Leyden's Painters, a Fanatic and a Hero
Rembrandt of the Rhine--His early life at Leyden--Jan
Steen--Jan van Goyen--Brewer and painter--Pictures for
beer--Jan Steen's grave--His delicacy and charm--His native
refinement--A painter of hands--Jan Steen and Morland--Jan
Steen and Hogarth--The Red Sea--The Flood--Jan of Leyden--The
siege of Münster--Gigantic madness--Gerard Dou--Godfrey
Schalcken--Frans van Mieris--William van Mieris--Gabriel
Metsu--Beckford's satire--Leyden's poor pictures--The siege
of Leyden--Adrian van der Werf.
Leyden was the mother of some precious human clay. Among her sons was
the greatest of Dutch painters, Rembrandt van Rijn; the most lovable
of them, Jan Steen; and the most patient of them, Gerard Dou.
Of Rembrandt's genius it is late in the day to write, nor have I the
power. We have seen certain of his pictures at The Hague; we shall
see others at Amsterdam. I can add nothing to what is said in those
places, but here, in Leyden (which has ten thousand stuffed birds,
and not a single picture by her greatest son), one may dwell upon
his early days and think of him wandering as a boy in the surrounding
country unconsciously absorbing effects of light and shade.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 15, 1606, probably in
a house at the corner of the Weddesteg, near the Wittepoort, on the
bank of the Rhine. It was the same year that gave England _Macbeth_
and _King Lear_. His father was a miller, his mother the daughter
of a Leyden baker: it was destined that the son of these simple folk
should be the greatest painter that the north of Europe has produced.
They did not foresee such a fate, but they seem sufficiently to have
realised that their son had unusual aptitude for him to be sent to
study law at the University. But he meant from the first to paint,
and when he should have been studying text-books he was studying
nature. The old miller, having a wise head, gave way, and Rembrandt
was allowed to enter the studio of Jacob van Swanenburgh. That was
probably in 1622, when he was sixteen; in 1624 he knew so much more
than Swanenburgh had ever dreamed of that he passed on to Amsterdam,
to see what could be learned from Peter Lastman. But Lastman was of
little use, and Rembrandt soon returned to Leyden.
There he set up his own studio, painting, however, at his father's
house--possibly even in the mill itself--as much as he could; and for
seven years he taught younger men at Leyden his secrets. He remained
at Leyden until 1631, moving then again to Amsterdam and beginning
the greatest period of his life. At Leyden he had painted much and
etched much; perhaps the portrait of himself in a steel gorget,
at The Hague, is his finest Leyden picture. It was not until 1632,
the year in which he married his Saskia, that the first of his most
famous works, "The School of Anatomy," was painted. Yet Leyden may
consider that it was she that showed the way; she may well be proud.
Rembrandt's later life belongs to Amsterdam; but Leyden had other
illustrious sons who were faithful to her to the end. Chief of these
was Jan Steen.
Harmens the miller, as we have seen, became the father of a boy named
Rembrandt in 1606; it was twenty years later that Steen the brewer
rejoiced over the birth of a son called Jan.
Of Jan's childhood we know nothing, but as a young man he was sent
by his father to Utrecht to study under Nicholas Knupfer. Then he
passed on to Adrian van Ostade and probably to Adrian Brouwer, with
both of whom and Frans Hals we saw him carousing, after his wont, in a
picture by Brouwer in Baron Steengracht's house at The Hague. Finally
he became the pupil of Jan van Goyen, painter of the beautiful
"Valkhof at Nymwegen," No. 991 in the Ryks Museum, a picture which
always makes me think of Andrew Marvell's poem on the Bermudas. Like
many another art pupil, Jan Steen married his master's daughter.
Jan van Goyen, I might add, was another of Leyden's sons. He was born
in 1596 and he died at The Hague in 1666, while London was suffering
under the Plague.
Jan Steen seems to have intended to make brewing his staff and
painting merely his cane; but good nature and a terrible thirst were
too much for him. From brewing he descended to keeping a tavern,
"in which occupation," to quote Ireland, "he was himself his best
customer". After a while, having exhausted his cellar, he took
seriously to painting in order to renew it, paying for his liquor
with his brush. Thus "for a long time his works were to be found
only in the hands of dealers in wine". Who, after this, shall have
the hardihood to speak evil of the grape?
Jan is not supposed to have lived at Leyden after his marriage to
Margaretta van Goyen, in 1649, until 1669, when his father died. In
1672 he is known to have taken a tavern at Leyden at the Lange Brug.
Of the intervening years little is known. He was probably at Haarlem
part of the time and at The Hague part of the time, In 1667 he paid
his rent--only twenty-nine florins--with three pictures "painted well
as he was able". Margaretta died in 1669--a merry large woman we must
suppose her from her appearance in Jan's pictures, and the mother of
four or five children who may often be seen in the same scenes. Jan
married again in 1673 and died in 1697.
He was buried in St. Peter's Church, Leyden, leaving more than five
hundred pictures to his name. The youth who, in the absence of the
koster, accompanied me through St. Peter's Church, so far from knowing
where Jan Steen was buried, had never even heard his name. (And at
the Western Church in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt is said to have been
buried, his resting-place cannot be pointed out. But never a Dutch
admiral's grave is in doubt.)
For all his roystering and recklessness, for all his drinking and
excess, Jan Steen's work is essentially delicate. He painted the
sublimated essence of comedy. Teniers, Ostade, Brouwer are coarse and
boorish beside him; Metsu and Mieris genteel. Even when he is painting
low life Jan Steen is distinguished, a gentleman. And now and then
he touches the springs of tears, so exquisite in his sympathetic
understanding. He remains the most lovable painter in Holland, and
the tenderest--in a country where tenderness is not easily found.
Look, for example, at the two pictures at The Hague which are
reproduced opposite pages 74 and 80. The first represents the Steen
family. The jolly Jan himself is smoking at the table; the old brewer
and the elder Mrs. Steen are in the foreground. I doubt if any picture
exists in which the sense of innocent festivity is better expressed. It
is all perhaps rather a muddle: Mrs. Steen has some hard work before
her if the house is to be restored to a Dutch pitch of cleanliness
and order; but how jolly every one is! Jan himself looks just as we
should expect.
The triumph of the "Oyster Feast," on the opposite page, seems to me to
be the girl kneeling in the corner. Here is drawing indeed. The charge
brought by the mysterious painter in Balzac's story against Pourbus,
that one was unable to walk behind the figure in his picture, could
never hold with Jan Steen. His every figure stands out surrounded
by atmosphere, and never more so than in the "Oyster Feast". Again,
in the "Cat's Dancing Lesson" (opposite page 158), what drawing there
is in the girl playing the pipe, and what life in the whole scene!
It is odd that Jan Steen in Holland, and George Morland in England,
both topers, should have had this secret of simple charm so highly
developed: one of nature's curious ironies, very confusing to the
moralist. In the second Hague picture (opposite page 80) Leyden's
genial tosspot has achieved a farther triumph--he has painted one of
the most radiantly delicate figures in all art. One must go to Italy
and seek among the early Madonnas to find anything to set beside the
sweet Wordsworthian character of this little Dutch girl who feeds
the animals.
It was Jan Steen's way to scamp much of every picture; but in every
picture you will find one figure that could not be excelled. Nothing
probably could be more slovenly, more hideously unpainted, than, for
example, the bed and the guitar-case in the "Sick Woman"--No. 2246
at the Ryks Museum--opposite page 22. But I doubt if human skill
has ever transcended the painting of the woman's face, or the sheer
drawing of her. Look at her arm and hand--Jan Steen never went wrong
with arms and hands. Look at the hands of the boy playing the pipe in
the picture opposite page 74; look at the woman filling a pipe at the
table. To-day we are accustomed to pictures containing children: they
are as necessary as sunsets to picture buyers: all our figure-painters
lavish their talents upon them; but who had ever troubled to paint
a real peasant child before Jan Steen? It was this rough toper that
showed the way, and no one since has ever excelled him.
Parallels have been drawn between Jan Steen and Hogarth, and there
are critics who would make Jan a moralist too. But I do not see how
we can compare them. Steen did what Hogarth could not, Hogarth did
what Steen would not. Hogarth is rarely charming, Steen is rarely
otherwise. It is not Hogarth with whom I should associate Jan, but
Burns. He is the Dutch Burns--in colour.
I wish we had more facts concerning him, for he must have been
a great man and humorist. The story is told of Hogarth that on
being commissioned to paint a scriptural picture of the Red Sea
for a too parsimonious patron who had beaten him down and down, he
rebuked him for his meanness by producing a canvas entirely covered
with red paint. "But what is this?" the patron asked. "The Red
Sea--surely." "Where then are the Israelites?" "They have all crossed
over." "And Pharaoh's hosts?" "They are all drowned." The story is
perhaps an invention; but a somewhat similar joke is credited to Jan
Steen. His commission was the Flood, and his picture when finished
consisted of a sheet of water with a Dutch cheese in the midst
bearing the arms of Leyden. The cheese and the arms, he pointed out,
proved that people had been on the earth; as for Noah and the ark,
they were out of the picture.
Jan Steen's picture of "A Quaker's Funeral" I have not seen, but
according to Pilkington it is impossible to behold it and refrain from
laughter. The subject does not strike one as being in itself mirthful.
A century earlier Leyden had produced another Jan, separated from
Jan Steen by a difference wide asunder as the poles. Yet a very
wonderful man in his brief season, standing high among the world's
great madmen. I mean Jan Bockelson, the Anabaptist, known as Jan of
Leyden, who, beginning as pure enthusiast, succumbed, as so many a
leader of women has done, to the intoxication of authority, and became
the slave of grandiose ambition and excesses. Every country has had
its mock Messiahs: they rise periodically in England, not less at
the present day than in the darker ages (hysteria being more powerful
than light); yet the history of none of these spiritual monarchs can
compare with that of the tailor's son of Leyden.
The story is told in many places, but nowhere with such dramatic
picturesqueness as by Professor Karl Pearson in his _Ethic of
Freethought_. "As the illegitimate son of a tailor in Leyden,"
says Professor Pearson--Jan's mother was the maid of his father's
wife--"his early life was probably a harsh and bitter one. Very young
he wandered from home, impressed with the miseries of his class and
with a general feeling of much injustice in the world. Four years he
spent in England seeing the poor driven off the land by the sheep;
then we find him in Flanders, married, but still in vague search of
the Eldorado; again roaming, he visits Lisbon and Lübeck as a sailor,
ever seeking and inquiring. Suddenly a new light bursts upon him in
the teaching of Melchior Hofmann [the Anabaptist]; he fills himself
with dreams of a glorious kingdom on earth, the rule of justice and
of love. Still a little while and the prophet Mathys crosses his path,
and tells him of the New Sion and the extermination of the godless."
Mathys, or Jan Mathiesen, was a baker of Haarlem, who, constituted an
Anabaptist bishop, was preaching the new gospel through the Netherlands
and gathering recruits to the community of God's saints which had been
established at Münster. "Full of hope for the future," says Professor
Pearson, "Jan sets out for Münster to join the saints. Still young,
handsome, imbued with a fiery enthusiasm, actor by nature and even by
choice, he has no small influence on the spread of Anabaptism in that
city. The youth of twenty-three expounds to the followers of Rottmann
the beauties of his ideal kingdom of the good and the true. With
his whole soul he preaches to them the redemption of the oppressed,
the destruction of tyranny, the community of goods, and the rule of
justice and brotherly love. Women and maidens slip away to the secret
gatherings of the youthful enthusiast; the glowing young prophet of
Leyden becomes the centre of interest in Münster. Dangerous, very
dangerous ground, when the pure of heart are not around him; when
the spirit 'chosen by God' is to proclaim itself free of the flesh.
"The world has judged Jan harshly, condemned him to endless
execration. It were better to have cursed the generations of
oppression, the flood of persecution, which forced the toiler to
revolt, the Anabaptists to madness. Under other circumstances the
noble enthusiasm, with other surroundings the strong will, of Jan of
Leyden might have left a different mark on the page of history. Dragged
down in this whirlpool of fanaticism, sensuality, and despair, we can
only look upon him as a factor of the historic judgment, a necessary
actor in that tragedy of Münster, which forms one of the most solemn
chapters of the Greater Bible."
Gradually Jan rose to be head of the saints, Mathiesen having been
killed, and none other displaying so much strength of purpose
or magnetic enthusiasm. And here his mind gave way. Like so
many absolute rulers before and since, he could not resist the
ecstacies of supremacy. To resume Professor Pearson's narrative:
"The sovereign of Sion--although 'since the flesh is dead, gold to him
is but as dung'--yet thinks fit to appear in all the pomp of earthly
majesty. He appoints a court, of which Knipperdollinch is chancellor,
and wherein there are many officers from chamberlain to cook. He
forms a body-guard, whose members are dressed in silk. Two pages
wait upon the king, one of whom is a _son of his grace the bishop of
Münster_. The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously attired,
one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of their coats
are embroidered the arms of Sion--the earth-sphere pierced by two
crossed swords, a sign of universal sway and its instruments--while
a golden finger-ring is token of their authority in Sion. The king
himself is magnificently arrayed in gold and purple, and as insignia
of his office, he causes sceptre and spurs of gold to be made. Gold
ducats are melted down to form crowns for the queen and himself; and
lastly a golden globe pierced by two swords and surmounted by a cross
with the words, 'A King of Righteousness o'er all' is borne before
him. The attendants of the Chancellor Knipperdollinch are dressed in
red with the crest, a hand raising aloft the sword of justice. Nay,
even the queen and the fourteen queenlets must have a separate court
and brilliant uniforms.
"Thrice a week the king goes in glorious array to the market-place
accompanied by his body-guards and officers of state, while behind ride
the fifteen queens. On the market-place stands a magnificent throne
with silken cushions and canopy, whereon the tailor-monarch takes
his seat, and alongside him sits his chief queen. Knipperdollinch
sits at his feet. A page on his left bears the book of the law,
the Old Testament; another on his right an unsheathed sword. The
book denotes that he sits on the throne of David; the sword that
he is the king of the just, who is appointed to exterminate all
unrighteousness. Bannock-Bernt is court-chaplain, and preaches in the
market-place before the king. The sermon over, justice is administered,
often of the most terrible kind; and then in like state the king and
his court return home. On the streets he is greeted with cries of:
'Hail in the name of the Lord. God be praised!'"
Meanwhile underneath all this riot of splendour and power and
sensuality, the pangs of starvation were beginning to be felt. For
the army of the bishop of Münster was outside the city and the siege
was very studiously maintained. The privations became more and more
terrible, and more and more terrible the means of allaying them. The
bodies of citizens that had died were eaten; and then men and women
and children were killed in order that they might be eaten too. Under
such conditions, is it any wonder that Münster became a city of the
mad, mad beyond the sane man's wildest dreams of excess?
A few of the least demented of Jan's followers at length determined
that the tragedy must cease, and the city was delivered into
the bishop's hands. "What judgment," writes Professor Pearson,
"his grace the bishop thinks fit to pass on the leaders of Sion at
least deserves record. Rottmann has fallen by St. Martin's Church,
fighting sword in hand, but Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinch are
brought prisoners before this shepherd of the folk. Scoffingly he
asks Jan: 'Art thou a king?' Simple, yet endlessly deep the reply:
'Art thou a bishop?' Both alike false to their callings--as father of
men and shepherd of souls. Yet the one cold, self-seeking sceptic,
the other ignorant, passionate, fanatic idealist. 'Why hast thou
destroyed the town and _my_ folk?' 'Priest, I have not destroyed one
little maid of _thine_. Thou hast again thy town, and I can repay
thee a hundredfold.' The bishop demands with much curiosity how this
miserable captive can possibly repay him. 'I know we must die, and
die terribly, yet before we die, shut us up in an iron cage, and send
us round through the land, charge the curious folk a few pence to see
us, and thou wilt soon gather together all thy heart's desire.' The
jest is grim, but the king of Sion has the advantage of his grace
the bishop. Then follows torture, but there is little to extract,
for the king still holds himself an instrument sent by God--though
it were for the punishment of the world. Sentence is read on these
men--placed in an iron cage they shall be shown round the bishop's
diocese, a terrible warning to his subjects, and then brought back
to Münster; there with glowing pincers their flesh shall be torn
from the bones, till the death-stroke be given with red-hot dagger
in throat and heart. For the rest let the mangled remains be placed
in iron cages swung from the tower of St. Lambert's Church.
"On the 26th of January, 1536, Jan Bockelson and Knipperdollinch meet
their fate. A high scaffolding is erected in the market-place, and
before it a lofty throne for his grace the bishop, that he may glut
his vengeance to the full. Let the rest pass in silence. The most
reliable authorities tell us that the Anabaptists remained calm and
firm to the last. 'Art thou a king?' 'Art thou a bishop?' The iron
cages still hang on the church tower at Münster; placed as a warning,
they have become a show; perhaps some day they will be treasured as
weird mentors of the truth which the world has yet to learn from the
story of the Kingdom of God in Münster."
A living German artist of great power, named Joseph Sattler, too
much of whose time has recently been given to designing book-plates,
produced some few years ago an extraordinary illustrated history of the
Anabaptists in Münster. Many artists have essayed to portray madness,
but I know of no work more terrible than his.
We have travelled far from Leyden's peaceful studios. It is time to
look at the work of Gerard Dou. Rembrandt we have seen was the son of
a miller, Jan Steen of a brewer; the elder Dou was a glazier. His son
Gerard was born in Leyden in 1613. The father was so far interested
in the boy's gifts that he apprenticed him to an engraver when he
was nine. At the age of eleven he passed to the studio of a painter
on glass, and on St. Valentine's day, 1628, he became a pupil of
Rembrandt. From Rembrandt, however, he seems to have learned only
the charm of contrasts of light and shade. None of the great rugged
strength of the master is to be seen in his minute and patient work,
in which the genius of taking pains is always apparent. "He would
frequently," says Ireland, "paint six or seven days on a hand, and,
still more wonderful, twice the time on the handle of a broom.... The
minuteness of his performance so affected his sight that he wore
spectacles at the age of thirty."
Gerard Dou's success was not only artistic; it was also
financial. Rembrandt's prices did not compare with those of his pupil,
whose art coming more within the sympathetic range and understanding
of the ordinary man naturally was more sought after than the Titanic
and less comfortable canvasses of the greater craftsman.
Dou did exceedingly well, one of his patrons even paying him a
yearly honorarium of a thousand florins for the privilege of having
the refusal of each new picture. "The Poulterer's Shop" at our
National Gallery is a perfect example of his fastidious minuteness
and charm. But he painted pictures also with a tenderer brush. I give
on the opposite page a reproduction of the most charming picture by
Gerard Dou that I know--"The Young Housekeeper" at The Hague. This
is a very miracle of painting in every inch, and yet the pains that
have been expended upon the cabbage and the fish are not for a moment
disproportionate: the cabbage and the fish, for all their finish,
remain subordinate and appropriate details. The picture is the picture
of the mother and the children. "The Night School"--No. 795 in the
Ryks Museum at Amsterdam--is, I believe, more generally admired, but
"The Young Housekeeper" is the better. "The Night School" might be
described as the work of a pocket Rembrandt; "The Young Housekeeper"
is the work of an artist of rare individuality and sympathy. At the
Wallace Collection may be seen a hermit by Dou quite in his best
nocturnal manner.
Gerard Dou died at Leyden, where he had spent nearly all his quiet
life, in 1676. He is buried at St. Peter's, but his grave does not
seem to be known there.
Dou had many imitators, some of whom studied under him. One of the
chief was Godfried Schalcken of Dort, whose picture of an "Old Woman
Scouring a Pan" may be seen in the National Gallery, while the Wallace
Collection has several examples of his skill. Schalcken seems to
have been a man of great brusquerie, if two stories told by Ireland
of his sojourn in England are true. William III., for example, when
sitting for his picture, with a candle in his hand, was suffered by
Schalcken to burn his fingers. "One is at a loss," says Ireland, "to
determine which was most to blame, the monarch for want of feeling,
or the painter of politeness. The following circumstance, however,
will place the deficiency of the latter beyond controversy. A lady
sitting for her portrait, who was more admired for a beautiful hand
than a handsome face, after the head was finished, asked him if
she should take off her glove, that he might insert the hand in the
picture, to which he replied, he always painted the hands from those
of his valet." The most attractive picture by Schalcken that I have
seen is a girl sewing by candle light, in the Wallace Collection. It
pairs off with the charming little Gerard Dou at the Ryks--No. 796.
Dou said that the "Prince of his pupils" was Frans van Mieris of
Delft, who combined the manner and predilections of his master with
those of Terburg. He was very popular with collectors, but I do not
experience any great joy in the presence of his work, which, with all
its miraculous deftness, is yet lacking in personal feeling. Mieris,
says Ireland, "was frequently paid a ducat per hour for his works. His
intimacy and friendship for Jan Steen, that excellent painter and
bon vivant, seems to have led him into much inconvenience. After a
night's debauch, quitting Jan Steen, he fell into a common drain;
whence he was extricated by a poor cobbler and his wife, and, treated
by them with much kindness, he repaid the obligation by presenting
them with a small picture, which, by his recommendation, was sold
for a considerable sum."
The amazingly minute picture of "The Poulterer's Shop" which hangs in
the National Gallery as a pendant to Dou's work with the same title,
is by William van Mieris, the son of Dou's favourite pupil. He also
was born at Leyden, that teeming mother of painters. Frans van Mieris,
his father, died at Leyden in 1681; William died at Leyden in 1747.
Above the work of Frans van Mieris I would put that of Gabriel Metsu,
another of Dou's pupils, and also a son of Leyden, where he was born
in 1630. Upon Metsu's work Terburg, however, exercised more influence
than did Gerard Dou. "The Music Lesson" and "The Duet" at the National
Gallery are good examples of his pleasant painting. Even better is
his work at the Wallace Collection. He died in 1667 in Amsterdam,
where one of his best pictures "The Breakfast"--No. 1553 at the
Ryks--may be seen. There are many fine examples at the Louvre. He
was always graceful, always charming, with a favourite model--perhaps
his wife--the pleasant plump woman who occurs again and again in his
work. She is in "The Breakfast" (see the opposite page).
Mention of Gerard Dou and his pupils reminds me of a little-known
satire on art-criticism written by "Vathek" Beckford. _Biographical
Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters_ it is called, among the painters
being Sucrewasser of Vienna, and Watersouchy of Amsterdam. It is
Watersouchy who concerns us, for he was a Dutch figure painter who
carried the art of detail farther than it had been carried before. I
quote a little from Beckford's account of this genius, since it helps
to bring back a day when the one thing most desired by the English
collector was a Dutch picture--still life, boors, cows, ruins, or
domestic interior--no matter what subject or how mechanically painted
so long as it was done minutely enough.
"Whilst he remained at Amsterdam, young Watersouchy was continually
improving, and arrived to such perfection in copying point lace,
that Mierhop entreated his father to cultivate these talents, and to
place his son under the patronage of Gerard Dow, ever renowned for
the exquisite finish of his pieces. Old Watersouchy stared at the
proposal, and solemnly asked his wife, to whose opinion he always
paid a deference, whether painting was a genteel profession for their
son. Mierhop, who overheard their conversation, smiled disdainfully
at the question, and Madam Watersouchy answered, that she believed it
was one of your liberal arts. In few words, the father was persuaded,
and Gerard Dow, then resident at Leyden, prevailed upon to receive
the son as a disciple.
"Our young artist had no sooner his foot within his master's apartment,
than he found every object in harmony with his own disposition. The
colours finely ground, and ranged in the neatest boxes, the pencils
so delicate as to be almost imperceptible, the varnish in elegant
phials, the easel just where it ought to be, filled him with agreeable
sensations, and exalted ideas of his master's merit. Gerard Dow on
his side was equally pleased, when he saw him moving about with all
due circumspection, and noticing his little prettinesses at every
step. He therefore began his pupil's initiation with great alacrity,
first teaching him cautiously to open the cabinet door, lest any
particles of dust should be dislodged and fix upon his canvas, and
advising him never to take up his pencil without sitting motionless
a few minutes, till every mote casually floating in the air should
be settled. Such instructions were not thrown away upon Watersouchy:
he treasured them up, and refined, if possible, upon such refinements."
In course of time Watersouchy gained the patronage of a rich but
frugal banker named Baise-la-Main, who seeing his value, arranged
for the painter to occupy a room in his house, "Nobody," Beckford
continues, "but the master of the house was allowed to enter this
sanctuary. Here our artist remained six weeks in grinding his colours,
composing an admirable varnish, and preparing his canvass, for a
performance he intended as his _chef d'oeuvre._ A fortnight more
passed before he decided upon a subject. At last he determined to
commemorate the opulence of Monsieur Baise-la-Main, by a perspective
of his counting-house. He chose an interesting moment, when heaps of
gold lay glittering on the counter, and citizens of distinction were
soliciting a secure repository for their plate and jewels. A Muscovite
wrapped in fur, and an Italian glistening in brocade, occupied the
foreground. The eye glancing over these figures highly finished, was
directed through the windows of the shop into the area in front of
the cathedral; of which, however, nothing was discovered, except two
sheds before its entrance, where several barbers were represented at
their different occupations. An effect of sunshine upon the counter
discovered every coin that was scattered upon its surface. On these
the painter had bestowed such intense labour, that their very legends
were distinguishable.
"It would be in vain to attempt conveying, by words, an idea adequate
to this _chef d'oeuvre_, which must have been seen to have been duly
admired. In three months it was far advanced; during which time our
artist employed his leisure hours in practising jigs and minuets on
the violin, and writing the first chapter of Genesis on a watchpaper,
which he adorned with a miniature of Adam and Eve, so exquisitely
finished, that every ligament in their fig-leaves was visible. This
little _jeu d'esprit_ he presented to Madam Merian."
Leyden's earliest painter was Lucas Jacobz, known as Lucas van Leyden,
who was born in 1494. He painted in oil, in distemper and on glass;
he took his subjects from nature and from scripture; he engraved better
than he painted; and he was the friend of Dürer. Leyden possesses his
triptych, "The Last Judgment," which to me is interesting rather as a
piece of pioneering than as a work apart. After settling for a while at
Middelburg and Antwerp, he returned to Leyden, where he died in 1533.
In spite of her record as the mother of great painters, Leyden treats
pictures with some indifference. The Municipal Museum has little that
is of value. Of most interest perhaps is the Peter van Veen, opposite
"The Last Judgment," representing a scene in the siege of Leyden by
the Spaniards under Valdez in 1574, which has a companion upstairs
by Van Bree, depicting the Burgomaster's heroic feat of opportunism
in the same period of stress.
Adrian Van der Werf was this Burgomaster's name (his monument stands
in the Van der Werf park), and nothing but his courage and address
at a critical moment saved the city. Motley tells the story in a
fine passage. "Meantime, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The
burghers had been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being
aware that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing
full well the thousand obstacles which it had to surmount. They had
guessed its progress by the illumination from the blazing villages;
they had heard its salvos of artillery on its arrival at North Aa;
but since then, all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear,
in sickening alternation, distracting every breast. They knew that
the wind was unfavourable, and, at the dawn of each day, every eye was
turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the easterly
breeze prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and
house-tops that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet,
while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even
the misery endured at Harlem had not reached that depth and intensity
of agony to which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, maltcake, horse-flesh,
had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin were
esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible,
for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day,
and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support
life among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily
around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending
for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as
it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled,
were greedily devoured.
"Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and
dung hills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the
famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every
living herb was converted into human food, but these expedients could
not avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful,--infants
starved to death on the maternal breasts, which famine had parched
and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead
children in their arms.
"In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family
of corpses, father, mother and children, side by side; for a disorder
called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now
came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The
pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed
inhabitants fell like grass beneath it scythe. From six thousand
to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet
the people resolutely held out--women and men mutually encouraging
each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe--an evil more
horrible than pest or famine. [3]
"The missives from Valdez, who saw more vividly than the besieged
could do, the uncertainty of his own position, now poured daily into
the city, the enemy becoming more prodigal of his vows, as he felt that
the ocean might yet save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants,
in their ignorance, had gradually abandoned their hopes of relief,
but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in
its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at
the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed
at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his
inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the
heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed
through the streets.
"A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a triangular place
in the centre of the town, into which many of the principal streets
emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood the church of
St. Pancras, with its high brick tower surmounted by two pointed
turrets, and with two ancient lime trees at its entrance. There stood
the burgomaster, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage,
and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat
for silence, and then exclaimed, in language which has been almost
literally preserved, 'What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that
we do not break our vows and surrender our city to the Spaniards?--a
fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures. I tell you I
have made an oath to hold this city, and may God give me strength to
keep my oath! I can die but once; whether by your hands, the enemy's,
or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so that
of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if
not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonoured
death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not; my
life is at your disposal; here is my sword, plunge it into my breast,
and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger,
but expect no surrender, so long as I remain alive.'"
Leyden was at last relieved by William of Orange, who from his
sick-bed had arranged for the piercing of the dykes and letting in
enough water to swim his ships and rout the Spaniards.
Out of tribulation comes good. For their constancy and endurance
in the siege the Prince offered the people of Leyden one of
two benefits--exemption from taxes or the establishment of a
University. They took the University.