Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [161]
Leon’s exhibition of models of the Biblical buildings was famous – Edward Browne, who we encountered sightseeing in the Netherlands in 1668, made sure to visit his ‘model of the Temple of Solomon, of Solomon’s house, the Fort of the Temple, the Tabernacle and many other curiosities’ while he was in Amsterdam.13 Now Huygens’s letter introduced Leon to Wren, in the hope that he might bring the exhibition to London:
Before all, I have thought I was to bring him acquainted with yourself. who are able to judge of the matter upon better and surer grounds than any man liuing. I give him also Letters to the Portingal Ambassador to Mylord Arlington and Mr Oldenburg, that some notice may be taken of him both at the Court, and amongst those of the Royal Society. If you will be so good as to direct him unto Mylord Archbishop of Canterbury.14
Huygens’s letter of introduction was written in response to a direct approach made to him at the court of William of Orange by Leon himself the previous year.15 And his intervention was successful. Through his and Wren’s efforts, the contents of Leon’s museum of architectural models, including his much-admired wooden model of the original Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, based on descriptions in the sacred texts, together with his extensive ‘museum’ of models of other historic buildings, were shipped to London. Leon died while on a return trip to the Netherlands in 1675, but his exhibition remained for many years in England.16
The arrival of Leon’s models produced a flurry of interest in reconstructed ancient Biblical architecture. Robert Hooke recorded in his diary, early in September 1675: ‘With Sir Chr. Wren. Long Discourse with him about the module of the Temple at Jerusalem.’17A good deal has been written by Dutch historians of architecture about the influence of the reconstructions of the Biblical buildings on Dutch church architecture in the second half of the seventeenth century. It is perhaps time for a similar kind of exploration of the effect of the collection of models brought to London by Leon on Wren and his contemporaries’ ecclesiastical architecture.
On a number of occasions while I have been writing this book, distinguished Dutch academics have expressed the hope to me that I would provide a picture of how, in the seventeenth century, Dutch fortunes declined as English fortunes grew, which was more sensitive to the Dutch side of the story.
The Dutch have always felt aggrieved at the way in which wealth, power and influence seeped away from the United Provinces at the beginning of the eighteenth century, as those of Britain increased. They have seen their diminishing role on the international scene as directly related to England’s rise. I hope that I have shown here that they are broadly right in thinking so. William III and his wife Mary Stuart carried with them into England not just the hopes and aspirations of a generation, but much of their tax revenue and wealth. Hence the word ‘plundered’ in my subtitle, though the process was, as I hope I have shown, considerably more subtle and extended than that word perhaps implies.
I hope I have indeed managed to paint a more colourful and varied picture of Anglo–Dutch relations and their outcome at the end of the seventeenth century, and thereby done something towards setting the record straight. It was the case then, and remains the case today, I believe, that the English and the Dutch share a remarkable amount in terms of outlook, fundamental beliefs, aspirations and sense of identity.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,