red in the face. He wears a broad-brimmed hat with a flute, a pipe and a fox’s brush attached, and stands, legs wide apart, on a bench. This identifies him as a speelman, an itinerant musician with a doubtful reputation.3 (These people were regarded as drunks and as lazy and untrustworthy.) An urchin sticks his head jokingly between his legs. Onlookers laugh. More of the village feast can be seen in the background. A drunken man appears to want to go towards the music, but he can hardly stand. Two friends hold him upright. Behind them villagers visit market stalls and pigs run around freely. The expressive and coarsely rendered faces and the relatively delicate manner he uses to depict the foliage are typical of Dusart. The use of a number of bright colours in the foreground (in this case the clothes worn by the dancer and the musician) is also characteristic. According to tradition, country folk often wore bright colours at village feasts, particularly blue, red and purple. 4 Here Dusart makes skilful use of this to highlight his protagonists. The dancer and the musician not only wear the brightest colours (red and blue), they are given even more emphasis by the 1 Aono 2011, ch. 1. 2 ‘Bedelaars, Bordeelen, Kroegen, Tabakrookers, Speelmans, Besmeurde Kinders in de kakstoel, en wat nog vuilder en erger is.’ Lairesse 1707, p. 171. 3 See Köhler et al. 2006, p. 445. 4 See the essay by De 70 Winkel, p. 40ff. 5 See the essay by Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff. 6 Haarlem/Munich 2008-09, p. 145. 7 Hollstein 1949–, vol. 6, no. 47.1. shaft of warm sunlight falling on them. The way Dusart makes his peasant dance also – as far as we know – reflects the conventions of the time. Unlike members of the elite, dancing peasants in the seventeenth century were usually portrayed with backs, knees and ankles bent.5 This work is one of the liveliest of Dusart’s pictures of village festivals. Adriaen van Ostade also painted similar impressions of these revels (see cat. no. 2). Dusart sometimes borrowed figures from Van Ostade in his own compositions (in this picture possibly the mother and child in the left foreground)6 and also often reused his own characters in different poses and combinations. The musician, for example, also appears in his etching The Violin Player of 1685.7 AT 9 Cornelis Dusart (Haarlem 1660 – Haarlem 1704) Village Feast, 1684, signed and dated lower right on the plough C Dusart f.1684 Oil on canvas, 80 x 70.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 71 gall ant companies The young and wealthy enjoying themselves at stylish gatherings was a new subject in painting in the seventeenth century. The Amsterdam painter David Vinckboons was the first to develop this type of composition, which became known as the ‘gallant company’. The genre subsequently flourished in Haarlem in the first decades of the Golden Age thanks to painters like Willem Buytewech, Esaias van de Velde and Dirck Hals. Each artist had his own individual approach and style. Van de Velde focused on quiet moments during the festivities, Hals depicted infectious merriment and Buytewech painted the most risqué visual jokes. In art history these kinds of paintings were long seen as admonitions – examples of how not to behave. Recent research has tempered this view somewhat; humour, for instance, is an important element. Artists also prove to have been thoroughly up to date with the latest fashions, new dance steps and elegant manners. And although alcohol or love may sometimes have caused the protagonists to relax a trifle too much, the message conveyed by most of the paintings seems more light-hearted than was previously thought. Isaac Elias, Celebrating Company, 1629 (detail of cat. n0. 15) dav id v inck boons Elegant Company in an Ornamental Garden Around 1610, the Mechelen-born David Vinckboons, who had settled in Amsterdam, began to paint festive companies in the open air. He was harking back to older Flemish pictorial traditions, but his works did not necessarily contain references to biblical or allegorical themes. This makes him a crucial link in the development of a new type of image – the ‘gallant company’. Vinckboons placed his companies around a table against the background of a pergola or a spinney. By varying the choice of motif he gave the works a range of meanings (see also cat. no. 13). This painting is one of the earliest examples of a merrymaking company which – because of the absence of any biblical or allegorical context – looks surprisingly modern. In part Vinckboons based the painting on motifs that were popular in depictions of the Bible story of the Prodigal Son, who among other things squandered his money and was thrown out of a brothel.1 As a rule, the pictorial indicators of this story are the inn, the innkeeper’s wife with the slate, the ejection from the brothel and the sensual revellers. Hans Bol (1534–1593) – like Vinckboons from Mechelen – who arrived in Amsterdam around 1589, was a central figure in the iconographic development of the Hans Bol, The Prodigal Son in the Brothel, 1570, pen and ink on paper, 13.1 x 19.1 cm, Walter Baker Collection, New York 1 Kolfin 2005, pp. 17-18. Kolfin also gives a historiographic introduction to the subject. 2 See Hillegers/Jaeger 2011, pp. 114157, esp. pp. 122-125. 3 See Kolfin 2005, pp. 22-24, 59. 4 ‘Geen onbehoorlickheijdt en werdt hier in bespiet.’ 5 Briels 1997, p. 400. 74 10 theme and its dissemination in the Northern Netherlands. We do not know whether Vinckboons ever studied with Bol but he was in any event on friendly terms with the family of Bol’s pupil Jacob Savery.2 For his festive companies Vinckboons adopted the pictorial scheme that Bol had developed in the 1570s and 1580s.3 Specifically, Vinckboons’s design for an engraving of the Prodigal Son of 1608, now in the British Museum, came directly from Bol and he must also have made use of Bol’s examples for his Garden Party (fig. left). In particular, Vinckboons borrowed his positioning of the table, the spinney and the man seated on the ground with his head in the woman’s lap in the right foreground. Whereas Vinckboons’s 1608 print illustrates the biblical subject, the omission of the specific motifs means that the Amsterdam painting is detached from this narrower meaning. The general tendency towards the profane, merrily celebrating company did not develop consistently in Vinckboons’s oeuvre. As early as 1602 he designed the title print of the songbook Den Nieuwen Lust-hof, featuring a merry, music-making company near a summer house which, in terms of composition alone and not content, harks back to the depiction of the Prodigal Son. In the caption the publisher explicitly stated that ‘No impropriety may be discerned in this’. 4 In the painting discussed here there is indeed some ‘impropriety’: the decadent festive company in the garden enjoy themselves with drink, music, dancing and making love. A peacock pie, possibly a symbol for pride, graces the table, while playing cards and gnawed bones on the ground refer to gambling and transience. JH 10 David Vinckboons (Mechelen 1576 – Amsterdam before 12 January 1633) 5 Elegant Company in an Ornamental Garden, c. 1610 Oil on panel, 28.5 x 43.6 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 75 esa i as va n de v elde Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air Although no concrete proof exists, Esaias van de Velde, the son of Flemish immigrants, was probably a pupil first of the Amsterdam painter Gillis van Conincxloo (1544–1606) and then of David Vinckboons. Around 1609, Van de Velde moved from Amsterdam to Haarlem. It is clear from his Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air, dated 1615, once in the collection of writer and art expert Carel Vosmaer (1826–1888), that Vinckboons’s companies made a lasting impression on him. Vinckboons’s composition for Banquet in a Park in Copenhagen (fig. below), in particular, served as an example for Esaias.1 However the focus of Esaias’s work differs from Vinckboons’s. For example, there is no palace garden to be seen at the end of the vista (as in the Vinckboons) and the figures look more like real young people in Holland. Whereas Vinckboons’s work always revolves around exuberant, often illicit licentiousness between men and women, Van de Velde seems to seek out another moment during the festivities. The feast appears to have passed its climax, or perhaps the mood had never been that high-spirited anyway. Some of the guests appear rather befuddled and lean on each other in silence. Even though the drink flows there seems to be some reticence. David Vinckboons, Banquet in a Park, c. 1619, oil on panel, 51 x 81.5 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 1 See Koester 2000, pp. 279-280. The work is a later repeat of a lost original, from which Van de Velde also took a number of figures for his Merry Company in the Park dated 1614, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 199. 76 2 ‘Die mensen leven niet. Op hun gelaat straalt niet de minste vreugde die bij dergelijke bijeenkomsten toch het doel is.’ Goossens 1954, p. 97. 3 Nevitt 2003, pp. 57-90. 4 See, for example, two risqué prints after Esaias’s design, which can be 11 Korneel Goossens, the author of a monograph on Vinckboons, interpreted Van de Velde’s reserve as frugality and decorum. This supposed prudishness led him to remark: ‘These people do not live. There is not the least joy on their faces, which is surely the object of gatherings like these.’2 Art historian H. Rodney Nevitt also draws attention to ‘ruptures in communication’, but arrives at a different explanation.3 On the one hand he attributes the hesitancy to young men’s tendency to become tongue-tied in the presence of their sweethearts, as cultivated in contemporary literature and songs. On the other he points to the passive role that the woman was supposed to play in the courtship process. It is with precisely this hushed, rather melancholic area of tension that Van de Velde seems to engage. The only figure making an attempt to communicate is the young man with the raised glass, who brusquely tries to pull the woman in front of him towards him. Clearly without her cooperation, he grabs her dress, at the same time an allusion to the word doeck – doxy – a coarse term for a woman. In paintings and prints, as budding artists in Haarlem, Van de Velde and his contemporary ‘Witty’ Willem Buytewech (cat. no. 12) explored the picturesque opportunities the merry company had to offer in various ways and with varying degrees of success, and in so doing revised its implications. Biblical connotations disappeared and made way for the realistic, in-depth exploration of the social relationships between the figures. They did not shy away from risqué humour on occasion and the moral tone seems lighter than before. 4 They paved the way for the first true specialist in the genre – Dirck Hals. JH dated to around 1615, in which by folding the print a certain way one can make an apparently respectable gentleman with a glass suddenly grope under the skirts of his companion. Kolfin 2005, pp. 87, 104-105, figs. 62 and 63. 11 Esaias van de Velde (Amsterdam 1587 – The Hague 1630) Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air, 1615, signed and dated E . vanden. Velde. 1615. Oil on panel, 34.7 x 60.7 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, bequest of Mr D. Franken, Le Vésinet 77 w illem bu y tew ech Banquet in the Open Air We know of few paintings by Willem Buytewech, who died young. In the past his unsigned Banquet in the Open Air was often attributed to the productive Esaias van de Velde, who joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1612 at the same time as the ‘Witty’ Willem.1 A glance at the print of Two Musicians in a Garden to a design by Esaias, which can be dated to around 1614, makes the misattribution perfectly understandable. Willem’s authorship is beyond dispute, however; in particular the subtle, lively expressions, his unusually thin paint layers and clearly separated areas of colour are absolutely typical.2 As with Esaias, we can detect a new, realistic note in Willem’s merry companies. The familiar fantastical palace of love in the background to David Vinckboons’s companies, for instance, is replaced by a building that Buytewech based on drawings he made of the Church of St Mary in Utrecht. The figures appear to have been drawn from life, representatives of the Dutch jeunesse dorée belonging to a generation which, at least in Haarlem and from the start of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621) onwards, grew up without an immediate threat of war in a society rapidly becoming very wealthy, at any rate for the privileged. True to his nickname, Buytewech shows their ostentation with unmistakable humour, which reveals itself in the display of luxury, their self-centered attitude and their lavish clothes. Buytewech’s women are eye-catching; their dresses reveal deep décolletages, far more than in Van de Velde or Vinckboons’s paintings. Clergymen were naturally united against the flamboyance of these dandies and kermispoppen, as provocatively dressed young women were called.3 In his Spieghel der Zedigheyt of 1620, for instance, the Zeeland minister Willem Teellinck (1579–1629) complained about low-cut dresses and their wearers. ‘What is this other than making oneself the devil’s snare?’ He also criticized men, who ‘deck themselves out in blue, green, yellow, crimson etc. Or all of them mixed together’, because ‘they make it clear before all the world that they have a wholly vain and shallow heart’. 4 There were also, though, more positive opinions, as expressed for example by the Leiden student Johannes van Heemskerck (1597– 1656), who in 1621 recommended his male friends to go to church 1 Würtenberger 1937, p. 43. 2 Haverkamp Begemann 1959, cat. II. 3 See the essay by De Winkel, p. 40ff. 4 ‘Wat is dat anders dan sich tot een stric des Duyvels te maken?’ ... ‘sich op-toyen in blauw, groen, geel, incarnate etc. Of alle dat door 78 malkanderen geslagen’. Teellinck 1620, pp. 37-39. 5 ‘gepronckt en op-getoyt na sulcke spelen treden. Sy komen om te sien, en om gesien te zyn.’ See the essay by De Winkel, p. 40ff. 6 Kolfin 2005, p. 105. 12 a lot, and above all to go to the theatre, because young ladies, ‘go to such plays dressed up and adorned. They come to see and to be seen’.5 Looking seems to be a central element in the painting. Buytewech’s inclusion of the monkey sitting on the ground, variously interpreted as a reference to the senses, shamelessness or seduction, was by no means random. The animal wants to take a peek under the dress of the woman in the left foreground, but the man beside her, to its displeasure, obstructs it with his foot. However the woman does not look at the man, but at the viewer (as do the figures on the right), in doing so making him part of the game of seeing and being seen. Although the moralizing import of Buytewech’s Banquet in the Open Air has been emphasized for many years, a new generation of art historians seems to have more of an eye for the comic side of his work and the ambivalence that Buytewech implies.6 JH 12 Willem Buytewech (Rotterdam 1591/92 – Rotterdam 1624) Banquet in the Open Air, c. 1615 Oil on canvas, 71.6 x 94.5 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, long-term private loan 79 dav id v inck boons Elegant Company in a Garden This painting, dated 1619, shows a company of eight around a lavishly-laid table in a garden, with a pergola and a palace in the background. A maid brings a pie and a boy on the right pours wine. The work can be specifically linked to two other paintings by David Vinckboons. One (cat. no. 10) depicts almost the same group of young people celebrating in a palace garden with dancers and revellers, the other, Garden Party (private collection), shows the same group in an elaborate palace garden.1 The Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin has the drawing by Vinckboons that probably served as preparation, linked in particular to the Garden Party and the work described here.2 Art historian Korneel Goossens, who published the work in 1966, observed that the five senses could be represented in it.3 Around the table he points out Hearing, personified by the musicians, Touch, represented by the lovers, Smell, portrayed by the figures at the back with flowers in their hands, and Taste, symbolized by the glutton sitting on the ground and the woman feeding him. According to Goossens, however, the absence of Sight made this interpretation problematic. In fact, though, Vinckboons did paint this sense, but not as a person. The key to the interpretation lies in the animals, which are attributes of the senses. Vinckboons probably based this picture on sixteenth-century print series of the five senses, like the one by Cornelis Cort to a design by Frans Floris, and the series by Adriaen Collaert after Maerten de Vos. 4 As usual in series like these, Vinckboons represented Hearing as a deer, Touch as a bird and Taste as a monkey. The woman appears to be holding a dog, the attribute of Smell, under her arm. He depicted Sight solely by an eagle, the traditional attribute, which is in the same position in which Sight is also represented in the Garden Party and the drawing in Berlin, but in those cases by a gentleman with a telescope. It is striking that Vinckboons uses a party to illustrate the five senses. Traditionally, in images of the five senses the viewer is informed that his senses can make him wise, but can also lead him astray. The temptation of the senses was a particularly controversial subject when it came to parties.5 In this respect 1 Garden Party, oil on panel, 51 x 98 cm, private collection, France (1987). See Briels 1987, p. 89, fig. 88. 2 Distinguished Company at Table in a Park, pen and brown ink, grey and brown washes, heightened in white on paper, 28.1 x 42.1 cm, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. no. 4026. See Wegner/Pée 1980, cat. no. Z. 12. 3 Goossens 1966, pp. 87-91, 80 fig. 9, whose attention, he says, was drawn to this by Professor Wolfgang Krönig. The subject of the five senses had been recognized in the drawing in 1937 and in the French work in 1987. 4 See The New Hollstein: Cornelis Cort, III (2000), nos. 04-208; The New Hollstein: The Collaert Dynasty, IV (2005), nos. 13671383. 5 See also the essays by Tummers, 13 Vinckboons’s depiction of Taste, who has abandoned himself to eating and drinking far too much, appears to contain a warning.6 Seen from this point of view the omission of the person who personifies Sight seems deliberate. In fact the painter puts the viewer in this role. As Sight in this painting, the viewer can be urged on to wise contemplation or, on the contrary, tempted to excess. In the early seventeenth century the allegorical representation of the five senses in the merry company gradually gave way to the pure, realistic genre scene. The motifs used by Vinckboons were adopted by artists like Willem Buytewech and Dirck Hals, whose Garden Party of 1624, for example, does include the senses but not their attributes.7 JH p. 8ff and De Winkel, p. 40ff. 6 Although the pictorial tradition of the seated man in the lap of a lady in a merry company harks back to that of the Prodigal Son, it will have been no coincidence that in Dirck Pietersz Pers’s translation of Ripa’s Iconologia, Adulterio (‘Adultery’) is described as a fat, seated young man in resplendent clothes. Young, because he is eligible for adultery, seated because this denotes his idleness, and painted as fat because idleness has a sister called the tavern (‘vet gemaelt, om dat de Leedigheyt de Brasserie tot haer suster heeft’). See Ripa 1644, pp. 399-400. Dirck Hals, Garden Party, panel, 38 x 47 cm, Richard Green, London (1987). See Briels 1987, p. 90, fig. 89. 13 David Vinckboons (Mechelen 1576 – Amsterdam before 12 January 1633) Elegant Company in a Garden, 1619, signed and dated DVB fe. 1619 Oil on canvas, 73 x 90.8 cm Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London 81 esa i as va n de v elde Garden Party 14 Here Esaias van de Velde shows us three very fashionably dressed couples at a sumptuous al fresco banquet. Silver and gold showpieces are arranged on a tresor, a display stand that has been placed outside for the occasion. A fountain and a splendid marble wine cooler (in the right foreground) reinforce the idyllic character of the scene. A servant walks towards them on the left, probably with a fresh pitcher of wine. Despite all the pomp and circumstance, however, the faces of the ladies and gentlemen betray few signs of enjoyment. Esaias van de Velde often focused on quiet moments in his depictions of ‘gallant companies’ – when the revelries have yet to begin, for instance, or when the tipsy behaviour of the gentlemen is causing a degree of reluctance among the ladies. Van de Velde’s compositions are reminiscent of contemporary songbooks featuring songs about melancholy silences like this at celebrations, as art historian H. Rodney Nevitt discovered.1 This painting, in particular, is very similar in mood to a song published in the Friesche Lust-hof collection (Amsterdam 1621), two years after the completion of the painting: ties, is emphasized yet again: ‘Everything has its time: it is praiseworthy that a man/ is wise in his profession, and merry with the jug.’3 Although in the past Van de Velde’s paintings were often interpreted as moral indictments of licentiousness, the elegant poses and modest expressions of the protagonists appear to have a greater affinity to more light-hearted songbooks. 4 AT The company is wondrous quiet, In the midst of all the wine: The wine that enflames the heart, And lightens worries and cares There they sit and present An affected face, Oh, why, yet thus shy, and restrained? Hey! Stop that, And be entertained With all that awakens desire.2 The song urges the stomme en bedeckte – the silent and restrained – young people to abandon themselves to pleasure. After all they are now in the ‘sweetness of their youth’ and it would be a pity to let this special time go by ‘heedlessly’ and ‘without joy’. Elsewhere in the collection the atmosphere of gaiety, which according to the writer Jan Jansz Starters is an essential element of festivi- 1 Nevitt 2003, pp. 61-64. 2 ‘’t geselschap is dus wonder stil,/ In ’t midden vande Wijn:/ De Wijn die yeders hart ontfonckt,/ En alle swarigheyd verlicht/ Daer by sit men nu noch en pronckt/ Met een beveynsd gesicht,/ Ey, waerom, doch dus 82 stom, en bedeckt?/ Hey! Wilt dat staken,/ En u vermaken/ met al wat lust verweckt.’ Starter 1621, pp. 8-9. 3 ‘Elck dingh heeft synen tyd: ’t is pryslick dat een Man/ Is Wys in syn beroep, en Vrolyck by de kan.’ Starter 1621, p. 7; Kolfin 2005, ill. 157, p. 208, see also the essay by Tummers, p. 8ff. 4 See, for example Köhler et al. 2006, pp. 614-615. 14 Esaias van de Velde (Amsterdam 1587 – The Hague 1930) Garden Party, 1619, signed and dated lower right E.V. Velde 1619 Oil on panel, 34 x 51.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt 83 isa ac eli as Celebrating Company In his 1941 survey of the Dutch Golden Age, cultural historian Johan Huizinga wrote: A part of the sense of this art continues to escape us. It is full of hidden clues or innuendos, which we could not solve even with the most painstaking studies. . . . This holds true to a certain indefinable extent to the musical company which our painters and printmakers are so fond of taking as a subject.1 In the 1972 reprint this passage was fittingly illustrated with Isack Elyas’s Celebrating Company, which art historian Eddy de Jongh had recently cited as an example of ‘seeming realism’.2 The figures in the painting seem to be divided into two groups. On the right is a young couple in fashionable clothes. Around the table sits a merry company that can be interpreted as personifications of the five senses.3 Although essential and even a blessing, 4 the senses were at the same time seen as dangerous seducers, which, if used unthinkingly, paved the road to hell and damnation. Elyas’s company also puts us in mind of late sixteenth-century print sets by Dirck Barendsz and Gerrit Pietersz Sweelinck, in which merry companies await the Flood and Judgement Day. The painted works after prints by Antonio Tempesta on the rear wall, The Flood and The Battle of the Israelites against the Moabites, emphasize this.5 In 1986 moreover, it was assumed on the basis of the position of the couple (the woman on the man’s right) that they were betrothed.6 The betrothed couple, it was suggested, were being cautioned not to use the senses improperly and, like the viewer, encouraged to see the good by pointing to the negative. Thomas Kren comes up with a similar interpretation; he thinks that a parlour-piece about the five senses (see cat. no. 23) is being performed for a newly-married couple.7 H. Rodney Nevitt doubts this is a specific event, but stresses the separation between 1 ‘Een deel van de zin van die kunst blijft ons ontgaan. Zij zit vol bedekte aanduidingen of toespelingen, die wij zelfs met de meest nauwgezette studies niet zouden kunnen ontraadselen. … Hetzelfde geldt tot op zekere niet na te speuren hoogte het musicerende gezelschap, zoals onze schilder- of prentkunst die zo gaarne als onderwerp kiest.’ 2 De Jongh 1967, pp. 6-8, fig.1; De Jongh 1971, pp. 146-149. 84 See also Amsterdam 1976, cat. no. 23. 3 Judson 1970, pp. 97-98, note 6. On the left, Smell with the dog as the attribute, alongside Sight reading a song text. Hearing plays a lute. The man with the upturned glass possibly represents Touch, while the lady beside him, pointing to the food appears to be Taste. In view of the other servant on the far left, the boy taking off his hat seems to be a wine waiter, 15 the couple and the table guests, pointing to the sword on the rear wall. 8 In his view the betrothed couple represents the decision to exchange the free-wheeling life of a bachelor for the more private domestic state, a transition that Cats and others expanded upon. However, according to Nevitt this separation hides ambiguity. Is the couple leaving the room or not? And, despite the painting of the Flood, is the message really that cautionary? Nevitt compares the painting with a print by Crispijn de Passe, in which a courting couple attends a dazzling feast. The print is reused in a songbook, this time with a risqué song about a wedding feast in which the bride and groom are urged on to consummate the marriage. In the end it appears doubtful that this is about couple who are even engaged – let alone married! The young man and the young woman both clearly wear clothes in which to go courting. It is true the girl has a ‘Spanish’ cap and ruff, whereas the lady on the left wears a French standing collar, but this was purely a lady’s personal preference, as the Leiden student Johannes van Heemskerck said: ‘If she dresses in the Spanish style, she will prize the Spanish costume, if it is French, she is very fond of French ways.’9 JH as in other depictions of the five senses (cat. no. 13). 4 Kolfin 2005, pp. 56-57. 5 One depicts the destruction of Mankind, which through a heedless love of celebration and a lack of godliness calls down God’s wrath; according to De Jongh the other may depict the moral struggle inherent in earthly existence. For a detailed interpretation, see Wuhrmann 1995. 6 Haarlem 1986, cat. no. 2. 7 Kren 1980, esp. pp. 76-77. Tafel-spel van de Vyf sinnen is indeed the title of a parlour-piece by A. van Overbeeke; however it was not published until 1665. 8 Nevitt 2003, pp. 141-145. 9 ‘Kleed sy haer op sijn Spaensch, de Spaensche dracht wilt prysen; Is ’t op sijn Fransch, so houd veel vande Fransche wysen.’ With thanks to Marieke de Winkel, who drew my attention to this. 15 Isaac Elias (Active 1629, probably in Haarlem) Celebrating Company, 1629, signed and dated lower right Isack Elyas f. 1629 Oil on panel, 47.1 x 63.2 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, bequest of Mr D. Franken, Le Vésinet 85 dirck h a l s Music-Making Company on a Terrace Between 1620 and 1625 Dirck Hals was the only artist in Haarlem to portray gallant companies out of doors and the most productive painter of pictures of this type anywhere in the Netherlands.1 He was the younger brother of the famous Frans Hals and was probably working in his workshop at that time. Dirck did not set up his own studio until 1627, and he had already developed his own style and speciality by the time he enrolled in the guild as an independent artist. Whereas his brother Frans Hals was famous for his life-sized portraits and genre works, Dirck opted for a far more modest format. He almost always painted fashionably-dressed figures, usually celebrating al fresco or indoors. The size of his paintings had little influence on the size of the figures in it: if he had a larger area he simply filled it with more revellers. In all probability the price of his work was related to the number of figures – a common way of determining the price of paintings at the time.2 From documents relating to a raffle of paintings that Dirck Hals organized with the engraver Cornelis van Kittesteyn in 1634, we know that Hals termed his figures ‘modern’.3 There were six oval paintings put up for raffle with moderne beelden, that is to say modern figures. They were assessed at 34 guilders each: unfortunately the number of figures in them and their dimensions are not given. To a contemporary it must have been obvious at a glance why Dirck Hals’s figures were ‘modern’. Now, 400 years later, it has taken a good deal of research to establish that his figures were dressed according to the latest fashion – and not decked out in fantastical costumes, as was long believed. 4 Dirck Hals’s interest in fashion is obvious from his designs for prints showing the typical dress of the elite in different European countries. The costumes and the poses and gestures of the figures in this painting are typical of the fashionable, upper classes of Dirck Hals’s time – for instance the straight backs and the elegant pose, hand on hip, of the man in black in the centre of the picture.5 What’s more this type of composition – the ‘gallant company’ – was relatively new at the beginning of the seventeenth century and this also made it ‘modern’. 1 Kolfin 2005, p. 106. 2 See the essay by Sluijter on the various ways of setting prices in Tummers/Jonckheere 2005. 3 Van der Willigen 1866, pp. 13 and 14; Miedema 1980, vol. 1, pp. 157-159; Köhler et al. 2006, pp. 176-178, note 23. 4 See 86 the essay by De Winkel, p. 40ff. 5 See the essay by Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff. 6 See the essay by Tummers, p. 8ff. 16 The broad painting style and the happy expressions on the faces are characteristic of Dirck Hals – his paintings contain a striking number of smiling ladies. The vivid colours, like the bright red costume of the man in the right foreground, indicate that the painting must have been painted between 1620 and 1625. After that Dirck ‘broke’ his colours more, as it was termed in the seventeenth century: he made them less pure by mixing them. Opinions vary as to possible moralistic overtones in this type of painting.6 One comical note, however, seems unmistakable: the ill-mannered behaviour of the dogs in the foreground offers an amusing counterpoint to the gallant poses of the elegantlydressed ladies and gentlemen. AT 16 Dirck Hals (Haarlem 1591 – Haarlem 1656) Music-Making Company on a Terrace, 1620-25 Oil on panel, 53 x 84 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from a private collection 87 dirck h a l s / dirck va n delen Festive Company in a Renaissance Room Whereas his famous brother Frans Hals painted larger than lifesized civic guard banquets (cat. no. 43), Dirck Hals specialized in feasts and banquets in small sizes. In this painting he worked with the architectural painter Dirck van Delen. We also know of two other compositions dated 1628 on which Dirck van Delen and Dirck Hals collaborated: Van Delen painted the impressive architecture in Dutch Renaissance style (meticulously rendered with his characteristic incised lines), while Dirck Hals was responsible for the foreground scenes with the celebrating figures.1 It is interesting to note that they evidently took the credit for the end result and with it the right to sell the work turn and turn about. Two of the paintings are signed and dated by Dirck Hals. This painting, however, bears the signature of Dirck van Delen. In Flanders in particular it was customary for artists with different specialities to work together on the same composition, and collectors were very interested in works like this.2 In the Northern Netherlands it was mainly architectural and landscape painters who adopted this practice. There is every reason to believe that in this case the result was expensive, not just on account of the size and the painstakingly rendered architectural setting, but because of the number of figures and their refined execution. We can see fashionable ladies and gentlemen conversing, making music, playing tric-trac (a form of backgammon) and enjoying wine, oysters and other delicacies. Although Dirck van Delen lived in Arnemuiden from 1625 to 1671, there is reason to believe that he also spent some time in Haarlem. According to the artists’ biographer Arnold Houbraken, he was even directly involved with a joke that some of Frans Hals’s pupils played on their teacher.3 Houbraken maintains that in the evening Hals was in the habit of drinking until he was ‘full to the gills’, 4 and his pupils used to take it in turns to help him home so that he would not fall in a canal or suffer some other mishap. No matter how drunk he was, Hals always mumbled a prayer before he went to sleep, concluding with the wish: ‘Dear Lord, take me early to your high Heaven.’ 5 To test whether he really meant it, his pupils decided to pull up his bed with ropes and 17 bored holes in the ceiling to pull the ropes through. According to Houbraken, Adriaan Brouwer, who was one of Hals’s pupils at the time, and Dirck van Delen were involved. Their prank had the intended effect, says Houbraken. He [Hals], who in the fug of his drunken state nonetheless became aware of this [that his bed was rising], and decided that Heaven had answered his prayer . . . changed his tune, crying much louder than usual, ‘Not so hasty, dear Lord, not so hasty, not so hasty’. Although this anecdote is difficult to verify, the mention of Dirck van Delen is at the least remarkable. He may have spent some time working as an architectural painter in Hals’s workshop. In any event it seems likely that Dirck Hals and Dirck van Delen made their joint compositions in Haarlem. AT Dirck Hals (Haarlem 1591 – Haarlem 1656) Dirck van Delen (Heusden 1605 – Arnemuiden 1671) Festive Company in a Renaissance Room, 1628, signed and dated in cartouche above the door D. van Delen Fecit 1628 Oil on panel, 92.5 x 157 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage 17 1 Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna inv. no. 684; Christie’s, New York sale 29 January 1998, lot 17. 2 See Honig 1995. 3 See Houbraken 1718-1721, vol. 1, p. 94. 4 Ibid., ‘tot den keel vol met drank’ 5 Ibid., ‘Lieve Heer, haal my vroeg in uwen 88 hoogen Hemel’ 6 Ibid., Hy [Hals] die in den dommel van zyn dronkenschap dit egter gewaar werd [dat zijn bed omhoog bewoog], en vast besloot dat de Hemel zyn gebed verhoord hadde ... veranderde van toon, roepende veel luider als gewoonlyk: Zoo haastig niet, lieve Heer, zoo haastig niet, zoo haastig niet’. 89 dirck h a l s Garden Party with a Company Dancing and Making Music A group of fashionable young people has assembled in an idyllic landscape to make merry. Music is being played on a cello, a violin and a flute, and on the right an elegant young lady and gentleman – both decked out in ostrich feathers – are dancing. The guests are probably between 20 and 25 years old and are wearing exceedingly expensive costumes. There is a reason why the costumes in merry companies are often brightly coloured, especially at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1604, painter and art historian Karel van Mander advised painters to depict wealthy young people in bright clothes. He explained that this was in keeping with the high-spirited and cheerful character of young people and was typical of the young gentry.1 According to the poet Jacob Cats, opulent dress was also evidence of amorous intentions; in his view anyone who appeared ‘fine and colourful’ was ‘fishing’ for lovers and was not intending to tie themselves down in matrimony (which Cats would have preferred to see).2 As the century progressed, however, painters used the brightest colours more sparingly in their gallant companies, often reserving the boldest colours for their most important figures. Dirck Hals placed his company in a diagonal line, only interrupted by the dancing couple – who thus gain added emphasis. He gave the dancing couple the brightest colours (yellow and red), the colours that according to seventeenth-century art theory had the most ‘power’ and by their nature stood out the most. 4 Hals also has an elegant man in the foreground on the left expressly looking at the dancing couple. The dancing in this painting is altogether different from the peasant dance depicted in Jan Steen’s The Fair at Warmond (cat. no. 8), where people hold hands and dance rather wildly in a circle. In Dirck Hals’s painting, the dance looks much more restrained and elegant. The man on the right raises his right foot, but is not bending his back – a mark of refinement.5 At the start of the seventeenth century dancing couples were a regular feature of paintings, particularly works portraying the prodigal son. There, dancing stood for lasciviousness and illicit sexual acts. This is in keeping with the subject of the prodigal son who led a life of profligacy until, reduced to abject poverty, he 1 Mander 1973, fol. 42v. See also Gordenker 1999, p. 88. 2 Cats 1625 (ed. 1712) vol. 1, p. 247, quoted in Kolfin 2005, note 14, p. 266. 3 ‘Met een vriendelijck toelachend aenschouwen/ Met omhelsinghen/ en aermen omvangen/ En de 90 hoofden toeneyghende doen hangen/ nae malcander/ als vol Liefden doorgoten/ met de recht handen in een ghesloten.’ Van Mander 1973, vol. 1, p. 159, quoted in Kolfin 2005, pp. 100 and 266, note 15. 4 Taylor 1992. 5 See the essay by 18 returned in ignominy to his parents’ house. In scenes like this we can therefore often find a jester who mocks the dancing couple.6 In Hals’s painting moralistic references like that are noticeably absent. He presents rather an idealized image of the amusements of the young and wealthy. The openness to love was seen as characteristic of youth and so Karel van Mander gave specific advice about how a painter could best portray amorous young couples, ‘With a friendly, laughing appearance/ With embraces/ and arm in arm/ And the heads bent towards one another/ as if permeated with love/ with their right hands clasped.’3 Exactly like the loving couples we can see in the background of Hals’s composition. SvM/AT Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff. 6 Kolfin 1999. 18 Dirck Hals (Haarlem 1591 – Haarlem 1656) Garden Party with a Company Dancing and Making Music, c. 1630 Oil on panel, 55 x 86.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 91 dirck h a l s Company Making Music in an Interior A fashionable company of 16 amuse themselves with music in a domestic interior. In the centre a seated woman sings from a songbook on her lap, while she appears to keep time with her right hand. She is accompanied by three musicians, a standing woman with a lute (seen from the back), a woman at a harpsichord (with a beautifully decorated lid) and a gentleman on the violin (right). Two prominently positioned gentlemen on the left are the very picture of elegance: hand on hip, one foot behind the other with the toes casually turned outwards, as became a gentleman at the time.1 They are dressed according to the latest fashion in starched white ruffs and large floppy hats. In the background on the right in the shadows, a likewise magnificently dressed little boy mimics their elegant pose with his hand on his hip and one foot in front of the other. It is a type of symmetry (a repetition in mirror image) that Dirck Hals often used to create coherence in his compositions (see cat. no. 16). It is not hard to guess what the song is about – love. In the foreground Dirck Hals prominently placed oysters, a well-known aphrodisiac,2 and in the background a couple caress. Although there are two children busy with a splendid wine cooler in the left foreground, none of the guests holds a glass. It is the amorous music, not the wine that sets the tone of this domestic gathering. The sketchy style and the harmonious ochre tones are typical of the gallant companies that Dirck Hals produced in great numbers in the 1630s. The ‘tonal phase’, a limited palette of green and ochre shades, was also very popular in landscapes of this period. In the background of Hals’s painting we can see five such landscapes. They have been hung remarkably high. The fact that paintings actually were sometimes hung in this manner can be deduced from an observation by the painter and art theoretician Gerard de Lairesse (1640–1711). In his Groot Schilderboek he complained that he had seen many landscapes hung so high that it was impossible for the viewer to look at them as the perspective demanded – with the horizon at eye level.3 The subject of music-making reflects what we know of the Hals family’s lifestyle. One of the earliest biographies of Dirck’s 1 See the essay by Roodenburg and Bouffard-Veilleux, p. 28ff. 2 See De Jongh et al. 1976, cat. no. 51. 3 De Lairesse 1707, vol. 1, pp. 345-347. 4 ‘J. Wieland, een oud Liefhebber, en die de meeste der zelve gekent heeft, getuigt: dat al de kinderen 92 van F. Hals luchtig van geest, en beminnaars van Zang- en Speelkonst geweest hebben.’ See Houbraken 1718-21 (ed. 1976), vol. 1, p. 95. 5 See the biography by Irene van Thiel-Stroman in Köhler et al. 2006, pp. 176 and 177, note 9. 19 famous brother, Frans Hals, by the painter and art theoretician Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) quotes an old art-lover who had known some of Frans Hals’s children personally. ‘J. Wieland, an old art-lover, who knew most of them himself, testified that all the children of F. Hals were light of spirit and lovers of song and music.’4 In all likelihood Dirck loved music and song too. Like Frans, he was for many years a member (beminnaer) of the Wijngaertranken Haarlem chamber of rhetoric, where poetry, singing and music-making were among the main activities.5 AT 19 Dirck Hals (Haarlem 1591 – Haarlem 1656) Company Making Music in an Interior, 1633, signed and dated lower right DHALS AN 1633 Oil on panel, 51.5 x 83 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage 93 masquer ades and fancy dress celebr ations Fancy dress festivities were perhaps the most dangerous celebrations in the seventeenth century – at least in the view of the moralists. Masked and unrecognizable revellers could let themselves go shamelessly. The situation could become very unruly, particularly during carnival. Some believed that the licentiousness had a cleansing effect: people – like garments – needed to be ‘aired’ now and again. But by no means everyone agreed. Adriaan van de Venne came up with an ingenious response to this controversy in his unique painting of a peasant Shrove Tuesday which is getting out of hand (cat. no. 20). Painting costumed celebrations was not a separate speciality, and several artists turned their hand to it on occasion. They show us – for the first time in history – a wide range of fancy dress parties: a wild man masquerade, ‘mummers’ (masked gentlemen who often gate-crashed parties) and Shrove Tuesday processions, when a girl (or boy!) was dressed as the May Queen. A single unusually-clad individual might also prompt a painting – a princess dressed up in a spectacular Indian feather cloak or the familiar figure of the drunkard Pekelharing in his jester’s outfit. Adriaen van de Venne, Peasant Shrove Tuesday, c. 1625 (detail of cat. no. 20) a dr i a en pietersz va n de v enne Peasant Shrove Tuesday ‘Indeed, not only do many men wear women’s clothes, and women men’s clothes, but they disfigure themselves further with masks . . . and do not respect the Lord’s work and pay no heed to the creations of his hands,’ wrote preacher Caspar Jansz Coolhaes in 1606, lamenting the Shrove Tuesday revelries.1 The customs surrounding this important February festival before the start of Lent were rooted in Mediaeval rituals, when to drive out winter people went around dressed as animals, devils or fools; groups of young men in disguise – charivari – went through the towns and the countryside, accompanying themselves on pots, pans, gratings and cows’ horns. They burst into houses, often looking for food and drink, and called the owners to account.2 In Adriaen van de Venne’s Peasant Shrove Tuesday we can still see a little of this practice. In a frozen landscape, probably with Rijswijk’s Oude Kerk in the background, a procession of curious figures passes by.3 Crossing a bridge, they arrive at a house where there is a woman wearing a man’s coat, and a man playing a rommelpot (a type of drum) is entertaining the people. A man vomits out of a window. The revellers are equipped with pans, baskets, funnels, bellows and gratings. Someone is carrying sausages and a dead goose on a long stick, the symbol of ‘Fat’ Shrove Tuesday. Behind him a woman who has fallen over shows her backside. Under the bridge a peasant is defecating, as is the dog beside him. In the foreground there are two men fighting with knives, a peasant whose basket of eggs has tipped over, and a cooper. The broken hoops at his feet and the spilt eggs probably refer to such proverbs as ‘do not put all your eggs in one basket’. 4 This is all being observed by a frowning, fashionably-dressed couple from the city, who point up the contrast between town and country. Shrove Tuesday was a highlight in the revelries of the upsidedown world, roughly from St Martin’s Day on 11 November to Easter, which revolved around the temporary reversal of the existing relationships in society. In the words of the cultural historian Herman Pleij, its objective was ‘a social hygiene of the community’.5 The social hierarchy was reversed, foolishness and cross-dressing were encouraged and the normal standards and 1 ‘Ja, vele mans trecken dan niet alleen vrouwecleederen, ende vrouwen manscleederen aen, maer mismaecken hun verder met momaensichten … ende sien niet op dat werc des Heeren ende hebben gheen acht op het geschapen sijner handen’. Ter Gouw 1871, p. 187, quoted 96 from Coolhaes’s Comptoir Almanach oft Journael op het jaer 1606. 2 Pleij 1979, ch. II. See also Kruiswijk/Nesse 2004, p. 58. 3 Y. Bruijnen, in Bikker et al. 2007, cat. no. 301, note 12. 4 ‘Plokker 1984, cat. no. 46. See also Bruijnen, op. cit. (note 3) 5 ‘sociale hygiëne van de gemeenschap’. 20 values were ridiculed. As the quote from Coolhaes indicates, the Reformation clamped down on this supposedly beneficial outburst of debauchery, and the growing opposition from church and state gradually led this, like most festivities, to dwindle into more modest celebrations indoors.6 For his Peasant Shrove Tuesday, Van de Venne called on existing Shove Tuesday pictorial traditions and on his sketchbook of 1626.7 The painting would therefore appear to date from around this time, when celebrations evidently still happened in the old-fashioned way. Van de Venne depicted the Shrove Tuesday procession a number of times, in grisailles and in a print. 8 From the banderole text beneath one of the grisailles, ‘the funnier, the better’, and the text below the print it clearly has a satirical cautionary meaning: ‘Without reason, without wit/ With a greedy blustering roar/ At the Shrove Tuesday feast/ You who take pleasure/ In this farcical peasant play/ Look to your own affairs/ Prize the art and fare thee well.’ JH H. Pleij, ‘Van Vastelavond tot Carnaval’, in: Den Bosch 1992, pp. 10-44, p. 13. 6 See for example Roodenburg 1990, pp. 330-332. 7 See with regard to Van de Venne’s sketchbook Royalton-Kisch 1988, esp. cat. nos. 75, 78 and 79. 8 Plokker 1984, cat. no. 44, note 3. See also Den Bosch 1992, cat. nos. 66 and 67. 9 ‘Sonder reden sonder Gheest/ Met een Gulsich bulder Brallen/ Op den Vasten Avondt Feest/ Ghij die neemt een soet Vermaecken/ In dit kluchtich Boere Spell/ Let oock op uw eijgen saecken/ Prijst de kunst en houd u wel.’ 20 Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (Delft c. 1587 – The Hague 1662) Peasant Shrove Tuesday, c. 1625, signed lower right … // …nne hage Oil on panel, 72.1 x 93 cm Limburgs Museum, Venlo, loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, gift from H. Teding van Berkhout esq., Baarn 97 hor atius(?) bollongier Masquerade of Valentine and Orson Art historian Wilhelm Martin (1876–1954) identified the late medieval romance of Valentine and Orson, the twin sons of the Greek king Alexander and Bellissant, sister of King Pippin of France, in this painting by Horatius1 Bollongier.2 Separated as infants as a result of spite and misunderstanding, Valentine grew up at court. Orson, raised by a she-bear, was a wild man, but was tamed by his brother, after which they performed heroic deeds and did battle to restore their mother’s honour. The earliest French edition dates from 1489. The first Dutch translation seems to have been published around 1525.3 Bollongier’s painting shows a street masquerade and harks back to a print (fig. below) after a background scene in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559). Evidently this play was performed during carnival – often, as we can see in Bruegel’s picture, followed by a collection. As in the Bruegel, a hairy wild man wrapped in a coarse hide with his club over his shoulder stands in front of a house. He is surrounded by three companions, a monarch, a woman with a ring and a crossbowman. Bystanders watch the play. If this is the tale of Valentine and Orson – iconographically the title print in an After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Masquerade of Valentine and Orson, woodcut, 27.5 x 40.1 cm 1 In 2001 Goosens tentatively attributed the Masquerade of Valentine and Orson and other genre pieces traditionally accredited to the flower still life painter Hans Bollongier to his brother Horatius. See Goosens 2001. 2 Martin 1935, p. 451, note 515. 3 See Kuiper 2010; Antwerp 98 1987, p. 9. 4 Een schone ende wonderlijcke historie van Valentijn ende Oursson, Amsterdam, Jan Jacobsz Bouman 1657. This is the only clearly identifiable contemporary illustration of Valentine and Orson. Beside Valentine and Orson we can see a horseman and a woman, possibly 21 Amsterdam edition of 1657 is quite different4 – the men alongside Orson may be King Pippin and Valentine. The woman’s identity is unclear as several women in the story can be linked to rings. The masquerade of the twin brothers is documented at least once: in 1547 actors dressed as Valentine and Orson welcomed Edward VI at his coronation.5 There are no other records of performances during popular festivals, but masquerades featuring wild men occurred throughout Europe. The highlight was usually the ritual capture.6 As far back as 1364 there is mention of a payment for taking part in such a play, ‘a company that plays the wild men’.7 If the work in Rotterdam depicts a more general wild man play, the woman, under the watchful eye of the monarch, may be enticing the savage out of the woods with her ring, an act that carries connotations of marriage. A text below some copies of Bruegel’s print, which begins ‘I, the Wild Man, must now surrender to my captors’, appears to support this interpretation. 8 The wistful complaint by the innkeeper’s wife Grietje in W.D. Hooft’s play of 1630, set during a miserable Shrove Tuesday, likewise points to this: ‘How well they used to play the Emperor and the Wild Man, both at the doors of the poor and for the wealthiest.’ 9 Evidently the feast was no longer what it had been. A Star Singers on Twelfth Night by Bollongier, almost identical in size, tells us that he painted contemporary festival scenes, and so he may well have seen a wild man masquerade in Haarlem.10 JH King Pippin and his sister Bellisant. 5 Bernheimer 1952, p. 71. 6 See Ter Gouw 1871, p. 554. 7 ‘Ghesellen die daer speelen mitten wilden manne’. Kalff 190610, II, p. 6. 8 ‘Ick Wildeman, moet my nu wel ghevanghen gheven’. 9 ‘In hoe fray speuldeme van de Keyser, en vande Wilde Man, soo wel voor slechten haer deur, als voor den grootsten prijcker.’ Hooft 1630, p. F4r. 10 See Briels 1987, p. 134 (as Hans Bollongier); Sotheby’s, London, 12 December 2002, lot 151 (as Hans Bollongier). 21 Horatius(?) Bollongier (Haarlem 1604 – Haarlem 1678) Masquerade of Valentine and Orson, 1628 Oil on panel, 36 x 29 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam 99 judith leyster Pekelharing 22 Like Hans Worst and Jan Klaassen, Pekelharing was a wellknown stage and carnival character in the seventeenth century. Pekelharing’s name refers to his heavy drinking, and derives from the unquenchable thirst that arises from eating a pekelharing (a herring that has spent a long time in salt), so Pekelharing almost always has a tankard in his hand. Such a figure was also known as a kannekijker (someone who spent too much time looking into a tankard). In this picture Pekelharing is holding the tankard in such a way that the viewer can glimpse the inside, so the viewer becomes the kannekijker – a visual joke on the artist’s part. In his jerkin with broad collar, large buttons and beret with a long feather, Pekelharing was a remarkable sight. An outfit like this – in Pekelharing’s case it could vary considerably – had been used in the Netherlands as a carnival costume since the sixteenth century and originally came from the Italian commedia dell’arte.1 One of the things that Pekelharing did was to speak the truth in farces, jestingly but without mincing words. As a figure outside the social hierarchy, Pekelharing could get away with it, and this must often have led to hilarious situations. Pekelharing was consequently a welcome guest at such events as rhetoricians’ banquets, fairs and Shrove Tuesday celebrations.2 In the past Leyster’s Pekelharing was often construed as a warning about how not to behave.3 However, recent interpretations by the art historians Noel Schiller and Thijs Weststeijn have stressed Pekelharing’s comic character and the challenge that he offered painters in portraying revelry in as lifelike a manner as possible. 4 According to seventeenth-century art theory, a laugh was not only one of the most difficult things to depict convincingly, it was also an expression that sparked the same kind of emotion in the viewer, so it is not surprising that a print after a similar painting of Pekelharing by Frans Hals (c. 1628-30; see fig. 5 on p. 26) was used as the title page of a joke book (Nugae Venales, 1648). In art, Pekelharing is particularly prominent in Haarlem works. Dirck Hals, Hendrick Gerritsz Pot and Jan Steen all used this character in their merry companies.5 1 Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in Haarlem/Worcester 1993, p. 150. 2 Alexander 2003, see also Schiller 2006, p. 2ff. 3 See Haarlem/Worcester 1993, pp. 130-135. Köhler et al. 2006, pp. 535536. 4 See the essay by Weststeijn, p.20ff, 100 and Schiller 2006, pp. 4-6. 5 See among others Dirck Hals, Merry Company, 1639, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, inv. no. 1549; Jan Steen, Christening Feast, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. no. 795B; further references in Washington/ This painting is one of the earliest known works by Judith Leyster. She was not acknowledged as a ‘master painter’ by the Haarlem painters’ guild until 1632, but she had already made independent works before that. She signed them with her unusual monogram, JL with a star linked to it – a reference to her name, which means ‘lodestar’. Revellers in fancy dress also appear in three other paintings by Leyster (see fig. 4 on p. 46). Her self-portrait of c. 1632 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington is particularly striking. In it Leyster makes a point of presenting herself as a painter of figures celebrating. On the easel she shows a painting in which one figure has already been completed – a violinist in pantalone (trousers worn as part of a carnival costume). SvM/AT London/Haarlem, 1989-90, cat. no. 31, and Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath 1993. 22 Judith Leyster (Haarlem 1609 – Heemstede 1660) Pekelharing, 1629, signed and dated upper right on the tankard JL* 1629 (JL in ligature and linked to a star) Oil on canvas, 88 x 83.7 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 101 pieter codde Merry Company with Masked Dancers A company of 25 people amuse themselves with conversation and music. A wine cooler in the left foreground and glasses on the stand on the right suggest drinking, but none of the figures holds a glass. The light indicates that the scene is set during the day. There is a bed in the centre of the back wall of the room, and in front of it a masked gentleman dances with a lady with her back to us. On the left some women stand in the company of two other masked men. Various explanations have been suggested for the presence of the masked dancers. The American art historian Caroline Bigler Playter, for example, thinks that it is a wedding party, at which ‘mummers’ (people in masks) often made an appearance.1 Art historian Elmer Kolfin, on the other hand, stresses the affinity with a print in an illustrated songbook of 1621 (fig. below).2 This anonymous print, the illustration to the ‘Comic Parlour-Piece, About Melis Thijssen, a half-witted Lover’, shows the masked Melis entering a room in which there is a merry company sitting around a table. Anonymous, title illustatrion for J.J. Starter’s Boerigheden. Kluchtigh Tafel-Spel, Van Melis Tijssen, een half-backen Vryer, in J.J. Starter, Friesche Lust-Hof, Beplant met verscheyden stichtelijcke Minne-Liedekens/Gedichten/ende Boertighe Kluchten, Amsterdam, 1621, pp. 2-3, University of Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Special Collections, OTM: OK 62-9529 1 Bigler Playter 1972, pp. 76-77. See also the essays by De Winkel, p. 40ff, en Bouffard-Veilleux/Roodenburg, p. 28ff. 2 Kolfin 1998. 3 Preparation for a Carnival, oil on panel, 33 x 52 cm, signed Codde f., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 102 Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. no. 800A. 4 Lammens-Pikhaus 1976, p. 182. 5 Kolfin 2005, pp. 114, 269, note 80. 23 The candles tell us that it is evening. As appears from the similarity to Starter’s text, the print, in which music is being played and the wine cooler lower left is again conspicuous, evidently shows the first scene of a parlour piece, a popular form of interactive play performed by two, three or four people as entertainment at celebrations and parties. Viewed in this light, Kolfin believes that Codde’s work also depicts a parlour piece. Even though there is no textual explanation of the painting, Kolfin’s suggestion seems plausible as Codde had portrayed masked actors before.3 It does, however raise the question as to why so little attention is being paid to their supposed play. Perhaps they have already finished the performance and are mingling with the audience afterwards, an aspect of the parlour piece that is explicitly mentioned. 4 Which leaves us with the matter of what sort of event this was. During the 1630s Codde was looking for gaps in the highly competitive market for the company piece and he experimented with combinations of genres and subjects.5 This suggests that he had already consciously steered clear of too specific associations in his work and opted for the vague and ambiguous no-man’s-land between tradition, form and expectation as his field. JH 23 Pieter Codde (Amsterdam 1599 – Amsterdam 1678) Merry Company with Masked Dancers, 1636, signed and dated PCodde/A° 1636 Oil on panel, 50 x 76.5 cm Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague 103 ja n steen The May Queen A little girl in a white robe with a train stops in front of a house in a village; she has chains around her neck and flowers in her hair. Her eyes are closed and she holds a goblet in her hands, also decorated with flowers. Behind her two laughing girls carry the train, while a merry, well-dressed youth with a flower-bedecked hat holds a long stick, likewise decorated with flowers, above their heads. The family looks on with delight, as do some children who have come to watch. The little girl is the Pinxsterblom, or May Queen, a subject that Steen depicted several times; the version shown here is the earliest of them.1 In the Catholic tradition Whitsun, 50 days after Easter, was the feast of the descent of the Holy Ghost and a customary day for baptisms and communions. The May Queen’s white dress refers to this. The pagan spring and fertility festivals, traditionally celebrated with a May Queen and flowers, were another background to the festival. The festival as Steen depicted it consisted of a procession, when children, often in a circle around the May Queen, who is decked out with flowers and sometimes expensive trinkets, sang for a small payment in the form of some sweetmeat or a small coin to put in the goblet. The first couplet of a May Day song recorded in a Dordrecht song of 1676 explains: 24 Pinxterblomloopen (May Day processions) were banned, and people were allowed to remove the chain or any other decoration from the May Queen by way of a penalty. In 1635 Haarlem banned the May Day processions with flower-bedecked children. 4 None of that is reflected in the painting, however. Unlike Steen’s later May Day Festival (cat. no. 25), which seems to sound a critical note, he had clearly set out to depict an atmosphere of good-natured benevolence. The branch the boy holds in his hand occurs repeatedly in Steen’s renditions of the subject, apart from in a May Day in Paris. It is a May branch or ciertak, which places the celebration in the broader context of the May festivals, in which it was customary to decorate a maypole with such things as flowers, garlands, pennants, little pieces of paper and eggs. JH Oh people, turn aside, and tarry a little see how the proud May Queen approaches. Let us now sing a ditty at this May Day feast; this sweet sound costs just a farthing, do not be annoyed folks, you were also young once.2 The collection could be given to a charitable institution such as an orphanage, but it was often divided up among the collectors. After the Reformation the feast, like so many other religious festivals, was watered down considerably. But as the historian Gilles Schotel remarked in 1867: ‘The Reformation did away with many abuses, yet those that were committed on the saints’ days were so deeply engrained in the lives of the people that neither Luther nor Calvin, nor ecclesiastical or worldly bans could abolish them.’3 Nonetheless, in 1612 in Amsterdam, for example, 1 Braun 1980, cat. no. 27. Cat. nos. 71, 171, 246 and 263 are other takes on the subject. 2 ‘Ey luytjes, wilt wat wijcken, en staet een weynigh om/ siet hoe hier komt aen-strijcken de fiere Pincxster-blom./ Laet ons nu een deuntjen queelen, op dese 104 Pincxster-feest;/ dit soet geluyt kost maer een duyt, laet het u doch niet verveelen; luytjes, jy hebt mee jonck geweest.’ Dordrecht 1676, p. 121. 3 ‘De hervorming heeft vele misbruiken afgeschaft, doch die op de heilige dagen gepleegd werden, waren zoo diep in ’t leven des volks gedrongen, dat noch Luther noch Calvijn, nog kerkelijke noch wereldlijke banbliksems ze konden afschaffen.’ Schotel 1867, p. 211. 4 Kruijswijk/Nesse 2004, p. 142. 24 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The May Queen, c. 1648-51, signed Oil on panel, 75.9 x 58.6 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917, Philadelphia 105 ja n steen The May Day Festival The nineteenth-century compilers of Steen’s oeuvre, John Smith and Tobias van Westrheene, mistakenly took The May Day Festival, or The Little Collector, for a St Nicholas celebration. However, the scene is set during the May Day festival (see also cat. no. 24). In the sixteenth century it was a Whitsuntide custom to choose the prettiest girl in the village as the pinxterblom, the May Queen, after which she was adorned with flowers and the boys competed for her favour, but by the start of the seventeenth century the festival had become no more than a children’s game.1 Led by a May Queen or Bride adorned with flowers and trinkets, a procession of children went from house to house to sing in exchange for a small gift. The procession that Steen painted here is modest. There is only one older, rather shy girl carrying the bride’s train. Unlike the girl in Steen’s earlier painting of the May Day festival, this Anonymous after Jan Steen, The May Day Festival, eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 99 x 83 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. RF 3830 1 Ter Gouw 1871, p. 225. 2 Schotel 1867, p. 213. 3 Schotel 1867, p. 213. In Purmerend and the Beemster boys and girls dressed in white and adorned with flowers did indeed go from door to door. 106 25 little bride wears a paper crown; a practice referred to, for instance, in connection with the North Holland village of Zijpe, where the May Queen was decked out with pieces of paper.2 The children are visiting a family. The grandfather, the mother and her baby are positioned behind a fence. A dovecote and a dove, traditionally a symbol of Whitsun, and a flowerpot with a cuckooflower growing in it contribute to the identification of the subject. The old man donates a coin while some bystanders look on. The father sitting on the chair on the right seems to have his gaze fixed on the bride’s trousers, which tell us that the bride is in fact a little boy, a practice recorded in Purmerend and the Beemster.3 As in Zijpe, these children are orphans. In Leiden cakes and small coins were distributed to singing orphans on Whit Monday. These festivities, accompanied as they often were by a degree of frivolity, were not appreciated everywhere. During the seventeenth century May Day processions in towns like Amsterdam, Haarlem, Dordrecht, Zwijndrecht and Enkhuizen were repeatedly banned, although usually without lasting success. Steen’s depiction of the rather poor masquerade seems to convey some social criticism. The boys in the left foreground provide the spectacle with an explicitly negative connotation. Their attributes, the toy windmill and the hoop, were familiar symbols of capricious folly and aimlessness. It is fascinating to compare The May Day Festival with another work by Steen we know of from an eighteenth-century copy in the Louvre (fig. left). The May Queen in the work in the Louvre, though, is a beautifully-dressed little girl, adorned with flowers and followed by three happy children. Beside them is a flowerpot with a cuckooflower in full bloom, totally unlike the scrawny specimen in the work described here. The absence of the bystanders with their pitying looks and the little boys with their toys sets an entirely different tone. JH 25 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The May Day Festival, c. 1663-65, signed Oil on panel, 58.5 x 50 cm Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris 107 a dr i a en h a nnem a n Portrait of Mary Stuart with a Servant In 1664 the painter Adriaen Hanneman received 400 guilders for ‘the likeness of Her Royal Highness of honourable memory in a turban with plumes on her head and a Moor’, probably the dazzling portrait of Mary Stuart shown here.1 The inventory of Huis Honselaarsdijk Palace of 1755/58, however, refers to the painting as ‘The Princess Royal. Mary . . . dressed as an American . . . by the famous painter from The Hague, J. Mijtens . . .’2 The work, later alternately credited to Mijtens and Hanneman, has been attributed to Hanneman since 1954.3 At the age of nine, Mary Stuart (1631–1660), daughter of Charles I of England (1600–1649), was married off to William II (1626–1650), son of Stadholder Frederick Henry and his wife Amalia van Solms. 4 In 1642 she moved from London to The Hague; from 1647 onwards she was Princess of Orange. Her husband died suddenly of smallpox a week before her nineteenth birthday and the birth of her son William III. Her relationship with Amalia was clouded by Mary’s profligate spending and her English loyalties. However she found a kindred spirit in her aunt, her father’s sister Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662), widow of the ‘Winter King’ Frederick IV, Elector Palatine (1596–1632), who had been living in exile in The Hague since 1621. Both had grown up at the English court, where there was a culture of magnificent parties culminating in the performance of ‘masques’, brilliantly staged, visually overwhelming theatrical shows with spectacular scenery and singing, dancing and acting in exquisite costumes.5 A central aspect of the ‘masque’, akin to the French ‘ballets de cour’, was the participation of the royal family, who joined in the dancing and singing. More than just a diversion, the ‘masque’ was a political and symbolic statement, a metaphor of power, selfrepresentation of the monarch and a regular part of the festivities surrounding births, marriages and distinguished visits and also at Christmas and on Twelfth Night. This custom was continued at the courts of Elizabeth and Mary in The Hague. On Twelfth Night (6 January) 1656, Mary organized a masquerade in The Hague, probably the one described in a letter from Elizabeth to Mary’s brother Charles II: 1 ‘het conterfeitsel van Hare Koninklijke Hoogheid Hoogloffelijker memorie met een tulband met pluimen op het hoofd met een Moor’. Ter Kuile 1976, cat. no. 78a, note 2, Archivalia XIII. 2 ‘De princes royael, Maria … in’t gewaad eener Americane … door den beroemden 108 Haagschen konstschilder J. Mijtens…’. Ter Kuile 1976, cat. no. 78a, note 13, with reference to Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer 1974, II, p. 510. 3 See M. Spliethoff, in Oranienbaum 2003, cat. no. II 26. 4 M. Keblusek, ‘Maria Henrietta Stuart I’, in Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon 26 Your sister was very well dressed, like an Amazone, the princess Tarente, like a shepheardess; madamoselle d’Orange, a nimph . . . Vanderduss . . . he was a Gipsie . . . They were 26 in all, and danc’d till five a clock in the morning.6 We may assume that it was at a party of this kind that Mary wore the feather cloak lined with silver brocade in which Hanneman immortalized her. The feather cloak, a traditional ritual garment of the Amazon Indians, layered with red Ibis feathers in each knot of the fabric, was brought to Europe as an expensive curiosity.7 Since the governorship of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen in Dutch Brazil (1636–1644), Indian clothes like this had become popular in court circles, as can be seen in the portrait of Mary’s niece, Sophia of Hanover, by her sister Louise. 8 Elizabeth’s letter suggests that the dance, attended by a small company, was relatively informal. However, the painting, which shows the princess with pearls, jewellery and a turban of ostrich feathers, functioned as a pendant to a portrait of William II by Gerard van Honthorst, and so was apparently regarded as official.9 The exotic splendour of Mary’s costume, emphasized by her black servant, was evidently considered ‘appropriate’ in this context. JH van Nederland. URL: http://www.inghist. nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/DVN/lemmata/ data/MariaHenriettaStuart (13/08/2010). 5 For an excellent discussion of the ‘masque’ at the courts of Mary and Elizabeth see Keblusek 1999. 6 Keblusek 1999, pp. 197-198. 7 Due 2002, pp. 192- 195. Native South-American women were called ‘Amazones’ at the time, see Anonymous 1661/66, pp. 10-16. 8 Museum Wasserberg-Anholt, Isselburg, inv. no. 729. 9 Ter Kuile 1976, cat.no. 78a. 26 Adriaen Hanneman (The Hague 1603/04 – The Hague 1671) Portrait of Mary Stuart with a Servant, c. 1664 Oil on canvas, 130.5 x 120.8 cm Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague 109 celebr ations in a domestic set ting The authorities frequently clamped down on public celebrations of popular festivals, and so the Twelfth Night and St Nicholas festivities increasingly moved indoors in the second half of the century. Their religious nature was particularly controversial, since they were originally Catholic feast days and as such were a thorn in the side of the Protestant clergy. The Twelfth Night procession with a star and the public sale of Twelfth Night dolls and sweets were repeatedly banned. For painters like Jan Steen and Richard Brakenburg these celebrations were an important source of inspiration, generating as they did exceptionally lively, narrative paintings. They were not the only domestic celebrations in the painting of the Golden Age. A new type of picture – the lying-in visit to a new mother – became fashionable, while less specific but lavish celebrations remained popular throughout the century. Richard Brakenburgh, Merry Company, c. 1680 (detail of cat. no. 29) ja n steen Twelfth Night Feast We know of a remarkably large number of paintings of Twelfth Night by Jan Steen. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was the most important family festival of the year and Steen’s splendid pictures of the subject must have been in demand. The feast celebrates the Adoration of the Magi on 6 January at the end of the twelve-day period following Christmas. Originally it revolved around religious plays about Herod, but after the Reformation the feast gradually became secular and was celebrated privately, in the home. The revellers chose a king for the day from among their number. This could be decided by a Twelfth Night cake – whoever got the slice with the dried bean in it was the king – or by drawing lots. As we can see in this Twelfth Night Feast, eating and drinking were an important part of the celebrations. The revellers were often visited by ‘star singers’ who, dressed as the three kings and carrying a star, went from door to door singing and asking for treats. Jan Steen quite often painted star singers in the doorways of the houses in which he set the Twelfth Night feast; here it appears that such a company (without the star) has already entered the room. They surround the table with loud music and shouting – a woman ostentatiously claps her hands to her ears – and the king in a paper crown takes a healthy swig from a rummer, the moment when everyone shouts: ‘The king drinks!’ The seemingly uninvited procession is led by a man dressep up as an old woman with a rommelpot and a string of eggs, an attribute of idleness that can also be seen in the earliest depiction of the Twelfth Night feast after Maerten van Cleve, and recurs in a composition by Jacob Jordaens.1 A man smoking a pipe stands behind the king. Beside him there is a cupbearer with a funnel on his head, followed by Steen himself, who waves a broom in the air. Like the string of eggs and the cross-dressing, their attire is also part of the traditional iconography of the carnival and the Shrove Tuesday procession (see also cat. no. 20).2 A man in a high-crowned hat, sometimes interpreted as a rhetorician, sings from a sheet and behind him a young woman brings up the rear. She carries a candlestick with three candles, the symbol of the three kings. This motif is echoed in the Twelfth Night game being played by 1 Van Cleve’s work can be dated c. 1570, but is only known from copies. See, for example, Van Wagenberg-Ter Hoeven 1997, p. 91, fig. 31, and p. 116, fig. 61 (Jordaens, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. GG786), and p. 138, fig. 84 112 (Richard Brakenburgh). Brakenburgh undoubtedly copied the subject from Steen. 2 See, for example, Hollstein XXXV (Adriaen van de Venne), nos. 7 and 13. 3 Van Wagenbergh-Ter Hoeven 1997, p. 164, no. 119, mentions as possibilities a 27 the girl in the foreground who lifts her skirt to jump over three candles – a subject Steen painted on many occasions. The little child with the kolf stick often recurs too. Finally, the picture on the wall occupies a central place; unfortunately little of it can be seen.3 The 4th Duke of Bedford purchased the rarely loaned Twelfth Night Feast, along with paintings by Robert Bragge, at a London sale in 1754, and the painting has never left England since then. On that occasion it was noted that the work portrayed Steen and his friends – including a pipe-smoking Rembrandt. 4 Although the identification with Rembrandt was never referred to after this, the smoker could well be the artist. If this is so, his inclusion would seem to be a homage by Steen, who incorporated Rembrandt quotes in several other paintings (see cat. nos. 4 and 8). JH certain type of sorcery (after Scharf 1878), or The Annunciation to the Shepherds. 4 Sale, Prestage, London, 24/25 January 1754 (Lugt no. 823), lot no. 53 (24 January): ‘Jan Steen – Twelfth-night, with Himself and Friends chusing King and Queen, amongst which is Rembrant’s Portrait smoaking.’ 27 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) Twelfth Night Feast, c. 1670-71 Oil on panel, 58.4 x 55.9 cm His Grace the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estates 113 ja n steen Merry Company on a Terrace ‘It is not possible to express the characters of the various persons with more feeling, and this artistic jewel rightly earns the name of masterpiece for its maker.’ This is the earliest reference to Merry Company on a Terrace – at the Schimmelpenninck sale in Amsterdam in 1819.1 The mood is superbly captured in this splendid work dating from the final stage of Steen’s career.2 Steen opted for the enclosed setting of a terrace for this merry company. A lot had happened since the emergence around 1600, particularly in the work of David Vinckboons, of the merry company on a terrace as pictorial type in its own right. Steen’s characters are individuals with their own expressions and background. Steen manages in an eclectic way – stylistically, compositionally and iconographically – to forge a satirical entity with motifs from well-known themes like the chaotic household, the inn, the family portrait and the garden of love. What grabs the attention is obviously the lively woman planted in front of the table with her revealing blue jacket, decorated with two meaningfully placed roses. She draws the viewer into the painting with a sly look and may be Steen’s second wife, Maria van Egmont.3 Steen portrays himself on her right in his favourite role as ringmaster. He holds a pitcher suggestively erect in his lap. She – the sexual allusion would not have escaped anyone’s notice – holds up her rummer, eager to have it filled, all the while leaning on the leg of the crooning young cittern player in his stage costume. In the left foreground a little boy has harnessed a distinctly unamused dog to his toy horse, a parody of the type of children’s portraits in which the young sitter was portrayed with a welltrained animal as a sign of good breeding. The old man in the middle ground is striking; his grotesque ruff clearly states that Steen’s composition draws on the comic world of theatre players, who were also employed in real life to liven up various celebrations. 4 On his right a girl is being cornered by a flute player with his phallic instrument and by Hans Worst, the ultimate jester, identifiable by the sausage on his hat, portrayed 1 ‘Het is niet mogelijk de karakters der verschillende personen met meerder gevoel uit te drukken, en dit kunstjuweel verdient met regt den naam van het meesterstuk zijns makers’. Sale Amsterdam, Roos (Schimmelpenninck), 12 July 1819, lot 112, Lugt no. 9629. 2 Liedtke 2007, II, cat. no. 197, n. 1: 1668-72 (with reference to Westermann, c. 1668-70); Westermann 1997b, p. 94, fig. 32: 1673-75; H.P. Chapman, in 114 Washington/Amsterdam 1996-97, cat. no. 48: c. 1673-75; Braun 1980, cat. no. 374: 1677-79. 3 See Braun 1980, cat. no. 374; Chapman, in Washington/Amsterdam 1996-97, cat. no. 48; Liedtke 2007, II, cat. no. 197, points to the year of Steen’s marriage to Van Egmont, 1673, and the fact that we do not know what she looked like. 4 Schiller 2006, p. 2. 5 Cf. Kolfin 2005, fig. 11, Frans Pourbus, The Prodigal Son in 28 here with a fool’s stick in his hand.5 He makes obscene advances with his tongue which the girl discourages good-naturedly. On the old man’s left a child reaches for the wineglass, while a boy on a ladder plucks bunches of grapes, the traditional symbol of a fruitful, virtuous marriage, but to be interpreted here as a parody referring to the delight of the ever-present drink. The owl beside its cage also stands for folly and drunkenness.6 Various elements refer to excess and transience.7 Steen deliberately places his merry company in the familiar context of a terrace; the pergola and the tympanum of which are reminiscent of the traditional ‘palace of love’. 8 However, because of the multitude of symbols and motifs the meaning of the work is intentionally more layered than traditional sixteenth-century depictions of this subject and Steen, who heartily joins in the laughter, as H. Perry Chapman noted, goes further than ever in making the unacceptable irresistible.9 JH a Brothel, and fig. 30, Crispijn de Passe I after Maerten de Vos, The Foolish Virgins Feasting, in which the company is sitting at a table under a similar type of pergola in the presence of a jester with a fool’s bauble. 6 See Amsterdam 1976, cat. no. 65. 7 The globe in the background can be interpreted as a symbol of Luck, the broken pillar refers to mortality and transience, like the pot with the hollyhock, which specifically emphasizes the transience of youth and beauty. The jug on its side and the pot of coals with the pipe stand for intemperance. See Liedtke 2007, II, cat. no. 197, p. 846. 8 Westermann 1997b, p. 203. 9 Chapman, in Washington/Amsterdam 1996-97, cat. no. 48, p. 256. 28 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) Merry Company on a Terrace, c. 1670, signed JSteen (JS in ligature) Oil on canvas, 141.5 x 131.4 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1958, New York 115 r ich a r d br a k enburgh Merry Company The painter Richard Brakenburgh has become known primarily for his pictures of merry companies, inspired by the work of his famous predecessor Jan Steen (see also cat. nos. 30 and 32).1 This Merry Company has a good deal in common with paintings by Steen illustrating the saying ‘as the old sing, so pipe the young’ – in other words children copy the behaviour of adults (fig. below).2 But whereas Steen included the saying literally (painted on a scrap of paper) and depicted it with his characteristic coarse humour, Brakenburgh’s painting is less blatant and much more decorous in tone. In his painting Steen shows his typical disorderly household (‘a Jan Steen household’). Children imitate inappropriate adult behaviour: a little girl laughingly holds a pipe, while another child tries to drink wine straight from the spout of a jug. This is Steen warning us in a comical way of the consequences of a bad upbringing. Brakenburgh, in contrast, does show the merriment but does not dwell too much on the excesses. In his Merry Company the old Jan Steen, Merry Household, 1668, oil on canvas, 110.5 x 141 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-C-229 1 Köhler et al. 2006, pp. 115-116. 2 ‘Soo de oude songen, so pypen de jonge’. See also Jan Steen, ‘Soo voer gesongen, soo na gepepen’, c. 1665, oil on canvas, 134 x 163 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague. 3 In real life too a curtain often hung in front of a valuable painting. See Gabriel Metsu, 116 A Woman Reading a Letter, c. 1664-66, oil on panel, 52.5 x 40.2 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, inv. no. 4537, and Wheelock in Washington 2002-03, pp. 7787. 4 See De Lairesse 1707, p. 57, ‘de ziel van een konstig schilderij’. 29 man sings from a songbook, while he beats time with his hand. The lady beside him joines in. In her left hand she holds a songbook, casually yet elegantly – her little finger genteelly crooked. A violinist, who has been prominently placed in the centre of the scene, pushes the book a little further open with his bow as he looks at the music. Two children laugh while they too try to make music – a little girl holds a flute, a boy a cello. However, the way he grasps the bow reveals his ignorance. He is holding the bow incorrectly and clasping the strings with his fingers. Thus Brakenburgh’s children also mimic the behaviour of adults, but this does not lead to total chaos. His tone is lighter. Immediately behind the music-making company we can see a serving maid happily holding up a rummer of wine. However no one is drinking; the company is primarily enjoying the music (in the foreground) and the conversation (in the background). The couple on the left who are not taking part in the elegant amusement, but looking on – both jauntily hand on hip – is also interesting. They call to mind a similar couple in a gallant company by Elias (cat. no. 15). It is up to them to decide, the painter appears to be saying, for the way the adults set the tone is the way their children will behave. The trompe-l’oeil curtain in the foreground emphasizes that this domestic celebration is a painting – Brakenburgh’s invention.3 In atmosphere and style it perfectly reflects the aesthetic of the late Golden Age. Dignity and good manners were key attributes. Painter and writer Gerard de Lairesse went so far as to call them ‘the soul of an artful painting’. 4 AT 29 Richard Brakenburgh (Haarlem 1650 – Haarlem 1702) Merry Company, c. 1680, signed Brakenburg f. Oil on canvas, 40 x 49 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, loan from a private collection, courtesy of Jan Six Fine Art, Amsterdam 117 r ich a r d br a k enburgh The Feast of St Nicholas Haarlem-born Richard Brakenburgh was a pupil of Hendrik Mommers and possibly also of Adriaen van Ostade and Jan Steen.1 His Feast of St Nicholas is in any case very like Steen’s paintings of the same subject in the Rijksmuseum (fig. below) and in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.2 In 1766 there was even mention of a Feast of St Nicholas supposedly painted jointly by the two artists.3 Brakenburgh painted the subject at least three more times; one of these versions has Steen’s – spurious – signature. 4 Brakenburgh presents the St Nicholas celebration in the home of a better-off family. In the middle of the composition there is a sweet little girl with a cake in her apron looking at her mother on the right. The mother, in a red jacket trimmed with white fur and a yellow satin dress, stretches out her arms towards her daughter, in almost exactly the same way as in Steen’s painting. Jan Steen, The Feast of St Nicholas, c. 1663-65, oil on canvas, 82 x 70.5 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-385 1 F.G. Meijer, in: Saur 13 (1996), p. 566. 2 Panel, 1670-75, 58.5 x 49 cm, Museum Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. 1826 (OK). 3 Sale Nicolaes van Bremen, 15 December 1766, lot 42. Hoet/Terwesten 1752-70, II, p. 487. 118 4 Canvas, 97 x 117 cm, signed Steenf, sale Sotheby’s, London, 3 July 1997, lot no. 229; canvas, 77.5 x 81.5 cm, signed lower right R. Brakenburg, whereabouts unknown; canvas, 94.6 x 114.9 cm, signed lower right R. Brakenburg, Christie’s, New York, 30 At the same time the girl – a linking pictorial element absent from Steen’s work – points to her sobbing brother on the left who, like his somewhat older sister beside him, was copied from Steen’s painting in Amsterdam. The snivelling boy has found a birch twig in his shoe (which indicates that he has been naughty and does not deserve a present), but it escapes his notice that his smirking brother behind him on the left alerts the viewer to the bed in which a gift is undoubtedly hidden. On the left beside him two sisters, each holding a doll, regard his distress somewhat inquiringly. The rest of the family, a little brother, grandfather, grandmother and the pipe-smoking father in the wig fashionable at the time, is gathered around the table. Compared with Steen’s painting in Amsterdam, Brakenburgh clearly places less emphasis on the sweets. There is indeed a basket on the floor beside the mother on the right with a spiced loaf leaning against it, but Steen’s so beautifully-rendered delicacies are missing, as is the side of the mantelpiece to which the attention of the littlest ones is being drawn. The lack of sweets can be linked to Brakenburgh’s faith. Unlike the Catholic Steen, he had been a member of the Reformed church since 1671.5 Various examples from the Golden Age show that the feast, the rituals and the refreshments were considered unacceptable by the Reformed church. For example, in his Roomsche mysterien of 1604, the Amsterdam deacon Walich Syvaertsz complained about the mothers who perpetuated the idolatry surrounding the feast of St Nicholas and filled their children’s shoes with ‘all kinds of sweets and treats’.6 In 1607 it was decreed in Delft that ‘no bread, cake, sugar or other foods having the face of any images are to be sold’, as this seemed too much like idolatry.7 And in 1661 the minister of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Petrus Wittewrongel, even wondered who could fail to notice that ‘the fruits of the St Nicholas celebrations are irreligious works of darkness? And heinous idolatries?’8 Judging by the various depictions of the feast by Brakenburgh, who was known for his lavish lifestyle, he would not have taken this fierce criticism too much to heart. JH 25 May 2005, lot no. 273. 5 Bakker 2008, pp. 170, 241. 6 ‘allerley snoeperie ende slickerdemick’. Syvaerts 1604, Voor-rede. 7 ‘gheen broot, coeck, suycker, ofte andere eetwaren te vercopen, hebbende het facoen [gezicht] van eenige beelden’. 8 ‘de vruchten van de St. Nicolaes-avonden ongodsdienstige werken der duysternisse zijn? En grouwelijcke afgoderijen?’ Wouters 2008, p. 294. 30 Richard Brakenburgh (Haarlem 1650 – Haarlem 1702) The Feast of St Nicholas, 1685, signed and dated R. Brakenburgh 1685 Oil on canvas, 49 x 64.5 cm Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam, loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 119 cor nelis dusa rt The Feast of St Nicholas Like Jan Steen and Richard van Brakenburgh (cat. no. 30), Dusart depicted the feast of St Nicholas a number of times. A watercolour by Dusart dated 1687 follows his painting of 1685 of the same subject quite accurately.1 The work shown here probably dates from roughly the same period. In a simple, rather poor dwelling, a cheerful peasant family celebrates the feast of St Nicholas. A boy kneels beside a chair on which a basket of bread, cakes and fruit is displayed. We know that Claes-broot, special almond bread, was made for St Nicholas.2 He laughs up at his mother, waving aloft a new kolf stick in his right hand. In his left he has a waffle, and not, as has been suggested, a penny print.3 The two other children also hold goodies. The girl in her mother’s arms has a long cake; the girl on the right is carrying a large loaf of sweet, spiced bread baked for the feast. On her arm she has a basket of apples and cakes, one of which has a head attached to it with a little stick. The father with his pipe is also celebrating and seems to be singing a song. In the box bed the grandmother is sharing in the festive joy, while the grandfather is eating something tasty in the background. The feast of St Nicholas is traditionally associated with putting out a shoe, as can be seen in the works by Steen and Brakenburgh. The presence of a variety of stockings with gifts in Dusart’s work is therefore striking. Evidently stockings could be put out too, as is usual now at Christmas. However, the idea that the family in this picture was too poor to have shoes appears unlikely. Not only does the mother wear shoes and there is a tiny shoe on the floor, the stocking also appears in Dusart’s watercolour, which shows the whole family wearing shoes. The stocking hanging from the mantelpiece appears to contain food for St Nicholas’s horse. Gifts that frequently form part of the St Nicholas iconography are the kolf stick and ball, which are sticking out of the stocking on the floor beside the boy, some marbles and the birch, traditionally the reward for bad behaviour, in the other stocking. A clay pipe that has also been put in that stocking leads us to fear the worst. Before around 1800 adults did not give one another presents at St Nicholas, which means the pipe must be for the boy. 4 Dusart appears to take a somewhat more critical 1 The Feast of Saint Nicholas, black lead, black chalk, watercolour heightened with white on paper, 33.5 x 27.8 cm, signed and dated on the chair: Corn. dusart.fe./.1687., Christie’s, Amsterdam, 10 November 1997, lot no. 152; The Feast of St Nicholas, 120 1685, canvas on panel, 41 x 35 cm, Tobias Christ Collection, Basel. See Trautscholdt 1966, pp. 182-183, fig. 10. 2 Schotel 1867, pp. 214-216. This ‘almond bread’ may actually be marzipan. 3 Boer-Dirks/ Helsloot 2009, p. 144. The object the boy 31 stance in this work than in his other versions of the subject, in which the children have received sweets in the shape of letters, a top and a wooden horse. JH holds in his hand is in fact too thick to be a print. 4 Kruijswijk/Nesse 2004, p. 218. 31 Cornelis Dusart (Haarlem 1660 – Haarlem 1704) The Feast of St Nicholas, c. 1685, signed Corn. Dusart fe. Watercolour 26.3 x 37.9 cm Stichting Atlas Van Stolk, Rotterdam 121 r ich a r d br a k enburgh The Twelfth Night Feast For a long time this festive work by Richard Brakenburgh was known as Merry Company in an Inn. The fact that the Twelfth Night feast is being celebrated was noticed in 19931 and is proved by the lots worn by some of the revellers. It was customary during Twelfth Night, at home or in the alehouse, to choose a king for the day, complete with a court. This was often done by drawing lots known as a koningsbrief or trekbrief, usually a woodcut on paper on which various characters from the court, sometimes as many as 32, were pictured, sometimes with a little figure. The woodcut could be cut into lots and were sold by hawkers on the days before the Widow of Hendrik van der Putte, Koningsbrief, 17th century, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. RP-P-OB-102.903 32 festival, which took place on 6 January. On one such sheet, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (fig. left), we can see the Sanger (singer). The man standing, singing from a sheet at the top of his voice in the painting does indeed have this lot pinned to his sleeve. The king himself is also recognizable, although he is wearing a cap rather than the usual crown and joining in the singing instead of drinking. Alongside him stands the Speelman with his fiddle; the woman in the front on the left may be the queen. Brakenburgh based her on a female figure Steen used in his Twelfth Night Feast (1668).2 On the rear wall hangs an engraving of a real king and queen. It is a 1634 print of the marriage of King Charles of England and his wife Henrietta Maria by Robert van Voerst to a design by Anthony van Dyck.3 Likewise remarkable is the foliage that can be seen indoors on the birdcage, but particularly outside the window, which apparently bears no relation to the time of the year. It is pictorial inconsistencies like these the artist Philips Angel warns his colleagues about in his 1642 treatise Lof der schilder-konst (and which apparently occurred quite often). 4 The widely celebrated festival, which centered on eating and, above all, heavy drinking, was of course abhorrent to the Calvinist clergy. As the clergyman Caspar Coolhaes put it at the start of the century: There is hardly any house where people do not choose a king. This king must also have a queen; there must also be servants . . . chancellors, councillors, a cook and cook’s boys. These having been chosen, they fall to eating and drinking, engage in all kinds of futile jollity, levity, and all sorts of futile and foolish chatter until midnight, indeed the whole night long until morning.5 Even though aspects of the feast were regularly banned, this often related to outdoor celebrations with singing, and the superstitious custom of burning the ‘kings’ candles’. The playing cards lying on the floor in Brakenburgh’s inn may well be a reference to idleness, it is true, but nonetheless it all looks great fun. JH 1 Van Wagenberg-Ter Hoeven 1993, pp. 90-91, fig. 41. 2 Jan Steen, Twelfth Night Feast, 1668, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel. This figure also appears in Jan Steen’s, As the Old Sing, so Pipe the Young, c. 1665, Royal 122 Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. 3 Hollstein XLI (Voerst), 3. 4 Angel 1642, pp. 44-46. 5 ‘bijna geen huys is er, ofte men verkieset daer eenen coninck. Die coninck moet oock een coninin hebben; daer moeten ooc dienaere … zijn, canseliers, raetsheren, kocke ende kockenjongens. Deze alsoo verkosen synde, gaetet op een vreeten ende suypen aen, bedryven alle onnutte vreuchde, lichtvaerdicheyt, alle onnutte ende sotte clapperijen tot der middernacht toe, ja altermale de geheelen nacht over tot den morgen toe.’ Caspar Coolhaes, Christelycke ende stichtelycke vermaningen (1607), quoted from Van Wagenberg-Ter Hoeven 1997, p. 30. 32 Richard Brakenburgh (Haarlem 1650 – Haarlem 1702) The Twelfth Night Feast, 1691, signed and dated R. Brakenburgh 1691 Oil on canvas, 52 x 62.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage 123 m at thijs na i v eu The Visit to the Nursery A new mother sits on the box bed in a lavishly decorated nursery. She is surrounded by her baby, her husband, a visitor and a wet nurse. The period known as the van-tijd or ‘upsitting’ has begun.1 In the seventeenth century the father fixed a kraamklopper – an ebony plank wrapped in red silk and lace – to the front door as soon as the joyful news of the birth was announced.2 Visitors could then be received after nine days. The mother is dressed for the occasion in her best kraamhuyke (lying-in cloak); she wears her fleppe, a flat headband, and a lavishly trimmed satin jacket. Her new-born is splendidly swaddled. She is on the point of taking her child from the fashionably coiffured lady, who probably previously received it from the nurse who took it from the cradle beside her. After all, the lady has to have her hands free for the glass the father has ready and is offering her. The glass is a rummer specially engraved for the upsitting time. There is a lying-in rummer in the Lakenhal in Leiden (fig. below). The father Anonymous, Rummer designed as a lying-in glass, c. 1730, glass, blown and engraved, 24.3 x 15.9 cm (diameter of foot: 13.3 cm/diameter of bowl: 15.2 cm), Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden 1 For an in-depth examination of seventeenth-century lying-in customs see Schotel 1867, chaps. 2-6. The van-tijd (visiting time) takes its name from the old Dutch verb vanden or vannen – to visit. 124 2 If the family were not well-off, the door handle was wrapped in linen, or twigs were hung on the doorknob. See Schotel 1867, p. 37. 3 Signed and dated 1675, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 33 serves caudle, the traditional lying-in drink, made with hot brandy or wine, eggs, cloves, sugar and cinnamon. He stirs the drink with a special caudle stick. Although the visitor is being served here, the sweet alcoholic drink was also given to the mother, even immediately after the birth. On this occasion the father wore the gentleman’s nursery cap, a plumed hat edged with lace which the man in Naiveu’s painting has in his hand. The nurse is taking the caudle bowl away. Afterwards there would have been a long discussion about the birth. In this work Naiveu did not show the moment, a little later on, when the husbands of female visitors joined the company and the caudle was enthusiastically passed round again. He did, however, paint the male visitors in two other versions of the subject.3 The lying-in visit was a particularly popular subject in paintings of the second half of the seventeenth century, as versions by Anthonie Palamedesz, Jacob Vrel, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu and others demonstrate. It was also the subject of literature and stage plays. The theatrical character of Naiveu’s work, of his nurseries and of the Leiden painting in particular has often been commented on. 4 The layout of the room with its symmetrical rear wall is indeed reminiscent of a stage. What is lacking in Naiveu’s work, with its harmony and subtle attention to lighting and detail, is the element of satire that resonated in works like Hieronymus Sweerts’ De tien vermakelikheden des houwelyks (The Ten Amusements of Marriage) of 1678 or Jan Asselijn’s comedy Kraam-Bedt of Kandeel-Maal van Zaartje Jans, Vrouw van Jan Klaazen (The Lying-In or Caudle Meal of Zaartje Jans, Wife of Jan Klaassen) of 1684. JH inv. no. 71.160; sale Christie’s, New York, 26 May 2000, lot 41. 4 Leiden 1988, cat. no. 58; Liedtke 2007, cat. no. 128. 33 Matthijs Naiveu (Leiden 1647 – Amsterdam 1726) The Visit to the Nursery, c. 1700, signed Naiveu F Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 86.3 cm Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden 125 street parties at night The street party at night was a new – and exceptional – subject for paintings in the Golden Age. These works appear to have been prompted by the liberation celebrations linked to the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648). In 1609 the Twelve Years’ Truce seemed to mark the end of the war with Spain; the war actually came to an end in 1648. As far as we know these celebrations did indeed take place in the streets in the evenings by the light of braziers, with jubilant dancing and sometimes fireworks. Egbert van der Poel, one of the best known specialists in light effects at night, was particularly fond of painting these kinds of celebrations. Egbert van der Poel, Celebrations by Torchlight on the Oude Delft, c. 1648-55 (detail cat. no. 35) pieter de molijn Nocturnal Celebration in the Grote Markt in Haarlem In the light from the braziers we can see children dancing. On the left a man carries a large barrel of liquor on his shoulder. A woman with a lantern offers a dish of sweetmeats to a small group of children. The square is packed with people, some simply dressed, like the man with the barrel, others in fashionable clothes, like the man in the centre in the hat and the starched white ruff, whose grey cloak gleams in the firelight. The artist painted this work swiftly, only roughly indicating the faces of the figures; the pointed noses and mask-like features are typical of his early figures. Haarlem town hall, a prominent detached building, looms up in the darkness behind the crowd. It has yet to acquire the classical façade that Salomon de Bray designed for it in 1630, so the painting must have been done before then.1 It has been suggested that this could be a Twelfth Night or Martinmas feast because of the children in the foreground.2 However, specific characteristics that would make it identifiable as such (like the Twelfth Night lantern in the shape of a star) are lacking. An early reproduction of the painting, a watercolour by Cornelis van Noorde (1731–1795), dated 1770 (fig. below) is an Cornelis van Noorde, Joyous Celebration to Honour the Twelve Years’ Truce 1609, in the Grote Markt, after P. de Molijn, c. 1770, watercolour, 33 x 51 cm, Noord-Hollands Archief, Haarlem 1 Haarlem/Munich 2008-09, pp. 135-136. 2 Waiboer et al. 2005, cat. no. 19. 3 North Holland Archives, 53-001610 M. I would like to thank Hans Quatfass for this reference, see also Cerruti 2001, no. 16, p. 699. 4 See the text about Egbert van der Poel, p. 130. 5 ‘woelende ordonantien’. 128 Letter of 1635, reproduced and transcribed in Washington/Detroit 2004, pp. 188-189. 6 Pieter de Molijn, Nocturnal Scene (Night Festival in Haarlem?), panel, 22 x 29 cm, Brussels, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. no. 1915. 34 accurate rendition of the composition.3 The subject is traditionally described as the celebration of the Twelve Years’ Truce with the Spanish in 1609, an important cease-fire after more than 40 years of war. This interpretation is very plausible: it explains the location and the central position of the town hall in the painting (where news like this was announced), the large crowd of people from all classes and the children’s dance of joy. As far as we know, liberation celebrations did indeed take place at night by the light of braziers. 4 This work is unique in Pieter de Molijn’s oeuvre. De Molijn has become known primarily for his naturalistic landscapes with powerful diagonal compositions. However, he painted figures too, not just as staffage, but also as the main subject, and he trained painters who concentrated solely on figure paintings, including Gerard ter Borch. A letter from Ter Borch’s father reveals that Ter Borch had been trained in De Molijn’s studio to paint dynamic works with figures (Ter Borch’s father called them ‘stirring compositions’).5 However, few of De Molijn’s own figure paintings have survived. This nocturnal celebration is one of his most dynamic works, and one of only two night scenes in his oeuvre. The other is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. It shows a street with a large crowd in it, market stalls and children dancing. Perhaps it depicts the same celebration.6 AT 34 Pieter de Molijn (London 1595 – Haarlem 1661) Nocturnal Celebration in the Grote Markt in Haarlem, c. 1625, monogrammed Oil on panel, 33 x 52 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 129 egbert va n der poel Celebrations by Torchlight on the Oude Delft A crowd has gathered around a pole with crossbars to which burning barrels have been fixed, erected for the occasion in front of the Delft Gemeenlandshuis on the Oude Delft. Painting fire was one of Egbert van der Poel’s specialities. His almost tangible flames cast glowing atmospheric light on the onlookers and surroundings. The dark outline of the Oude Kerk stands out in the rising smoke, while rockets can be seen in the sky. This was clearly an evening of festivities, but what was being celebrated? The first art historian to venture an opinion on the subject was Ernst Moes in 1895. On the basis of a drawn copy by Leonaert Bramer of a similar painting by Egbert van der Poel, now lost, he thought that the fires had been lit to celebrate the Peace of Munster in 1648.1 Moes’s suggestion certainly has merit in view of the date of Bramer’s drawing, which must have been made in 1652 or 1653, a clear terminus ante quem for the lost painting.2 What is more, judging by the various prints from 1667 and 1674 which depict the peace between the Dutch Republic and England, peace celebrations must indeed have looked like this in the seventeenth century.3 Van der Poel depicted the subject in at least four other paintings, two of which are dated, one 1654 and the other 1659. 4 These later dates have raised doubts about identifying the subject of the Delft work as the Peace of Munster celebrations in 1648. As an alternative it has been suggested that Van der Poel recorded the inaugural celebrations for the Gemeenlandshuis, the offices of the Delfland water control board from 1645 onwards. In 1998 a third possibility was put forward by the Delft city archivist Gerrit Verhoeven.5 He doubted it was the Peace of Munster because Delft city council had decreed a restrained celebration. Instead Verhoeven suggested that the work may depict the celebration of the baptism of William III on 15 January 1651, when Delft city council acted as witnesses. However, the lack of a date on the painting, combined with Van der Poel’s repeats of the subject over many years and the total absence of any pictor- 1 Moes 1895, p. 189, no. 38. 2 Plomp 1986, p. 84. Moes himself dated the drawing around the middle of the seventeenth century. 3 These prints also show houses on a canal, burning pitch barrels, onlookers and fireworks. See Dane 1998, pp. 181, 194, fig. 154 (Romeijn de Hooghe, 1674), 158 (Abraham Blooteling, 1667), 163 (Isaac Sorious, 1674). On p. 177, fig. 151 (Romeijn de Hooghe, 1667), there are also stands 130 with burning barrels, but no fireworks. 4 See for an overview A. Rüger, in New York/London 2001-2002, cat. no. 50, pp. 324-326, p. 326, no. 8. Dated works in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, panel, 65.5 x 55 cm, inv. no. 38.2 (1654) and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, panel, 528 x 43.2 cm, inv. no. 1960 (1659). The dimensions of the work in Bonn are very similar to those of the Delft piece. 35 ial elements characteristic of a specific celebration, mean that none of these interpretations can be proved or disproved. In 2000 Michiel Plomp consequently suggested that Van der Poel had probably recorded a generic festivity, an opportunity to demonstrate his skill as a fire painter, not a historic event at all. This conclusion appears to be correct, although this is not to say that Van der Poel’s general subject did not spring from an original picture of a specific celebration. In this respect it is certainly remarkable that in 1810, 85 years before Moes’s observation, the present work was referred to in a sale in Amsterdam as ‘A view in the city of Delft, where there were celebrations in the year of 1648 to mark the Peace; all in the evening and very naturally depicted’.6 Whether this interpretation might be based on an oral tradition going back to the origins of the picture remains unclear. JH 5 Verhoeven 1998, pp. 10-11. 6 ‘Een gezigt binnen de Stad Delft, waar in vreugde bedrijven bij gelegenheid van de Vrede, in den Jaren 1648, gevierd werden; alles bij den avond en zeer natuurlijk verbeeld’. Amsterdam, Schley, 6 August 1810 (Lugt no. 7844), lot 86, panel, 22 x 17 inches (fl. 71); three years later what is probably the same work was sold again as ‘Een Gezigt te Delft bij avond, zijnde de afkondiging van den Munsterschen Vrede aldaar; bij het branden der Pektonnen. Zeer bevallig van licht en schaduw, en zeer natuurlijk van uitdrukking.’ (A view of Delft by night, being the proclamation of the Munster Peace there; with the burning of barrels of pitch, Very agreeable in light and shade, and very natural of expression.) See Amsterdam, Schley, 21 September 1814 (Lugt no. 8584), lot 125, panel, 22 x 16 inches (fl. 84). 35 Egbert van der Poel (Delft 1621 – Rotterdam 1664) Celebrations by Torchlight on the Oude Delft, c. 1648-55, signed lower left E. vander Poel Oil on panel, 55 x 43 cm Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, purchased with the support of the Vereniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst 131 rhetoricians’ celebr ations ‘Rhetoricians, drunkards’ as the seventeenth-century expression would have it. The carousing habits of these rhetoricians, who practised the art of eloquence, were notorious, and they left their mark on the festive culture of the Golden Age. Rhetoricians were members of urban literary societies; almost every town had one. Their public performances, which included processions and poetry readings, attracted huge audiences from all levels of society. Rhetoricians’ texts were clever, sophisticated and often championed high ideals. This can be seen in the many inscriptions on the unique painting of an allegorical play (cat. no. 39). It expresses a religious tolerance that was extremely innovative at the time, presenting a wide range of religious beliefs as more or less equal in merit. Many painters, among them Dirck and Frans Hals, and possibly also Jan Steen, were members or ‘friends’ of these chambers of rhetoric – and yet rhetoricians are not a particularly common subject in seventeenth-century paintings. The works in which they do appear give all the more revealing a glimpse into the rhetoricians’ world. They are – aptly – often exceptionally cleverly conceived compositions. Jan Steen, Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1662-66 (detail of cat. n0. 41) fr a ns pietersz de gr ebber a f ter hendr ick goltzius Blazon of the Haarlem Chamber of Rhetoric Trou Moet Blijcken De Pellicaen, better known by its motto Trou Moet Blijcken, the Haarlem chamber of rhetoric that continues to this day, is mentioned for the first time in the city’s accounts for 1503.1 In 1511 the chamber merged with De Wijngaertrancken and took Liefde Boven al as its motto. After 1646 there were references to two chambers again. A third chamber, De Witte Angieren with the motto In Liefde Getrouw, was established in 1592 by Flemish Haarlemmers. Rhetoricians, including the members of Trou, mainly came from a middle-class cultural elite and played a substantial role in entries, processions, competitions and other festivities they organized, providing the staging, performing spectacles and plays and reciting poetry. In 1606 Trou was the driving force behind the Haarlem Landjuweel, a competition between chambers of rhetoric from all over Holland. After earlier requests to Haarlem town council in 1590 and 1600, the Landjuweel was finally staged on 22 October 1606 for the benefit of the old men’s home, for which a large lottery was organized (lots were sold throughout Holland). Twelve chambers took part in this event and according to custom took their painted blazons with them to Haarlem, where they were carried during a procession through the city. Trou led the way with the blazon painted by Frans Pietersz de Grebber to a design by Hendrick Goltzius.2 Goltzius, who was not a member of Trou, but who had worked for the chamber more than once and was a member of the panel of judges during the Landjuweel,3 designed a symbolic and allegorical depiction of the chamber’s name and motto, but at the same time stuck specifically to the theme of the Landjuweel, De Naasten Liefde (Charity), specifically care for the elderly. 4 Christ is portrayed on a shadowy cross in a central lozenge. Above him there are two clasped hands, putti on the right and left and the motto ‘TROV MOET BLYKEN’. Under the cross there is a pelican pecking blood from her breast to feed her young. The pelican, from which the chamber took its name, was a traditional symbol for Christ, who sacrificed his blood. The text in the lozenge refers to this.5 Upper left in the elaborate 1 Van Boheemen/Van der Heijden 1993, p. 49, ‘prince van de rhetorijck van de Pellicaen’. 2 De Bruin 2001, p. 107. As the 1610 inventory of Trou reveals, ‘Voor eerst Camers beste blasoen geteickent ende geinventeerd bij Mr h. Goltius ende geschildert bij Frans pietersz 134 schilder TROU MOET BLIJCKEN’ (for the first chamber’s blazon drawn and invented by Mr H. Goltzius and painted by Frans pietersz painter TROU MOET BLIJCKEN’). 3 Van Mander/Miedema 1994-99, V (1998), pp. 174-175, notes 12 and 13; Miedema 1991-92, p. 38; De Bruin 36 cartouche is Aeneas fleeing Troy with his father Anchises on his back; upper right is the Caritas Romana (Roman Charity), or Cimon feeding her shackled father Pero. Lower left is the personification of Friendship with her heart in her left hand and a faithful dog at her side; lower right we see the personification of Concord, with a sheaf of arrows in her hand, which Goltzius seems to have loosely borrowed from Michelangelo.6 To the left and right there are medallions with doves and a hen with chicks. At the top the arms of Haarlem are displayed under a wreathed staff of Mercury, the symbol of harmony. The design is closely related to a blazon that Goltzius designed earlier for Trou, which was reproduced in print form by his foster son Jacob Matham in 1597.7 Even more striking is the similarity to the print designed by Goltzius which was used as the invitation to the Landjuweel. 8 This print differs from the painting in just a few details (omissions and additions), among them the medallions on the left and the right, which remain empty. De Grebber may have filled them in himself. JH 2001, p. 74. 4 See De Bruin 2001, p. 86, and pp. 132-133. 5 The lozenge contains the inscription Des Levens Leven Goet/ Doots Doot Door Liefde Gedreven/ Als Pellicaen Syn Bloet/ Schank Voor Syn Ioncxkens Leven. 6 Compare the Concord with Michelangelo’s Sybil of Erythrae in the Sistine Chapel. 7 De Bruin 2001, p. 41, fig. 8. In 1600 Matham made a second, similar but simpler blazon print for Trou after a design by Goltzius. See De Bruin 2001, p. 43, fig. 10. 8 De Bruin 2001, p. 71, fig. 17a. 36 Frans Pietersz de Grebber after Hendrick Goltzius Haarlem c. 1573 – Haarlem 1649 / Mühlbracht 1558 – Haarlem 1617 Blazon of the Haarlem Chamber of Rhetoric Trou Moet Blijcken, 1606 Oil on panel, 125 x 98 cm Broederschap zijnde de aloude Rhetorijkkamer der Pellicanisten te Haarlem, known under the motto Trou Moet Blycken, Haarlem 135 a non y mous Blazon of De Witte Angieren Chamber of Rhetoric in Haarlem On Sunday 22 October 1606, watched by crowds, Haarlem’s Flemish chamber De Witte Angieren, the last of the 12 chambers of rhetoric taking part in the great annual Haarlem Landjuweel, or rhetoric contest, entered the city, preceded by their blazon, a decorated wooden escutcheon.1 Forty years later, Haarlem historian Theodoor Schrevelius could still remember the onlookers: ‘A great multitude of people who had gathered there from all walks of life . . . noble, ignoble, aldermen, children, common people, great ladies sitting loftily in their coaches, maidens and marriageable daughters, men, children and all manner of people.’2 The Landjuweel was organized for the benefit of the Haarlem old men’s home by the Pellicaen, or Trou Moet Blijcken chamber, which did not take part in the competition itself.3 In addition to the prizes that could be won for the entry, the morality play, the song and the poem or Refreyn, the chambers also competed for a cup, which was presented for the most splendid blazon. The blazons, specially decorated for the occasion, which were given to Trou Moet Blijcken at the end of the competition, had to reflect the theme Naaste Liefde (Charity). The day after the entry, on a stage in the Grote Markt, each chamber recited an explanatory poem about the blazon, which was recorded in Const-thoonende ivweel (1607-08). 4 De Witte Angieren was one of the chambers that succeeded in presenting word, image and subject as a complementary entity. On the blazon, the coat of arms with the Lion of Flanders is at the bottom of the inner oval. At the top is the vase of carnations ‘whose flowers,’ as the poem explains ‘stand on Holland’s Haarlem’,5 reaching up to touch the arms of Haarlem at the top of the oval. This reminded the originally Southern Netherlandish Angieren that they ‘had come from Flanders because of the war/ To settle in Batavia’s sweet Haarlem’.6 The border around the oval contains various animals and objects. The pelican on the left, pecking her breast to feed her blood to her young, is shown here as a symbol for charitable people, and the trumpet symbolizes the glory that the faithful will accord them. The hand from 1 De Bruin 2001, chaps. 3 and 4, esp. pp. 127-130, 133. 2 ‘Ontallijcke menighte van menschen die daar vergadert sijn van alle guartieren (…) edele, onedele, wethouders, kinderen, ghemeene 136 luytjens, grote joffrouwen, verheeven op haer koetsen sittende, maeghden ende houwbare dochteren, mannen, kinderen ende alle gedrocht van menschen.’ Schrevelius 1648, p. 32. 3 The third 37 the clouds extends an olive branch, a symbol for God’s serene grace, while the soul surrounded by cherubim symbolizes the eternal life given by God. On the right the opposite is depicted. The wolf tearing a sheep apart stands for people acting out of avarice and selfishness who oppress others. The trumpet wound round by the serpent signifies its widespread bad name. The hand with the flaming sword symbolizes God’s punishment, eternal death, represented by the ringed death’s head. The oval is flanked by two female figures: Charity on the left with a sceptre with a burning heart; Faith on the right with interlocked hands on her sceptre. They refer to the chamber’s motto In liefde ghetrouwelich, (Faithful in Love), on the decorated banner across the vase. Whereas Trou Moet Blijcken’s allegorically conceived blazon expresses Humanist thinking, this division into good and evil, reward and punishment, reveals a Reformed vision of charity. We do not know which chamber ultimately went home with the prize. JH Haarlem chamber, De Wijngaertranken, had been excluded because of a fight. See De Bruin 2001, p. 75. 4 Heyns 160708. See also De Bruin 2001, pp. 65-69, and p. 86. 5 ‘wiens blommen zijn aen ’tHollants Haerlem staende.’ 6 ‘uyt vlaenderlandt om d’Oorlog waren gaende/ In ’t Batavisch soet Haerlem ons ontfaende (vestigde)’ 37 Anonymous Blazon of De Witte Angieren Chamber of Rhetoric in Haarlem, 1606 Oil on panel, 84 x 65.5 cm Broederschap zijnde de aloude Rhetorijkkamer der Pellicanisten te Haarlem, known under the motto Trou Moet Blycken, Haarlem 137 a non y mous Allegorical Procession of the Dordrecht Chamber of Rhetoric De Fonteynisten during the Rhetoricians’ Contest in Vlaardingen in 1616 In July 1616 De Akerboom, the Vlaardingen chamber of rhetoric, organized a celebratory rhetoric competition or Landjuweel. Over a period of several days, 15 chambers from Holland, including the Dordrecht Fonteynisten, put on performances and presentations to compete for all sorts of prizes. As the average chamber had around 30 members, some 500 rhetoricians would have taken part in the competition. All the scripts the various chambers used in their performances and presentations were recorded in Vlaerdinghs Redenrijck-bergh, published in 1617. The painted Allegorical Procession of the Fonteynisten is the only known seventeenth-century painting of a rhetoricians’ ceremonial procession. As it was in the Haarlem Landjuweel of 1606, the festive entrance was part of the competition. It included the characters in the morality play, an allegorical theatrical performance performed later in the week. The painting can only really be understood if we read the text of the morality play, as printed in Vlaerdinghs Redenrijck-bergh.1 In their morality plays the chambers had to answer the question: ‘Which means can be best employed, that are most necessary to society and most beneficial to the country?’2 In the play by the Dordrecht chamber, the figure of the Rijm-konst-liever, the Lover of the Art of Rhyming, or rhetorician, tried to answer this question. In the painting he is the man dressed in black behind the blazon carriers, the drummer and the standard-bearer carrying the chamber’s flag that bears the motto Reyn Gheneucht (Pure Pleasure). His advisors follow: the carefree Vliegend Vernuft (Inspired Genius) in fantastical costume, who replies that in his opinion ‘nothing else matters but eating and drinking’, 3 and the wiser Goede Meyning (Good Opinion), who disagrees. Following him, in order of appearance, come the Huysman (Farmer), Gemeen Ambachts-Man (Common Artisan), Gheleerde Waen (Scholarly Delusion) and Onmatige IJver (Excessive Zeal). The last two, dressed as a theologian and a friar, say that the country is in decline because of religious disputes, and demand that a tough 1 Amsterdam 1968, cat. no. 15; Bleyerveld 2006, who thoroughly analyzed this work. 2 See for an in-depth analysis of the question B. Ramakers, in Dordrecht/Vlissingen 2006-07, pp. 74-78. 3 ‘Niet anders wesen dan wel eeten ende drincken’, 138 4 Vlaardingen 1617, Eee2r, see also Eee3r. 5 Vlaardingen 1617, Ccc4v, Inhoudt van’t Spel. 6 ‘dat Veel Menschen goedt worden ende blyven ende alsoo tot Godes goetheyt genaken’. 7 We do not know whether real women joined in the procession. Although 38 approach be taken towards heretics. 4 Behind them the Soldaet (Soldier) and Matroos (Sailor) answer the question from a military point of view, mocked by Al Willens Sot, the Jester. Finally we can see Goet Onderwijs (Good Education) in black, who with Rijm-konst-liever and Goede Meyning formulate the answer, which is as correct as it is simple: ‘That many people become and remain good’, referring to the sincere repentance of sins as a means to achieve this ‘and also to draw near to God’s goodness’.5 Then some silent figures join in, identifiable from Goet Onderwijs’s final speech. The woman with the mirror depicts evil,7 followed by ‘true repentance with the sword of the forgiveness of sins’, then ‘God’s punishment’, 8 dressed as a Saracen, behind whom comes Gods-dienst (Religion) in white, with carnations and panels bearing inscriptions that read ‘love God above all and love thy neighbour as thyself’.9 Beside him strides blindfolded Rechtvaerdigheyt (Justice). Going by the text of the play, the last stage character can be interpreted as the personification of God’s blessing, with a sheaf of the arrows of concord and the horn of plenty as attributes.10 They are followed by members of the chamber of rhetoric in ordinary clothes. Vlaerdinghs Redenrijck-bergh also mentions the prize for this competition – a barrel of beer.11 We do not know whether the Fonteynisten won. Perhaps their victory prompted this unique painting. JH women were permitted a restricted role in the South Netherlandish culture of rhetoric, it seems that this was not the case in the Northern Netherlands. See Bleyerveld 2006, pp. 141-142. 8 ‘waer berouw met ’t swaert des aflaets van sonden’, dan de ‘straffe godts’. 9 ‘bemint Godt bove alen v naste als v selven’. 10 Bleyerveld 2006, pp. 132-133 11 ‘Vlaardingen 1617, b3r. 38 Anonymous Allegorical Procession of the Dordrecht Chamber of Rhetoric De Fonteynisten during the Rhetoricians’ Contest in Vlaardingen in 1616, in or after 1616 Oil on panel, 34.4 x 201.5 cm Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht 139 a non y mous Chamber of Rhetoric This painting cleverly depicts the world of the rhetorician. It comments on the rhetoricians’ culture of revelry and the religious quarrels of the time and is strongly reminiscent of the allegorical plays performed by the rhetoricians during public and private celebrations. The link between festive conviviality, eloquence and learning was characteristic of rhetoricians, but over the course of the seventeenth century became the target of reformers.1 In the manner of rhetoricians, the painting plays with this criticism as the starting point for an exposé of the good and bad foundations of society: merry Bacchus (god of wine), learned Rhetorica (the personification of eloquence), and Christian Caritas (the personification of charity). The main text on the right wall, which is decorated with blazons of the three Haarlem chambers, stems from the wellknown saying rederijkers, kannenkijkers (rhetoricians, drunkards). This poem suggests that rhetoricians read books while enjoying wine and beer, and in their drunken delusion think they have a monopoly on wisdom. The rear wall, meanwhile, is inspired by the blazon that Maarten van Heemskerck and Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert designed in 1550 for the chamber of the Wijngaertrancken.2 As a farcical reaction to this blazon, Bacchus has been installed on the right of the chimney breast, where one would expect to see the Christ Child, the chamber’s patron saint. This light-hearted reworking reveals that the painting is part of a long tradition of self-mockery among rhetoricians, in which the moderation of the lives of rhetoricians, here portrayed by the exemplary refinement of the figures in the company, is turned upside down to teach and delight. The pedantic rhetoricians themselves are symbolic of a selfopinionated society critical of the religious quarrels (see the following pages for the inscriptions on the painting). The poem on the chimney breast was copied from the mantelpiece text on an anonymous sixteenth-century print which shows the merry company of Calvin, Luther and a Catholic fraternally enjoying a meal prepared by Reason, a cook who strongly criticizes their self-conceit and tyranny in a verse.3 Here the company has been increased, and there are now 11 religious representatives: Calvin, 1 See Van Dixhoorn 2009. For the culture of merriment see esp. the final conclusion. 2 For a description of the blazon see Veldman 1977, pp.124-125. 140 3 Anonymous, Reason Urges the Churches to Tolerance, late sixteenth century, engraving, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. RP-P-1952-300. 39 Luther, Arminius, Menno Simonsz, Socinus, a Roman Catholic, a Collegiant, a Sophist, a Libertine, a Muslim and a Jew. The accompanying text spares no one from the criticism that a charitable life is more Christian than the struggle for the truth. The man at the head of the table is not identified and is possibly the play’s ‘teacher’, the one who formulates the answer to the central question in an allegorical drama – in this case: ‘Who speaks of Charity but ignores it?’ The joke is that the twelfth man also belongs to the present company, so it is hard to see why the criticism would spare his point of view. In this case the Christian argument of tolerance which seemed to be advocated here has been inverted so that the investigation of the true import of the play can begin again. It is possible that this is the meaning of the work, which gives it an even more radical message. After all it seems to lead to the conclusion that no other foundation can be found for society than the pleasure of the merry company, in spite of the deepest religious and philosophical differences. But was this merriment not the very point of the whole play? AvD 7 10 8 9 6 13 5 4 3 11 2 1 12 1 John Calvin, 1509–1564, Protestant reformer. 2 Jacobus Arminius, 1560–1609, Leiden professor whose criticism of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was condemned at the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619. 3 Martin Luther, 1483–1546, Protestant reformer 4 Menno Simonsz, 1496–1561, leader of the Mennonites 5 Socinus, 1539–1604, Italian reformer who rejected the divinity of Jesus and the doctrine of the Trinity. 6 A libertine, follower of a Southern Netherlandish sect of freethinkers who believed in general mercy. 7 A Jew 8 A Collegiant, follower of the anti-dogmatic, interdenominational doctrine that promoted freedom of thought and the practicing of Christian piety and love in daily life and rejected church offices and ceremonies. 9 A Muslim. 10 A Sophist, a scholar who adheres to the empirical, Socratic philosophy. 11 A Roman Catholic. 12 A servant. 13 Unknown. 39 Anonymous Chamber of Rhetoric, 1659 Oil on panel, 46 x 43.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 141 Chamber of Rhetoric 39 Inscriptions on the painting 1. The text on the panel on the right wall Retorica seer Aerdich/ wort door Bacchus weer onwaerdich/ Hier ist bibel inde bol/ Want wanneer het volck is vol/ Dan soo handelt men van boecken/ Die elck door sijn ondersoecken/ Na sijn sin te draeien weet/ Hier siet elck een Anders leet/ Hier spreeckt d’eene voor Calvinis/ En den ander voor Arminus/ d’Ander die hanght Luijter aen/ Menno wort oock voor gestaen/ En een Ander prijst sosijnus/ Vrijgeest Roemt op Libertijnus/ Ja de Jootse-kerck seer out/ Wort hier mee noch op gebout/ Somm’verwerpen Predick ampten/ Gelijck doen veel kooleds janten/ Machomet prijst d’alcoran/ Den soofist hanght dwaelgeest an/ Maer ’t konsijlium van trenten/ Verbant al dees’ argumenten. 2. Below the three blazons on the same wall Door der druiven soetheijt Rapen wij solaes 3. The panel on the mantelpiece Waert dat Elck docht op Schristij laetste Sentensije Daer hij der liefden wercken Alleen maeckt mensij En hoe de Bermhertighe Sijn rijck sullen ontfaen Ick soude in het hert En niet voor de schouwe staen 4. The panel to the left of the mantelpiece Vrage bij wie is liefd’int woort en nochtans wort verschoven 5. The panel to the right of the mantelpiece Antwoort De liefde is in ’t woort, bij meest de Christen klercken en wort verschoven doort gebreck van t’recht uijt wercken 6. The panel held by Calvin Uijt veel maar een van eeuwigheen is uytverkooren wie tegenstreen hiertoe seijt neen is niet herbooren 142 Rhetoric so amusing/ is dishonored by Bacchus/ Heads are stuffed with the Bible/ And when they are drunk/ They speak about the books/ Studied by every one of them/ Twisted and turned to their intent/ Each one finds the other’s fault/ While one advocates Calvin/ The other supports Arminius/ Yet another follows Luther/ Menno too has his defenders/ Someone praises Socinus/ A freethinker extols Libertinus/ And behold, the old Jewish church/ Is also amplified among them/ While some reject the Ministry/ As many Collegiants do/ Mohammed lauds the Koran/ The Sophist supports a heretic/ But, the Council of Trent/ Expels all those arguments. The sweetness of grapes gives us solace Would each mind Christ’s last lecture Where he only mentions works of charity And how the Charitable enter his Kingdom I would be in their heart, not on the mantelpiece 2 Question Who talks about love And yet ignores it? Answer Love is spoken of by most Christian scholars and is being ignored since it is malpractised 1 5 Council of Trent 8. On Socianus’s book Constrats Constrats 9. On the Libertine’s book Lijbertinus Libertine 4 16 10. On the panel leaning against the Libertine’s chair p…. …. ick vlien maer hoort eens wie hier spreeckt als Presis dwaes sulcx geschie so Ick recht sie ist wijt van Jesis I flee . . . but just hear who is speaking as President foolish that it happens if I am right it’s far from Jesus 11. On the panel held by the Jew De outste leer van godt den heer ons voorgeschreven houdt ick in eer en oock geen meer om na te leven The oldest doctrine Of the Lord God Layed down to us I shall honour and not abide to any other 12. On the book held by the Muslim De Alcoran The Koran 13. On the panel held by the Muslim d’alcoran net van machomet ons naegelaten twist christne wet verdooft verplet t spijt die sulcx haten the good Koran given to us by Mohammed disputes Christ’s rule quenches, crushes it in spite of who hates this 10 6 7 14. On the panel leaning against the Collegiant’s chair Ick quel mij niet met groot verdriet van veel dispuijten ick hoort en siet en speel een liet op snaer of fluijten I do not torment myself with great sorrow of many disputes I listen and watch and play a song on strings or flute 3 12 15 8 9 Out of many just one from eternity is chosen who opposes and denies this is not born again 7. On the priest’s book Consilium van Trenten 17 5 11 13 14 10 18 15. On the Sophist’s book Ondecking [des Pausdoms?] Discovery [of the Popery?] 16. On the panel leaning against his chair pastoor vierhoeck spreeckt eenen vloeck over veel kercken door ondersoeck van menich boeck kentmen haer wercken pastor square pronounces a curse against many churches the study of many books reveals their deeds 17. On the books next to the Sophist Biencorf (een boek van Philips van Marnix van Sint Aldegonde gericht tegen de katholieke kerk) en Coornert (verwijzing naar de Nederlandse filosoof Dirck Volckertz. Coornhert) Biencorf (Marnix’s mock defence of the Catholic Church) and Coornert (referring to the Dutch philosopher Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert) 18. On the table in the lower left of the painting Hier moetmen gissen Glazen te wassen Daer in te pissen En sou niet passen Ao 59 One must guess here To wash glasses And piss in them Would be unfitting Ao 59 143 ja n steen The Rhetoricians of Warmond by Candlelight The Rhetoricians of Warmond by Candlelight, which turned up in London in 1961, is Jan Steen’s only known nocturnal picture of rhetoricians.1 The subject had already been identified in a 1767 sale catalogue: ‘18. A Company of Rhetoricians by Candlelight, by the same [Steen].’2 In this atmospheric composition Steen arranges his figures at an open widow, lit by a lantern and partially framed by a trompe-l’oeil curtain. We can see a sixth figure behind them in a doorway. The text In liefde verwarmt (Warmed in Love) on the lozenge-shaped blazon below the window reveals that these are rhetoricians from the village of Warmond. A play on words on the place name (‘Warmond’ sounds like ‘warmend’ which means ‘warming’), the text was the motto of the local chamber of rhetoric De Roode Maagdelieven. The rhetoricians’ motto may well have been the reason Jan Steen chose a nocturnal scene here. It gave Steen the chance to depict the warmte – warmth. He opted for a limited colour palette with predominantly dark and glowing shades and again skilfully emphasized the warm effect with the suggestion of a white candle flame shielded by the hand of the man on the right. Steen positioned his figures in the light of the candle with mild irony. The laurel-crowned reader is the orator or retor; the man in the tall hat with the pen behind his ear is the factor, who was responsible for the chamber’s literature.3 Steen’s staging could depict a rhetoricians’ competition. As a Middelburg factor declared in an ode to the winner of the recitation competition in 1649: ‘Would that I could now crown your witty head with laurels/ I should fashion you a laurel wreath to your honour and reward,’ after which the winner in his turn eulogized the factor. 4 The man with his index finger raised can be seen as the critic or momus. Like the retor and the sot (fool) this was not an established position in the chamber, but a much-used character in the rhetorician’s discourse. Beside the woman in the headdress on the left, Steen has portrayed himself – probably as the fool – with a raised glass, undoubtedly alluding to the revealing expression rederijkers, kannekijkers (rhetoricians, drunkards) which linked the rhetoricians’ culture to drinking, feasting and pleasure. The pipe on the win- 1 Sale Sotheby’s, London, 22 February 1961, lot no. 125. 2 ‘18. Een Gezelschap Rhetorykers by het Kaarsligt, door denzelven [Steen]’, ‘hoog 15 ¼ breet 12 ¼ duimen’, (height 15 ¼, width 12 ¼ inches) (40 x 32 cm). See Hofstede de 144 Groot 1907-28, I, no. 236. Possibly identical to Lugt no. 13324 (London, 1 June 1833), lot 147: ‘J. Steen, A Group of Figures at a Window singing by the light of a lantern; the effect similar to Gerard Dow’s works’. See also Lugt no. 13557 (Foster, London, 40 dowsill with the glowing embers in the bowl, the jug of beer on the right and the rummer on the blazon make the same point. Steen’s self-portrait in the composition makes it likely that he was a member of this chamber when he lived in Warmond (1658-1660). However, we know of no documents to corroborate this assumption and Steen’s possible membership of other chambers of rhetoric also remains a matter of conjecture. In any event he must have been familiar with the rhetoricians’ culture in view of the public nature of their activities. He also devoted several paintings to them. One depicts De Jonge Batavieren, a chamber in The Hague (cat. no. 41). In Munich there is an as yet unidentified rhetorician’s company, and Steen’s Rhetoricians in Worcester shows the Amsterdam chamber De Egelantier. The motto In liefde verwarmt appears again in a copy after the work in Munich in the Bredius Museum in The Hague. JH 5 March 1834), lot 69 ‘Jan Stein, A group of Figures at a Window, singing by the light of a lanthorn’. 3 For the various posts in the chambers, see Van Dixhoorn 2009, chap. 3, esp. p. 64-65. The positions of retor, momus and sot were first men- tioned in this context by Braun 1980, no. 103 (without crediting the source). 4 ‘Cond ick naer wensch met lauwrieren, nu u geestich hooft vercieren/ wat wou ick een lauwer croon, vlechten u tot eer en loon.’ Van Dixhoorn 2009, p. 145. 40 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The Rhetoricians of Warmond by Candlelight, c. 1660, signed lower right JSteen (JS in ligature), on the blazon In liefde verwarmt Oil on panel, 41 x 34 cm Private collection, the Netherlands 145 ja n steen The Rhetoricians at a Window Through a window surrounded by vines we can see six men. One of them hangs out of the window on the left, reciting from a sheet of paper with the text of a Lof-Liet – a song of praise. Another man on the right with a pot-bellied pewter tankard in his hand and wearing a tall hat with a pipe in the hatband looks on with a somewhat jaded air. Meanwhile, as a jolly figure in the centre regards the viewer provocatively, merry carousing goes on in the background. The lozenge-shaped blazon hanging on a nail from the window ledge identifies the company as members of a chamber of rhetoricians. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in particular, many towns and villages had one or more of these literary orientated, amateur dramatic companies, which were made up of active members as well as beminders, (supporters).1 At the head there was a deacon or emperor, followed by a prince. During the weekly meeting (colve) the members rehearsed recitations, plays and music. Performances were given at religious and other festivals, fairs, processions and competitions, where they showed off their literary ingenuity. In 1634 the poet Jan Harmensz Krul expressed it as follows: 41 infested with ‘Futile scandal-mongering, and Godless business/ Levity, profanity with slander and quarrelling.’ 5 Steen also alludes to this development in his painting. The barely legible motto on the blazon says ‘IVGHT NEMT IN’, and is a variation of the motto of De Jonge Batavieren chamber in The Hague, Jeught neempt aen (‘youth begins’). This chamber was founded around 1629 by members who included the painter, poet and publisher Adriaen van de Venne, the printer Isaac Burchoorn and the poet Pieter Nootmans. De jonge Batavieren seems primarily to have been a platform for an informal group of friends who were poets in The Hague.6 For some time Nootmans was the factor and on the title page of his play Ulysses we see the note ‘Tragedy Performed by the Jonge Bataviers in The Hague on 27 March 1629’7 and the blazon of the Bataviers showing three laurel branches sprouting from the earth, with the inscription Ievcht on the left and neemt an on the right, meaning ‘youth takes on’. Steen, however, depicts the blazon with crossed pipes and a rummer and also substitutes in for aen, evidently alluding to the company and their obvious intake of drink and tobacco smoke, pressing the point home with the vine around the window. JH So for an hour or so one day each week Whoever could express ideas in rhyming metre Brought all his rhymes along at this time A prize was awarded for making the best rhyme And people took their pleasure in such things. The ode being recited by the bespectacled rhetorician in this picture could well be addressed to his factor (the rhetorician who bore the literary responsibility in the chamber) after he had been awarded a prize by the jury, of which the factor was a member.3 The close-knit network of rhetoricians brought about cultural exchange and in so doing influenced public opinion. Although a numerical high point of 90 or so chambers was reached around 1620, predominantly in South Holland, various sources reveal a clearly growing dissatisfaction with the rhetoricians’ culture as the seventeenth century wore on, 4 a development Krul’s poem goes on to address. In his view, the chambers of rhetoric were 1 For the most recent study of the chambers of rhetoric in the Northern Netherlands see Van Dixhoorn 2009. 2 ‘Soo hieldmen op een dagh een uyrtjen eens ter weken/ Wie yet wat stellen kon in maet van rymery/ Die broght op dese tijdt 146 dan al syn rijmpjes by/ Daer was een prys gheset op ’t beste rijm te maecke/ Men had syn soeticheyt in deerghelycke saecke.’ 3 Van Dixhoorn 2009, p. 146, describes a similar practice in Middelburg. 4 See for example Grootes 1992. 5 ‘Onnutte klapperny, en Goddeloos bedrijf./ Lichtvaerdigheyt, ghevloeck met laster en ghekijf.’ 6 Keblusek 1997, p. 198. For the story of the establishment of the chambers in The Hague and De Jonge Batavieren, see Van Boheemen/Van der Heijden 1999, pp. 304-305. 7 ‘Treurspel Verthoont by de jonge Bataviers in ’s-Graven-Hage den 27 Martij 1629.’ 41 Jan Steen (Leiden 1626 – Leiden 1679) The Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1662-66, unsigned Oil on canvas, 75.9 x 58.6 cm Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917, Philadelphia 147 festive portr aits In the majority of paintings of celebrations in the Golden Age we see stereotypical revellers – types – rather than specific individuals, but festivities also played a role in portraiture. Respectable citizens, particularly members of the civic guard, chose to have themselves portrayed while celebrating. Cornelis van Haarlem’s civic guard painting (cat. no. 42) is a key work in the depiction of merrymaking militiamen. Van Haarlem was not the first painter to picture civic guardsmen at a banquet, but he was certainly revolutionary in the lively manner in which he did it. Frans Hals subsequently far surpassed him (cat. no. 43). His portraits of officers celebrating are the ultimate in dynamism and directness. The fact that the officers had their portraits painted during their revelries is revealing. These banquets – paid for by the community – were quite controversial. Around the time Frans Hals painted his famous civic guard pictures, the town of Haarlem tried repeatedly to curtail the feasts. In 1633, for example, the celebratory meals were restricted to a maximum of four days (!) and women and children were no longer allowed to attend. Frans Hals, Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard, 1627 (detail of cat. no. 43) cornelis van haarlem Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard Cornelis van Haarlem’s civic guard painting is a milestone in the depiction of militia celebrations. He was not the first artist to portray civic guardsmen at a banquet, but he was certainly revolutionary in the dynamic way in which he did it, and he was soon garnering praise for his approach. This is also the earliest known civic guard portrait painted in Haarlem. This painting greatly impressed the Flemish-born painter and writer Karel van Mander soon after he moved to Haarlem – so much so that he described it in detail in his Schilderboeck (Book on Picturing, 1604), the earliest Northern Netherlandish book on painting.1 What struck him most forcibly was the true-to-life composition and the characteristic portrayal of the men, each with a typical pose that befitted their profession or nature. He found the work as a whole outstanding, from the lifelike, fluently painted heads to the clothes and the hands. The lively composition reflects the nature of this civic guard portrait. This is not a banquet attended exclusively by the militia company’s top brass, but a celebration for a file of militiamen (corporaelschap). Aside from the militiamen themselves (the lowest in rank) and the corporal, the corporal’s five superiors – the captain, the lieutenant, two sergeants and the ensign – were also present on such an occasion.2 A later civic guard painting by Cornelis van Haarlem, which only shows the senior officers, is far more conventional and the composition is accordingly more rigid.3 Militiamen were well-known for their revelry; in the seventeenth century countless bye-laws were issued in an endeavour to prevent the celebrations from getting out of hand. There was, nevertheless, a clear hierarchy during the celebrations. For example, the first raising of the glass (the toast) and the carving of the meat were the preserves of the senior officers. 4 It would therefore appear to be no accident that a knife can be seen prominently on the table. During the recent restoration of the painting it also came to light that the man to the right of the standard-bearer is holding a long object.5 In all probability 1 ‘Van Mander 1604, fol. 292v. 2 Van Thiel/Van Thiel 1995, p. 246. 3 Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Banquet of the Officers and Sub-Alterns of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard, 1599, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS I-53. 150 4 Schama 2001 (1987), pp. 188-189. 5 With thanks to Liesbeth Abraham, Mireille te Marvelde and Herman van Putten, who carried out the technical research and the restoration. Koos Levyvan Halm had previously interpreted this 42 this is a baton – a wooden stick signifying leadership. From the man’s prominent position and his raised glass it is obvious that he is high-ranking: in all likelihood he is the captain of the company proposing the toast. Thanks to a source dating from 1592, we know the identity of the seated man in white: he is Cornelis Schout, a rifleman in the company of Jonge Jan Adriaensz van Veen (probably the man in yellow in the left foreground). The painter of this work, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (top left with a hat), and his younger brother Hans Cornelisz van Haarlem (lower left) were also members of this company.6 Originally the civic guard portrait hung in the Calivermen’s Headquarters, probably above the fireplace. Since the early seventeenth century a motto about the wijncoop (wine deal) has adorned the same fireplace. This was a reassuring rule for businessmen who did business during civic guard meetings (as Cornelis Schout is doing in this painting). No deal made in the civic guard barracks was immediately binding. The participants had the right to cancel the transaction a day later over a glass of wine.7 AT gesture as reaching for a purse; see Köhler et al. 2006, p. 424. 6 There is some discussion about the identification of the two brothers. It is possible that Cornelis van Haarlem is the figure lower left and his brother is the militiaman in the hat above left; see Van Thiel/Van Thiel 1995, pp. 246247. 7 ‘Men sal geen coemenschap so vast muegen duen binnen dit scuttershof. Die gheen diet rout die mach tsanderen daechs met de wyncoop off. A.o 1605.’ See Levyvan Halm 1988, p. 110. 42 Cornelis van Haarlem (Haarlem 1562 – Haarlem 1638) Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard (during restauration), 1583, dated in the centre between the windows Ao. 1583 Oil on panel, 135 x 233 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 151 fr a ns h a l s Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard This painting is the ultimate achievement in the depiction of civic guardsmen celebrating. It was most probably hung in the place of honour above the fireplace in the Calivermen’s Headquarters (the earliest source to give the exact location dates from 1725).1 It must have literally and figuratively ousted the earliest Haarlem civic guard piece by Cornelis van Haarlem (cat. no. 42). Although Cornelis van Haarlem had been revolutionary in making his figures true to life and in the way he placed them on the canvas, Frans Hals far surpassed him. An early admirer, the clergyman Samuel Ampzing, described the work as ‘very boldly painted from life’.2 Hals’s loose brushwork was a true tour de force. It was far from easy to place rough brushstrokes in precisely the right spot first time. This was a huge challenge for painters in the seventeenth century. The advantage of a loose painting style was that the suggestion of ‘reality’ could be greater, according to seventeenth-century connoisseurs – provided the painting was viewed from some distance. Unlike Cornelis van Haarlem, Frans Hals was not commissioned to paint the militiamen themselves. All the men in his portrait are officers. Evidently Hals had been able to persuade the gentlemen in it to be depicted in an unusually modern and dynamic composition with lively gestures and movements – possibly precisely in order to outdo Cornelis van Haarlem in vitality. In the seemingly casual arrangement he nevertheless subtly indicated the hierarchy, as the art historian Seymour Slive discovered.3 The colonel or most senior officer proposes the toast (at the table on the left) and one of the captains enjoys the privilege of the knife – as was customary with the Calivermen Civic Guard. He also portrayed the most important officers seated, whereas the lieutenants, the ensigns and the servant are standing. The fact that the officers did not have themselves depicted in a modest manner, but casually during a drinking spree while they had their glasses filled, tells its own story. The annual banquets were quite controversial in the seventeenth century. They went on for days and there were copious amounts of food and drink. In 1633 the Haarlem military court complained that ‘in all meetings of the companies lasting an entire week, excessively large sums of 1 See the reconstruction by J. Goudeau in Haarlem 1988, p. 121. 2 ‘seer stout naer ‘tleven gehandeld’, Ampzing 1628, p. 371. 3 Slive 1970, vol. 1, pp. 39-49, and 68-71. On the table rituals, see Schama 2001, 152 pp. 188-189. 4 ‘in alle vergaderingen van de Corporaelschappen een gheheele weecke gedurerende, eenen grooten overmatigen pennick verteert werden, tot grooten costen van de Ghemeente’. 43 money were spent, to the great cost of the municipality’. 4 It was decided from then on to restrict the banquets to a maximum of four days (!) and no longer to allow women and children to attend. Rules to impose restraints on the banquets had been devised as far back as 1617 and 1621. Nonetheless, the officers chose to be shown ‘celebrating’. They were evidently not ashamed of the culture of festivities; on the contrary they championed it. They did, though, observe a certain degree of decorum or propriety. No immoderate conduct can be seen in civic guard portraits – no one laughs with his mouth open, for example, and the excesses we know of from the sources, like public drunkenness and vomiting in the street, are also wisely left unrecorded.5 AT Knevel 1994, pp. 298-299. 5 See also the essay by Weststeijn, p. 20ff and Knevel 1994, p. 298 ff. 43 Frans Hals (Antwerp 1582/83 – Haarlem 1666) Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard, 1627, signed on the chair on the left FHF Oil on canvas, 183 x 266.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 153 bibliogr aphy akkerman 2009 N. Akkerman, ‘Cupido en de eerste koningin in Den Haag: Constantijn Huygens en Elizabeth Stuart’, De zeventiende eeuw 25 (2009), pp. 73-96 akkerman/sellin 2004-05 N. Akkerman, P.R. 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Smith (eds.), Tweelinge eener Dragt: Woord en beeld in de Nederlanden 1500–1750, Hilversum 2001, pp. 169-198 kolfin 2005 E. Kolfin, The Young Gentry at Play: Northern Netherlandish Scenes of Merry Companies 1610–1645, Leiden 2005 156 kren 1980 T.J. Kren, ‘Chi non vuol Baccho: Roeland van Laer’s Burlesque Painting about Dutch Artists in Rome’, Simiolus 11 (1980), pp. 63-80 kruijswijk/nesse 2004 M. Kruijswijk, M. Nesse, Nederlandse jaarfeesten en hun liederen door de eeuwen heen, Hilversum 2004 ter kuile 1976 O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman, 1604–1671: Een Haags portretschilder, Alphen aan den Rijn 1976 kuiper 2010 W. Kuiper, ‘Valentijn ende Oursson’, in Voortgang: Jaarboek voor de Neerlandistiek 28 (2010), pp. 213-245 de lairesse 1707 G. de Lairesse, Groot schilderboek, Amsterdam 1707 lammens-pikhaus 1976 P. Lammens-Pikhaus, ‘Het tafelspel bij de Rederijkers’, in De Nieuwe Taalgids 69 (1976), pp. 179-190 lammertse 1998 F. Lammertse, Dutch Genre Paintings of the 17th Century: Collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1998 lauze 1623 F. de Lauze, Apologie de la danse et de la parfaite méthode de l’enseigner tant aux cavaliers qu’aux dames, 1623 van leeuwen 1667 S. van Leeuwen, Costumen, Keuren ende Ordonnantien, van het Baljuschap ende Lande van Rijnland [...], Leiden/ Rotterdam 1667 liedtke 2007 W. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols, New York 2007 leiden 1988 E.J. Sluijter, M. Enklaar, P. Nieuwenhuizen (eds.), Leidse fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760, exhib. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal), Leiden/Zwolle 1988 lomazzo 1584 G.P. Lomazzo, Trattato dell’ arte de la pittura [...], Milan 1584 london/the hague 2007-08 R. Ekkart, Q. Buvelot, Dutch Portraits, The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, exhib. cat. 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The Hague (Mauritshuis); San Francisco (The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco), Zwolle 1990 van thiel 1967-68 P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘Marriage symbolism in a musical party by Jan Miense Molenaer’, Simiolus 2 (1967-68), pp. 90-99 van thiel/van thiel 1995 I. van Thiel, P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘The Four Musketeers: An Attempt at Identification of the First Militia Piece by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem’, in C.P. Schneider (ed.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive: Presented on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 245-248 trautscholdt 1966 E. Trautscholdt, ‘Beiträge zu Cornelis Dusart’, in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 17 (1966), pp. 171200 tummers 2011 A. Tummers, The Eye of the Connoisseur: Authenticating Paintings by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, Amsterdam/Los Angeles 2011 tummers/jonckheere 2008 A. Tummers, K. Jonckheere, Art Market and Connoisseurship: A Closer Look at Paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and their Contemporaries, Amsterdam 2008 vasquez 1614 A. Vasquez, Los Sucesos de Flandes y Francia del tiempo de Alejandro Farnese, 1614 veldman 1977 I.M. Veldman, Maarten van Heemskerck and Dutch Humanism in the sixteenth century, Maarssen 1977 verberckmoes 2001 J. Verberckmoes, ‘Het geslacht van het lachende gelaat in de zestiende en zeventiende eeuw’, in K. Wils (ed.), Het lichaam (m/v), Louvain 2001, pp. 87-102 verhoeven 1998 G. Verhoeven, ‘Schilderde Egbert van der Poel de Vrede van Munster?’, Delf: Cultuurhistorisch Bulletin 1 (1998), pp. 10-11 vianen 1999 A.J.M. Koenheim (ed.), Johan Wolfert van Brederode 1599–1655: Een Hollands edelman tussen Nassau en Oranje, exhib. cat. Vianen (Stedelijk Museum Vianen), 1999 van de wael 1617 J.A. van de Wael, Vlaerdings redenrijck-bergh, met middelen beplant, die noodigh sijn ’t gemeen, en voorderlijck het landt, Amsterdam 1617 157 van wagenbert-ter hoeven 1993 A.A. van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, ‘The celebration of Twelfth Night in Netherlandish Art’, Simiolus 22 (1993-94), pp. 65-96 van wagenberg-ter hoeven 1997 A.A. Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, Het driekoningenfeest: De uitbeelding van een populair thema in de beeldende kunst van de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1997 washington/london/amsterdam 2001-02 A.K. Wheelock, (ed.), Aelbert Cuyp, exhib. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art); London (National Gallery); Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Washington 2001 washington 2002-03 S. Ebert-Schifferer, W. Singer et al., Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe-l’Oeil Painting, exhib. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art), 2002 washington/amsterdam 1996-97 H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exhib. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art); Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Washington/Amsterdam/Zwolle 1996 washington/detroit 2004 A.K Wheelock et al., Gerard ter Borch, exhib. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art); Detroit (The Detroit Institute of Arts), Washington/New York 2004 washington/london/haarlem 1989-90 S. Slive et al., Frans Hals, exhib. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art); London (Royal Academy of Arts); Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum), London/ Maarssen/The Hague 1989 weber 1904-05 M. Weber, ‘Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik 20/21 (1904-05), pp. 271-277 wegner/pée 1980 W. Wegner, H. Pée, ‘Die Zeichnungen des David Vinckboons’, in Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 31 (1980), pp. 35-128 westermann 1997a M. Westermann, ‘How was Jan Steen funny?: Strategies and functions of comic painting in the seventeenth century’, in H. Roodenburg J. Bremmer (ed.), A Cultural History of Humour from Antiquity to the Present Day, Cambridge 1997, pp. 134-178 westermann 1997b M. Westermann, The amusements of Jan Steen: Comic painting in the seventeenth century, Zwolle 1997 van westrheene 1856 T. van Westrheene, Jan Steen: Etude sur l’art en Hollande, The Hague 1856 van westrheene 1864 T. van Westrheene, Jan Steen: Historisch-Romantische Schetsen, Leiden 1864 weststeijn 2008 T. Weststeijn, The Visible World: Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2008 wheelock 1995 A.K. Wheelock, Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: The Collections of the National Gallery of Art: Systematic Catalogue, Washington 1995 van der willigen 1866 A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen 158 over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten: voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het Schilders- of St. Lucas gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866 de winkel 2006 M. de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings, Amsterdam 2006 wittewrongel 1661 P. Wittewrongel, Oeconomia christiana ofte Christelicke huys-houdinghe: Vervat in twee boecken: Tot bevoorderinge van de oeffeninge der ware godtsaligheydt in de bysondere huys-ghesinnen, 2 vols, Amsterdam 1661 wouters 2008 M-J. Wouters, Sinterklaaslexicon: Sinterklaas van A tot Z, Haarlem 2008 wuhrmann 1995 S. Wuhrmann, ‘À propos de la “Joyeuse compagnie” d’Isack Elyas’, in L. Golay et al., Florilegium: Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Carlo Bertelli, Milan 1995 würtenberger 1937 F. Würtenberger, Das holländische Gesellschaftsbild, Schramberg 1937 paintings in the exhibition 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 David Vinckboons, Village Fair, c. 1608 Oil on panel, 42.5 x 60.8 cm Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie im Neuen Schloß Schleißheim, Munich, inv. no. 4927 Adriaen van Ostade, The Dancing Couple, c. 1635 Oil on panel, 38 x 52 cm Frans Hals Museum, long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. OS 2003-43 Jan Miense Molenaer, Peasant Wedding, 1652, signed and dated lower centre on the bench Jmolenaer 1652 Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 106 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS I-260 Jan Steen, The Village Wedding, 1653, signed lower left JSteen 1653 (JS in ligature) Oil on canvas, 64 x 81 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, inv. no. 2314 (OK) Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple, c. 1662, signed lower left JSteen (JS in ligature) Oil on panel, 55.7 x 77.2 cm Private collection Cornelis de Man, Hot Cockles, c. 1660, signed K. De Man Oil on canvas, 69 x 84 cm Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 91 Philips Wouwerman, Village Festival with HerringPulling, c. 1652-53 Oil on canvas, 64.5 x 82 cm Private collection Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, c. 1676, signed lower centre JSteen (JS in ligature) Oil on canvas, 111.8 x 177.8 cm Private collection, New York, inv. no. JS-108 Cornelis Dusart, Village Feast, 1684, signed and dated lower right on the plough C Dusart f.1684 Oil on canvas, 80 x 70.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS 55-39 David Vinckboons, Elegant Company in an Ornamental Garden, c. 1610 Oil on panel, 28.5 x 43.6 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-2109 Esaias van de Velde, Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air, 1615, signed and dated E . vanden. Velde. 1615. Oil on panel, 34.7 x 60.7 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, bequest of Mr D. Franken, Le Vésinet, inv. no. SK-A-1765 Willem Buytewech, Banquet in the Open Air, c. 1615 Oil on canvas, 71.6 x 94.5 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, long-term private loan David Vinckboons, Elegant Company in a Garden, 1619, signed and dated DVB fe. 1619 Oil on canvas, 73 x 90.8 cm Johnny van Haeften Gallery, London, inv. no. VP 4394 Esaias van de Velde, Garden Party, 1619, signed and dated lower right E.V. Velde 1619 Oil on panel, 34 x 51.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, inv. no. OS 76-415 15 Isaac Elias, Celebrating Company, 1629, signed and dated lower right Isack Elyas f. 1629 Oil on panel, 47.1 x 63.2 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, bequest of Mr D. Franken, Le Vésinet, inv. no. SK-A-1754 16 Dirck Hals, Music-Making Company on a Terrace, c. 1620-25 Oil on panel, 53 x 84 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from a private collection, inv. no. OS 76-10 17 Dirck Hals/Dirck van Delen, Festive Company in a Renaissance Room, 1628, signed and dated in cartouche above the door D. van Delen Fecit 1628 Oil on panel, 92.5 x 157 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, inv. no. OS 75-318 18 Dirck Hals, Garden Party with a Company Dancing and Making Music, c. 1630 Oil on panel, 55 x 86.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS I-637 19 Dirck Hals, Company Making Music in an Interior, 1633, signed and dated lower right DHALS AN 1633 Oil on panel, 51.5 x 83 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, inv. no. OS 76-9 20 Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne, Peasant Shrove Tuesday, c. 1625, signed lower right … // …nne hage Oil on panel, 72.1 x 93 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, gift from H. Teding van Berkhout esq., Baarn, inv. no. SK-A-1931 21 Horatius (?) Bollongier, Masquerade of Valentine and Orson, 1628 Oil on panel, 36 x 29 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. no. 1072 22 Judith Leyster, Pekelharing, 1629, signed and dated upper right on the tankard JL* 1629 (JL in ligature and linked to a star) Oil on canvas, 88 x 83.7 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. OS 60-55 23 Pieter Codde, Merry Company with Masked Dancers, 1636, signed and dated PCodde/A° 1636 Oil on panel, 50 x 76.5 cm Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 392 24 Jan Steen, The May Queen, c. 1648-51, signed Oil on panel, 75.9 x 58.6 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917, Philadelphia, inv. no. 513 25 Jan Steen, The May Day Festival, c. 1663-65, signed Oil on panel, 58.5 x 50 cm Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris, inv. no. PDUT 00930 14 26 Adriaen Hanneman, Portrait of Mary Stuart with a Servant, c. 1664 Oil on canvas, 130.5 x 120.8 cm Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 429 27 Jan Steen, Twelfth Night Feast, c. 1670-71 Oil on panel, 58.4 x 55.9 cm His Grace the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estates 28 Jan Steen, Merry Company on a Terrace, c. 1670, signed JSteen (JS in ligature) Oil on canvas, 141.5 x 131.4 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1958, New York, inv. no. 58.89 29 Richard Brakenburgh, Merry Company, c. 1680, signed Brakenburg f. Oil on canvas, 40 x 49 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, loan from a private collection, courtesy of Jan Six Fine Art, Amsterdam, inv. no. OS 2010-20 30 Richard Brakenburgh, The Feast of St Nicholas, 1685, signed and dated R. Brakenburgh 1685 Oil on canvas, 49 x 64.5 cm Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam, loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. Br. 235 31 Cornelis Dusart, The Feast of St Nicholas, c. 1685, signed Corn. Dusart fe. Watercolour, 26.3 x 37.9 cm Stichting Atlas Van Stolk, Rotterdam, inv. no. 10931, AvS no. 2067 32 Richard Brakenburgh, The Twelfth Night Feast, 1691, signed and dated R. Brakenburgh 1691 Oil on canvas, 52 x 62.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, long-term loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, inv. no. OS-75-308 33 Matthijs Naiveu, The Visit to the Nursery, c. 1700, signed Naiveu F Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 86.3 cm Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, inv. no. F 1071 34 Pieter de Molijn, Nocturnal Celebration in the Grote Markt in Haarlem, c. 1625, monogrammed Oil on panel, 33 x 52 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS 56-19 35 Egbert van der Poel, Celebrations by Torchlight on the Oude Delft, c. 1648-55, signed lower left E. vander Poel Oil on panel, 55 x 43 cm Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, purchased with the support of the Vereniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst, inv. no. PDS 85 36 Frans Pietersz de Grebber after Hendrick Goltzius, Blazon of the Haarlem Chamber of Rhetoric Trou Moet Blijcken, 1606 Oil on panel, 125 x 98 cm Broederschap zijnde de aloude Rhetorijkkamer der Pellicanisten te Haarlen, known under the motto Trou Moet Blycken, Haarlem 37 Anonymous, Blazon of De Witte Angieren Chamber of Rhetoric in Haarlem, 1606 Oil on panel, 84 x 65.5 cm Broederschap zijnde de aloude Rhetorijkkamer der Pellicanisten te Haarlen, known under the motto Trou Moet Blycken, Haarlem 38 Anonymous, Allegorical Procession of the Dordrecht Chamber of Rhetoric De Fonteynisten during the Rhetoricians’ Contest in Vlaardingen in 1616, in or after 1616 Oil on panel, 34.4 x 201.5 cm Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, inv. no. DM/904/263 39 Anonymous, Chamber of Rhetoric, 1659 Oil on panel, 46 x 43.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS I-552 40 Jan Steen, The Rhetoricians of Warmond by Candlelight, c. 1660, signed lower right JSteen (JS in ligature), on the blazon In liefde verwarmt Oil on panel, 41 x 34 cm Private collection, the Netherlands 41 Jan Steen, The Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1662-66, unsigned Oil on canvas, 75.9 x 58.6 cm Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917, Philadelphia, inv. no. 512 42 Cornelis van Haarlem, Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard, 1583, dated in the centre between the windows Ao. 1583 Oil on panel, 135 x 233 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS I-48 43 Frans Hals, Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard, 1627, signed on the chair on the left FHF Oil on canvas, 183 x 266.5 cm Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, inv. no. OS I-111 159 This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Celebrating in the Golden Age’ Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 11 November 2011 – 6 May 2012 The exhibition has been made possible by an indemnity grant provided by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Dutch Ministry of Finance. (Netty van Doorn Fonds) Dr. Marijnus Johannes van Toorn & Louise Scholten Stichting publication Concept and Editing Anna Tummers Translation Lynne Richards Copy Editing D’Laine Camp with Mehgan Sellers Image Research/Exhibition Registrar Susanna Koenig Design Bregt Balk, Amsterdam Lithography and Printing Drukkerij Die Keure, Bruges Paper Satimat 170 grs Project Coordination Barbera van Kooij, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam Publisher Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem/Barbera van Kooij, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam Photography Credits Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, (p. 44, fig. 2) Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich (p. 55) Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (p. 35, fig. 8; 36, fig. 9) Special Collections Library, University of Amsterdam (p. 102) British Museum, London: © The Trustees of the British Museum (p. 43) Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (p. 13, fig. 2) Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht: photo Marco de Nood (p. 139) Duke of Bedford/Trustees Bedford Estates (p. 113) Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem: photo Margareta Svensson (p. 59, 123, 151, 153) Frans Hals Museum: photo Tom Haartsen (p. 83, 87, 89, 91, 93, 101, 129, 141) Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden: photo: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut (p. 21, fig. 1) Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Berlin (p. 46) Johnny Van Haeften, Ltd., London (p. 81) Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (p. 12, fig. 1) Institut de France, Parijs: (C) RMN (Institut de France) / Agence Bulloz (p. 32, afb. 3) Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague (p. 65, 103, 109) Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague (p. 15, fig. 4) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (p. 22, fig. 2, 31, fig. 2) Limburgs Museum, Venlo (p. 97) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1958, New York/Art Resource/Scala, Florence (p. 115) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequest mrs H.O. Havemeyer, 1929 New York/Art Resource/Scala, Florence (p. 23, fig. 4) Musée du Louvre, Paris: RMN/Franck Raux (p. 106) Museo del Prado, Madrid (p. 13, fig. 3) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam (p. 61, 99) Museum Kurhaus, Cleves: photo: Annegret Gossens (p. 48, fig. 6) Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden (p. 124, 125) Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam (p. 119) Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft (p. 131) Museumslandschaft Hessen-Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (p. 26, fig. 5) National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, Washington (p. 62) Noord-Hollands Archief, Haarlem (p. 128) Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille: © RMN/René Gabriel Ojéda (p. 34, fig. 6) Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris (p. 107) Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917, Philadelphia (p. 105, 147) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (p. 60, 68, fig. 1, 75, 77, 85, 116, 122) Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Berlin (p. 36, fig. 10: Kaiser-FriedrichMuseumsverein/Jörg P. Anders, p. 46 fig. 5, 79) Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (p. 76) Stichting Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam (p. 121) Trou moet Blycken, Haarlem: photo Margareta Svensson (p. 135); photo Anita van der Krol–van Hasselt (p. 137) © 2011 Frans Hals Museum, Haarlen, the authors, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For works of visual artists affiliated with a CISAC-organization the copyrights have been settled with Pictoright in Amsterdam. © 2011, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam Although every effort was made to find the copyright holders for the illustrations used, it has not been possible to trace them all. Interested parties are requested to contact NAi Publishers, Mauritsweg 23, 3012 JR Rotterdam, The Netherlands, info@naipublishers.nl NAi Publishers is an international publisher that specializes in developing, producing and distributing books on architecture, visual arts and related disciplines. www.naipublishers.nl Available in North, South and Central America through Artbook | D.A.P., 155 Sixth Avenue 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10013-1507, tel +1 212 627 1999, fax +1 212 627 9484, dap@dapinc.com Available in the United Kingdom and Ireland through Art Data, 12 Bell Industrial Estate, 50 Cunnington Street, London W4 5HB, tel +44 208 747 1061, fax +44 208 742 2319, orders@artdata.co.uk Printed and bound in Belgium ISBN 978-90-5662-835-2 Information on the Frans Hals Museum www.franshalsmuseum.nl Cover Isaac Elias, Celebrating Company, 1629 (detail cat. no. 15) The Frans Hals Museum is supported by the BankGiro Lottery

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