The Ark

The uniquely tolerant religious society of the Netherlands in the 17th century features in a new art exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

THEME

Rachael Kohn: Their paintings glow with a luminescent realism, an intimacy and a confident prosperity. They were the Dutch Masters.

Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and on today's Ark, here on ABC Radio National, we'll find out what made them tick, spiritually.

The unrivalled religious tolerance, wealth and civic life of Dutch Protestant Holland in the 17th century, was bound to find expression in the work of its artists. Painters like Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals are just the most well-known of a host of brilliant painters, whose works are on display at the National Gallery of Victoria. The Director, Gerard Vaughan, describes the society from which they emerged.

Gerard Vaughan: What you find is that this new society, which was selfconsciously Calvinist, and therefore not Catholic, created this amazing economic miracle, and it was the economic miracle of the 17th century.

They were a great trading power, it was a middle-class nation of merchants and traders and businessmen, but also Amsterdam became an amazing melting pot for people of all backgrounds and persuasions, and many people who were fleeing perhaps from the counter-reformation of the Catholic church, and the Inquisition, made their way to Amsterdam, so they brought with them not just capital in the form of money, but intellectual capital.

It was a place where printing went on, the sort of things that would be banned or censored in France, or Spain, or Italy, could be quite freely printed in Holland. And so it was this amazing country that effectively was a Protestant country. But Calvinism was never established as a state religion, because there was, in an interesting way, a kind of tolerance in Holland. About a third of the population remained Catholic, and there were many other religious groups as well, and of course there was a very big Jewish population, and that's actually reflected in our exhibition.

Rachael Kohn: Yes, in fact the painting of the Synagogue, the Great Synagogue in Amsterdam, outside of Amsterdam actually, compares favourably with the Mariakerk, the major church in Amsterdam.

Gerard Vaughan: It's an amazing painting by Emanuel de Witte, a work of about 1680, of, as you say, of the interior of the Portuguese Synagogue, and it's the most beautiful building, and you get the sense, don't you, standing looking at it, that this is a well-to-do, confident group within Dutch society. And as well, there's a very small, but beautiful Rembrandt portrait, and it's been cleaned by the Rijksmuseum, in order to come to Melbourne, of the Jewish physician and writer, Dr Ephraim Bueno, and his family too. His father was a great physician before him, and they'd come from northern Portugal, and his father in fact had been brought to Holland to be a physician to the Prince of Orange the generation before. And he was a major figure in intellectual society in mid-17th century Amsterdam.

Rachael Kohn: Well you also get that sense of confidence in the depictions of the Protestants; was that kind of coincidental rise of a Protestant nation and mercantilism, what produced something rather unique, something that has been called a bourgeois Protestant society?

Gerard Vaughan: I think that's absolutely right, and perhaps it's the counterpoint to that. And I'll come back to your comment because it's a good one.

There are a couple of pictures in the exhibition that do represent what we would call the Italianate stream in Dutch painting, and what we might call a kind of painting that would be more acceptable to Catholics. And remember there were many Catholics in Holland. It was not a banned religion, in the sense that it was banned in other countries such as England, under Elizabeth I, and even of painters, you get Rembrandt.

His father was Protestant but his mother was a Catholic, and Vermeer, born a Protestant but he married a Catholic and converted to Catholicism. So it is this co-existence, although obviously it was a fairly uneasy co-existence, and a very difficult one until 1648 when at last the war with Spain was called off. But there are a couple of paintings in the exhibition that could almost be Italian religious works. There's one, 'The Adoration of the Magi' by Hendrick Terbrugghen and you can sort of see that whole Italian background. But he was an artist who obviously had Catholic patrons in Holland. He painted for churches, he very much was part of the Utrecht School, and Utrecht was a particularly Catholic city, as it is today. There's a Carel Fabritius, a pupil of Rembrandt, 'The Beheading of St John the Baptist', a work of around 1640, but there are all sorts of analogies with those wonderful kind of agisti, that we had in Melbourne in our exhibition last year.

Rachael Kohn: Gerard, are you saying that these paintings were of a Catholic type that might have been painted by Protestants?

Gerard Vaughan: It's a bit of each I think. I think that at the end of the day, an artist was a businessman, and if the patron was there, wanting a painting, and you were in a position to produce that painting, then you would take the commission and you would earn your money. But the point I'm making is that these are rather unusual works, and exceptional works, and you're absolutely right, that the visual culture of this new Protestant society turned its back on what I would call traditional Catholic imagery, the imagery of the baroque, of the counter-reformation.

And there are very few paintings produced in Holland other than that category I've just talked about, that are overtly religious, because obviously Calvinism did not wish to depict religious subjects in the traditional sense, and yet many of these paintings have a spiritual element I suppose, which is really quite interesting.

Dutch painting is about the here and now, painting what's around you, and this new society that emerged in 17th century Holland was very much as painting the world as people experienced it, whether it's a townscape, an interior, but some of the works do have a spiritual quality. There's a wonderful painting by Nicolaes Maes, of an old woman in prayer. She's a peasant, she's sitting down in a very, very simple interior, she's breaking bread and she's clasped her hands in prayer, thanking God for the meal that has been provided.

Rachael Kohn: Gerard, I find that painting and others like it in direct contrast to the sumptuous paintings, because what that one you've just described shows is the simple faith of the peasantry, the egalitarianism of the Protestant faith, that one can be holy in the simplest settings. And yet that's in such high contrast to the sumptuous paintings that seem to be displaying all the goods of the Dutch East India Company.

Gerard Vaughan: Well it's a bit of each, isn't it, because these were well-to-do people and they were a society that became immensely rich.

It was the most literate society in Europe, half the population lived in cities, and that meant that they were in business, they were traders, you know, they created this mercantile empire, that they had trading stations all over the world, but particularly in the Dutch East Indies, in Batavia, in what's now Jakarta in Indonesia, and the riches of the east were brought back to Holland, and that was the basis of the wealth of this new mercantile and Protestant society. And I think these great still lifes for example, these great displays of the richness of Dutch culture, I think there's a great sense of pride, because this was a new nation that came out of nowhere, and it was the most powerful mercantile power in the world, certainly in the first half of the 17th century, and so these great still lifes for example, celebrate that fact.

But of course you can decode them, and they're not all quite as straightforward as you think, and even the fact that a still life with these amazing blooms, these flowers at their peak, certainly there's a sense that those flowers have been cut off, and they will eventually wilt and die, so they represent a peak of perfection but it's transitory, and this comes across really, really clearly in one of the most amazing paintings in the exhibition by Albert Jans Vanderschuur, a vanitas still life of around 1660. And it's just a table-top covered with skulls and bones. So it's the old memento mori thing, you know, remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you will return. So here amidst the skulls and the bones of people who have died, lying on the table top beside the bones, is a pure fresh bloom, a cut-off flower at its peak, but again there's the sense that very quickly that flower will wilt, it will die, it will turn brown. So they're very, very interesting from that perspective.

Rachael Kohn: I wonder to what extent what we're seeing here is something of the philosophical movement that was taking place in Amsterdam at the time. This was the time of Baruch Spinoza, whom some people attribute the dawning of the Enlightenment, with his Deism. Are we seeing here something very sophisticated about the nature of life?

Gerard Vaughan: Yes, I agree with that, it is a kind of bridging thing, isn't it, you're quite right, between the old order that we know from the late Middle Ages and the time of the Renaissance, and the new order, looking forward to the 18th century, I agree with that, I think it is a kind of bridging culture in all sorts of ways. And there is a sense of modernity about it isn't there? As I said before, it was a melting pot for ideas, and people who were banned elsewhere could come to Amsterdam, they could print their books and tracts, and then of course they'd be smuggled into other countries where they were banned. So there was a sense of subversion, about intellectual life in Amsterdam at this time, which I do find very, very fascinating.

Rachael Kohn: Is it possible to identify something like the religion of the Dutch Masters? Can we categorise them in any way?

Gerard Vaughan: I think we can categorise them, generally, but of course there are exceptions, and I've talked about artists who came out of Rotterdam and Utrecht which were still very Catholic.

There is something I think the straightforwardness, the clarity, the realism, the naturalism of these images, no matter what they're depicting, I do believe represents a world view, a mindset, and it's something of the spirit of Calvinism, as I understand it, I think you can detect in it even the spotless interiors, and they're usually interiors of ordinary people, they're not interiors - a few represent aristocratic or very wealthy families, feasting and doing glamorous things, but most of them are quite deliberately unglamorous, but they're nevertheless the interiors of people who have in a relative sense, more worldly possessions, and a more ordered lifestyle, and a more ordered world view than peasants in other parts of Europe. And that does bring with it a sense of the Calvinist view of life, doesn't it?

Rachael Kohn: Yes, I was impressed by how many paintings depict work, the trades, baking, sewing, preparing cloth, even painting the portrait of a fishmonger's wife, as if she was a duchess.

Gerard Vaughan: Yes, that's an amazing portrait I have to say. It's one of the most interesting things in the exhibition. And of course look, there are different ways in which you can deconstruct; there are a lot of fish in this exhibition or people associated with fishing, and it's interesting because when I first noticed that, I went off and I began to read up on the Dutch economy in the 17th century, and of course the fishing industry was crucially important, and was a major part of the wealth of the Dutch nation.

They had the best fishing fleet in the world, they invented new technology, so their fleets could go out further because they knew how to preserve the fish when they caught them. And so all of that sort of underlies again this tremendous pride in doing business and being successful in business, but not gloating over it, just being quietly pleased that you've created a standard of life and a way of life, and a civic life, and I think that's the crucial thing to understand about 17th century Holland, and it comes through again and again in these images, that it was a republic.

They didn't have a monarchy, the Princes of Orange controlled one area of these united provinces, but they weren't kings of Holland in any sense. It was a very egalitarian society, relative to the rest of Europe, and it comes across also in some of the portraits and group portraits, (and group portraiture is one of the great contributions that the Dutch make at this time) of people organising their own lives. So you'll have the Regents of a well-known hospital or school, wanting to be portrayed together because they're giving their time and their energy and their effort to making sure that this public facility is well-governed, well-managed, and well-looked after.

And one of the really good paintings, one of my favourites in fact, is by Jan de Bray, and it's the Governors of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, a work of 1675. It's all the painters who worked in Haarlem, or the key painters who made up the Guild with the Master of the Guild in the front, and it's interesting again, from a kind of Protestant-Catholic perspective, because St Luke is the Patron Saint of painters, and the man sitting in the front is not a painter in fact, he's a brass-founder, and he's made this magnificent medallion of St Luke in relief, which you think is a little bit un-Protestant, you know, because it is a saint, with a halo, essentially painting the Virgin, you know, that tradition that the icon of the Virgin Mary being painted by St Luke.

And I think that's a quite interesting sense of continuity from the culture of the Middle Ages, if I can put it like that, going through into the 17th century, and in this case into the late 17th century, and a sense of continuum, so they weren't necessarily prepared to turn their back on something like that because it went to the heart of this major sector in Dutch creative society, the painters, because there are an enormous number of painters, and they were very happy to maintain that sort of mediaeval association with St Luke, the Patron Saint of painters.

Rachael Kohn: One of the great exhibitions to come to Australia, the Dutch Masters at the National Gallery of Victoria, under the Directorship of Gerard Vaughan, who was speaking to me from Melbourne. It's on till the 2nd October.

Next week we explore the true origins of Catwoman, how 'women became cats' in the popular imagination. That's on The Ark, with me, Rachael Kohn.

Further Information

Dutch Masters from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The richest survey of 17th century Dutch art ever staged in Australia, at the National Gallery of Victoria until 2 October 2005.
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/dutchmasters/