Classicism and City Planning in the Netherlands

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Classicism and City Planning in the Netherlands

Restrained Grandeur.

As in England, a severe classicism free from a great deal of ornamentation was typical of most Dutch architecture in the seventeenth century. As a trading empire, the country's merchants were in frequent contact with the world that lay beyond their canals, dikes, and interior seas. Dutch traders and architects were frequent visitors to Italy, France, and England, although they generally shunned the elaborately ornamented spaces of the Roman Baroque as well as the severe grandeur of the court culture of nearer Versailles. During this Golden Age in the country's history, a fondness for classical design, much of it influenced by the relative severity of figures like Inigo Jones and Andrea Palladio, prevailed. The country's ethos—shaped by Calvinism and the sixteenth-century fight for independence from Catholic Spain—meant that the seventeenth century was not a great age in Dutch history for the construction of churches. As a rule, Dutch Protestants merely took over Catholic churches from the later Middle Ages, often whitewashing over the structure's murals and removing their sculptures. As population increased in the country's cities during the seventeenth century, new churches, often built in a style known today as "Dutch Palladianism," were constructed, but Calvinism, with its radical distaste for religious art and decoration, assured that many of these structures had only simple interiors. Dutch artists of the time like Vermeer and Saenredam documented the severe interiors that were common in the country's churches. Cleansed of their "idolatrous" religious art, these structures presented a severe face, with simple white walls and austere but massive spaces as their defining characteristics. Often the only ornamental elements that survived in these churches were their Gothic vaulting or their more modern carved and handsome pulpits, this later feature suggesting the primary importance given to the scriptures, the Word of God, in the new reformed faith.

Domestic Architecture.

By contrast, the Dutch displayed a more decorative taste in their civic buildings and houses, drawing on a repertory of Palladian decorating elements on the handsome exteriors of these structures. In the seventeenth century most Dutch houses were built from brick, rather than stone, although stone façades tended to increase as Dutch prosperity climbed during the century. Unlike Italy, where merchant princes had long built great urban palaces, Dutch houses were considerably more modest. Large tenement buildings that housed several families were also uncommon. Instead, the Dutch house was a place in which a single family or extended family lived. Most were quite small and were built in a way similar to modern "row houses." In Amsterdam and other cities near the water, they faced onto a canal, the main arteries for commercial deliveries at the time. They were usually about 25 to 30 feet wide and four to six stories high with decorated gables that faced toward the street or canal. This design allowed the maximum number of merchants access to a city's thoroughfares, but it also shaped and limited the domestic spaces inside. Most houses were only one or two rooms wide, although they were considerably deeper, stretching back from the street or canal. The Dutch house of the time was often used for both business and domestic pursuits, with cellars and attics functioning as commercial storehouses. Great families sometimes joined two or more of these smaller houses into a single space. Grand mansions built over several city lots were not as common in the Netherlands as they later became, although Amsterdam did acquire quite a number of these structures in the later seventeenth century.

City Planning.

Between 1600 and 1700, Amsterdam's population increased fourfold. Although its growth was the most dramatic in the region, rapid increase was the rule in most parts of the country. The Dutch's success in their sixteenth-century war of independence against the Habsburgs had left the country free to develop as a commercial center. To the south in Flanders and France, and to the east in Central Europe, religious repression continued to be the rule through most of the seventeenth century. In the Netherlands, by contrast, relative tolerance became the rule. Although the law officially prohibited Catholicism and some other religions, in practice Dutch local officials permitted a considerable degree of religious freedom. As a result, Jewish settlers from throughout Europe streamed into the country, as did Mennonites, Anabaptists, French Huguenots, Catholics from Flanders, Germany, and France, and even Orthodox Christians from Greece and the Near East. The Netherlands had long been a country that was exceptional by European standards; much of its land was low-lying, large parts of it were even below sea level, and for centuries, the country had been claiming territory from the water through the skillful draining of marshes and the construction of dikes. This tradition of public engineering continued in the seventeenth century, yet at the same time a new method of urban planning was taking shape in the country's cities. To accommodate the influx of new settlers in Amsterdam, the town council devised the Three Canals Plan in 1612 to increase the city's size and manage its growth. In essence, the plan expanded the town walls to enclose four times more space than they had previously, and called for three new canals to provide merchants and artisans with an outlet to the sea. Tough new restrictions drew a distinction between areas where "noisy" industries and crafts might be pursued and other parts of the town intended for residences and quieter commercial transactions. They divided the undeveloped land with mathematical precision into lots that were each 25 feet wide, and carved the new water thoroughfares with geometric regularity so that all roads led inexorably to the town's center. Handsome townhouses soon appeared in the new quarters, with prominent families streaming into these districts to take advantage of the relative peace and quiet. They decorated the new town walls with impressive gates at the major entrances and exits to the city, and along this string of walls, massive new fortifications protected the city from attack. Thus, in comparison to the relatively piecemeal plans for urban development then in use in London and Paris at the time, the Dutch model of urban planning was notable for its thoroughness and rationality.

Public Architecture.

During the Baroque period, Dutch burghers, that is city dwellers, continued to build imposing town halls, a tradition that stretched back through the Renaissance to the later Middle Ages. Of the many civic projects undertaken during the Netherlands' seventeenth-century Golden Age, the greatest was the construction of a new town hall in Amsterdam to replace an older medieval building that had served this purpose. When the burghers of the city began this project in 1648, they had merely desired to expand their pre-existing civic offices. In the initial phases of remodeling, however, the medieval structure at the site burnt down. Thus Jacob van Campen, the new building's architect, had a blank slate with which to work. The structure that he created survives today as an imposing testimony to the wealth of the time. The hall covered an entire city block, almost 300 feet wide and more than 230 feet deep. Above a ground floor, Campen designed two high-ceilinged stories, so that the entire structure, minus its enormous cupola, soared to a height of more than 100 feet. The central portion of this building projected outward towards the surrounding square and culminated in a pediment. Inside, an enormous Great Hall made use of the full potential of the building's grand height. Like Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall in early seventeenth-century London, this hall was a single monumental block of space, one of the largest public halls built during the Baroque. While it employed more restraint in its decoration than the exuberant ostentation typical of Italian buildings at the time, the massive scale of the structure makes it a building of undeniable grandeur.

Hidden Churches.

Another feature of seventeenth-century Dutch life presents a curious adaptation to the continuing religious controversies of the period. While the Netherlands was an island of relative religious toleration in the seventeenth-century world, the law still officially forbade the practice of Catholicism. As a result, large numbers of "private" churches sprang up in the country's cities, usually accommodated in the attics of townhouses. The degree of toleration granted to these institutions fluctuated over time and from place to place, although in most places bribes and even a system of fines meant that Catholics enjoyed relative freedom to practice in these private churches. Many of Holland's secret churches spanned the attics of several houses, and their artistic decoration was often quite flamboyant. The nobles, wealthy merchants, and foreign Catholic traders who patronized these institutions saw to it that these private chapels had elaborate murals, frescoes, and gilt ornament similar to the ostentation common in the continent's leading Baroque churches. In spite of their status as a subculture within the predominantly Calvinist cities of the region, the number of these secret churches was often considerable. Amsterdam had about twenty, Leiden eight. The potency of the Baroque interiors that survive from this period demonstrate the appeal that this style had for Catholics who existed in a state of relative isolation from the broader world of Roman religion.