Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [182]
Perhaps more than anything else, the Noord-Zuidlijn fiasco has contributed to a sense of malaise amongst Amsterdammers – a feeling they share with many other Netherlanders. Most hope for better times, but others are voting with their feet: in 2006, 132,000 mostly middle-class Dutch citizens emigrated, the largest number ever.
Dutch art
Designed to serve only as a quick reference, the following outline is the very briefest of introductions to a subject that has rightly filled volumes. Inevitably, it covers artists that lived and worked in both the Netherlands and Belgium, as these two countries have – along with Luxembourg – been bound together as the “Low Countries” for most of their history. For in-depth and academic studies, see the recommendations in "Books".
Dutch art |
Beginnings – the Flemish Primitives
Throughout the medieval period, Flanders, in modern-day Belgium, was one of the most artistically productive parts of Europe, and it was here that the solid realist base of later Dutch painting developed. Today, the works of these early Flemish painters, the Flemish Primitives, are highly prized, and although examples are fairly rare in the Netherlands, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has a healthy sample, though unfortunately many of them are not on display during the museum’s long-winded refurbishment (see "The Rijksmuseum").
Jan van Eyck (1385–1441) is generally regarded as the first of the Flemish Primitives, and has even been credited with the invention of oil painting – though it seems more likely that he simply perfected a new technique by thinning his paint with turpentine (at the time a new discovery), thus making it more flexible. The most famous of his works still in the Low Countries is the altarpiece in Belgium’s Ghent Cathedral, which was revolutionary in its realism, for the first time using elements of native landscape in depicting biblical themes. Van Eyck’s style and technique were to influence several generations of the region’s artists.
Firmly in the Eyckian tradition were the Master of Flemalle (1387–1444) and Rogier van der Weyden (1400–64), one-time official painter to the city of Brussels. The Flemalle master is a shadowy figure; some believe he was the teacher of Van der Weyden, others that the two artists were in fact the same person. There are differences between the two, however; the Flemalle master’s paintings are close to Van Eyck’s, whereas van der Weyden shows a greater degree of emotional intensity in his religious works. Van der Weyden also produced serene portraits of the bigwigs of his day and these were much admired across a large swathe of western Europe. His style, never mind his success, influenced many painters, one of the most talented of these being Dieric Bouts (1415–75). Born in Haarlem but active in (Belgium’s) Leuven, Bouts is recognizable by his stiff, rather elongated figures and penchant for horrific subject matter – the tortures of damnation for example – all set against carefully drawn landscapes.
Few doubt that Hans Memling (1440–94) was a pupil of van der Weyden. Active in Bruges throughout his life, he is best remembered for the pastoral charm of his landscapes and the quality of his portraiture, much of which survives on the rescued side panels of triptychs. Gerard David (1460–1523) was a native of Oudewater, near Gouda, but he moved to Bruges in 1484, becoming the last of the great painters to work in that city, producing formal religious works of traditional bent. Strikingly different, but broadly contemporaneous, was Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516), who lived for most of his life in the Netherlands, though his style is linked to that of his Flemish contemporaries. His frequently reprinted religious allegories are filled with macabre visions of tortured people and grotesque beasts, and appear at first faintly unhinged, though it’s now thought that these are visual representations of contemporary sayings, idioms and parables. While their interpretation is