Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume IV Part 11

Antwerp--the city on the wharf--became famous at the beginning of the sixteenth century under the reign of the enterprising Charles V.

"Antwerp was then truly a leading city in almost all things, but in commerce it headed all the cities of the world," says an old chronicler. Bruges, the great banking center yielded her position, and the Hanseatic merchants removed to the banks of the Scheldt. "I was astonished, and wondered much when I beheld Antwerp," wrote an envoy of the Italian Republic, "for I saw Venice outdone."

In what direction Venice was outdone is not recorded. Not in her architecture, at least; scarcely in her painting. We can not concede a Tintoretto for a Rubens. Yet, as Antwerp was the home of Matsys, of Rubens, Van Dyck, and the Teniers, the home also of Christopher Plantin, the great printer, her glory is not to be sought in trade alone. She is still remembered as a mother of art and letters, while her mercantile preeminence belongs to a buried past.

It must, however, be confest that the fortunes of Antwerp as a city, prospering in its connection with the Hanseatic League, were anything but advantageous to the student of architectural history. Alterations and buildings were the order of the day, and so lavish were the means devoted to the work that scarcely a vestige of architecture in the remains is of earlier date than the fourteenth century.

The grandly dimensioned churches raised in every parish afford ample evidence of the zeal and skill with which the work of reconstruction was prosecuted, and as specimens of the style of their day can not fail to elicit our admiration by the n.o.bility of their proportions, so that in the monuments the wealthy burghers of Antwerp have left us we have perhaps no reason to regret their zeal. At the same time, one is tempted to wish that they had spared the works of earlier date by raising their new ones on fresh ground, instead of such wholesale demolition of the labors of preceding generations.

Notre Dame at Antwerp, the most s.p.a.cious church in the Netherlands, originated in a chapel built for a miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin. This chapel was reconstructed in 1124, when the canons of St.

Michel, having ceded their church to the Praemonstratensians, removed hither. Two centuries later, the canons of St. Michel, animated by the prevailing spirit, determined on rebuilding their church on a more magnificent scale, and they commenced the work in 1352 by laying the foundations for a new choir. But slow progress was made with this great undertaking, more than two centuries and a half elapsing before the church a.s.sumed that form with which we are familiar to-day. In 1520, the chapter, dissatisfied with its choir, started upon the erection of a new one, the first stone of which was laid in the following year by the Emperor Charles V., accompanied by King Christian II. of Denmark and a numerous retinue.

The new plan included a crypt, partly above ground, probably like that we see in St. Paul's in the same town, and the work was progressing when, in 1533, a disastrous fire did such damage to the western parts of the church that the project of enlargement was suspended, and the funds destined for its employment were applied to restoring the damaged portions. Had the design been realized, the eastern limb of the church would have been doubled in size.

As regards its dimensions, Notre Dame at Antwerp is one of the most remarkable churches in Europe, being nearly 400 feet long by 170 feet in width across the nave, which, inclusive of that covered by the western towers, has seven bays, and three aisles on either side. This multiplication of aisles gives a vast intricacy and picturesqueness to the cross views of the interior; but there is a poverty of detail, and a want of harmony among the parts and of subordination and proportion, sadly destructive of true architectural effect; so that, notwithstanding its size, it looks much smaller internally than many of the French cathedrals of far less dimensions. If there had been ten bays in the nave instead of only seven, and the central division had been at least ten feet wider, which could easily have been spared from the outermost aisles, the apparent size of the church would have been much greater. The outermost south aisle is wider than the nave, and equal in breadth to the two inner aisles; the northernmost aisle is not quite so broad.

The transepts have no aisles, but they are continued beyond the line of the nave aisles, so that they are more than usually elongated. The two inner aisles of the nave open into the transepts, but the outer ones, which, it should be remarked, are continuous, and not divided into a series of chapels, are walled up at their eastern extremities.

The choir consists of three bays, but has only one aisle on either side. This is continued round the apse, and five pentagonal chapels radiate from it. Three chapels flank the north aisle of the choir, the first two opening, as does the north transept, into one large chapel of the same breadth as the southernmost aisle of the nave.... The facade is flanked by towers equal in width to the two inner aisles of the nave. The northern one has alone been completed, and altho it may seem to a severe judgment to possess some of the defects of the late Flemish style, it is rivaled for beauty of outline only by the flamboyant steeples of Chartres and Vienna. As might be expected from its late age--it was not finished until 1530--this northwestern spire of Notre Dame at Antwerp exhibits some extravagances in design and detail, but the mode in which the octagonal lantern of openwork bisects the faces of the solid square portion with its alternate angles, thus breaking the outline without any harsh or disagreeable transition, is very masterly, while the bold pinnacles, with their flying b.u.t.tresses, which group around it, produce a most pleasing variety, the whole serving to indicate the appearance the steeple of Malines would have presented had it been completed according to the original design.

If size were any real test of beauty, the interior or Notre Dame at Antwerp ought to be one of the finest in Belgium. Unfortunately, altho it was begun at a time when the pointed style had reached the full maturity of perfection, a colder and more unimpressive design than is here carried out it would be difficult to find. Still, notwithstanding the long period that elapsed between its commencement and completion, there is a congruity about the whole building which is eminently pleasing, and to some extent redeems the defects in its details and proportions, while the views afforded in various directions by the triple aisles on either side of the nave are undeniably picturesque.

The high altarpiece, placed on the chord of the apse, is a n.o.ble and sumptuous example of early Renaissance taste and workmanship, but like the stallwork, its dimensions are such as to diminish the scale of the choir, the five arches opening to the procession path being completely obscured by it. Of the numerous creations of Rubens' pencil none perhaps more thoroughly declares to us his comprehension of religious decorative art than the "a.s.sumption" which fills the arched compartment in the lower portion of this altarpiece. It was finished in 1625, and, of twenty repet.i.tions of the subject, is the only example still preserved at the place it was intended by the painter to occupy. In spirit we are reminded of t.i.tian's "a.s.sumption" in the cathedral at Verona, but Rubens' proves perhaps a higher conception of the subject. The work is seen a considerable way off, and every outline is bathed in light, so that the Virgin is elevated to dazzling glory with a power of accession scarcely, if ever, attained by any master.

In the celebrated "Descent from the Cross," which hangs in the south transept, the boldness of the composition, the energy in the characters, the striking att.i.tudes and grouping, the glowing, vigorous coloring, are astonishing proofs of Rubens' power. The circ.u.mstances which gave rise to this wondrous effort of art are interesting. It is said that Rubens, in laying the foundations of his villa near Antwerp, had unwittingly infringed on some ground belonging to the Company of Gunsmiths (arquebusiers). A law suit was threatened, and Rubens prepared to defend it, but, being a.s.sured by one of the greatest lawyers of the city that the right lay with his opponents, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a picture by way of recompense. The offer was accepted, and the company required a representation of its patron saint, St. Christopher, to be placed in its chapel in the cathedral, which at that time Notre Dame was.

Rubens, with his usual liberality and magnificence, presented to his adversaries, not merely a single representation of the saint, but an elaborate ill.u.s.tration of his name--The Christ-bearer. The arquebusiers were at first disappointed not to have their saint represented in the usual manner, and Rubens was obliged to enter into an explanation of his work. Thus, without knowing it, they had received in exchange for a few feet of land a treasure which neither money nor lands can now purchase. The painting was executed by Rubens soon after his seven years' residence in Italy, and while the impression made by the work of t.i.tian and Paul Veronese were yet fresh in his mind. The great master appeared in the fulness of his glory in this work--it is one of the few which exhibits in combination all that nature had given him of warmth and imagination--with all that he acquired of knowledge, judgment and method, and in which he may be considered fully to have overcome the difficulties of a subject which becomes painful, and almost repulsive, when it ceases to be sublime.

VII

HOLLAND

HOW THE DUTCH OBTAINED THEIR LAND[A]

[Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." Translated by Caroline Tilton. By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Copyright, 1880.]

BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS

The first time that I crossed the old Rhine, I had stopt on the bridge, asking myself whether that small and humble stream of water was really the same river that I had seen rushing in thunder over the rocks at Schaffhausen, spreading majestically before Mayence, pa.s.sing in triumph under the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, beating in sonorous cadence at the foot of the Seven Mountains; reflecting in its course Gothic cathedrals, princely castles, fertile hills, steep rocks, famous ruins, cities, groves, and gardens; everywhere covered with vessels of all sorts, and saluted with music and song; and thinking of these things, with my gaze fixt upon the little stream shut in between two flat and desert sh.o.r.es, I had repeated, "Is this that Rhine?"

The vicissitudes which accompany the agony and death of this great river in Holland, are such as really to excite a sense of pity, such as is felt for the misfortunes and inglorious end of a people once powerful and happy. From the neighborhood of Emmerich, before reaching the Dutch frontier, it has lost all the beauty of its banks, and flows in great curves through vast and ugly flats, which seem to mark the approach to old age. At Millingen it runs entirely in the territory of Holland; a little farther on it divides. The main branch shamefully loses its name, and goes to throw itself into the Meuse: the other branch, insulted by the t.i.tle of the Dannerden ca.n.a.l, flows nearly to the city of Arnehm, when it once more divides into two branches. One empties into the Gulf of Zuyder-Zee; the other still called, out of compa.s.sion, the Lower Rhine, goes as far as the village of Durstede, where it divides for the third time; a humiliation now of old date.

One of these branches, changing its name like a coward, throws itself into the Meuse near Rotterdam; the other still called the Rhine, but with the ridiculous surname of "curved," reaches Utrecht with difficulty, where for the fourth time it again divides; capricious as an old man in his dotage. One part, denying its old name, drags itself as far as Muiden, where it falls into the Zuyder-Zee; the other, with the name of Old Rhine, or simply the Old, flows slowly to the city of Leyden, whose streets it crosses almost without giving a sign of movement, and is finally gathered into one ca.n.a.l by which it goes to its miserable death in the North Sea.

But it is not many years since this pitiful end was denied it. From the year 839, in which a furious tempest had acc.u.mulated mountains of sand at its mouth, until the beginning of the present century, the Old Rhine lost itself in the sand before reaching the sea, and covered a vast tract of country with pools and marshes. Under the reign of Louis Bonaparte the waters were collected into a large ca.n.a.l protected by three enormous sluicegates, and from that time the Rhine flows directly to the sea. These sluices are the greatest monument in Holland and, perhaps, the most admirable hydraulic work in Europe.

The dikes which protect the mouth of the ca.n.a.l, the walls, pillars, and gates, present altogether the aspect of a Cyclopian fortress, against which it seems that not only that sea, but the united forces of all seas, must break as against a granite mountain. When the tide rises the gates are closed to prevent the waters from invading the land; when the tide recedes they are opened to give pa.s.sage to the waters of the Rhine which have acc.u.mulated behind them; and then a ma.s.s of three thousand cubic feet of water pa.s.ses through them in one minute. On days when storms prevail, a concession is made to the sea, and the most advanced of the sluicegates is left open; and then the furious billows rush into the ca.n.a.l, like an enemy entering by a breach, but they break upon the formidable barrier of the second gate, behind which Holland stands and cries, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!" That enormous fortification which, on a desert sh.o.r.e, defends a dying river and a fallen city from the ocean, has something of solemnity which commands respect and admiration....

Napoleon said that it [Holland] was an alluvion of Trench rivers--the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse--and with this pretext he added it to the empire. One writer has defined it as a sort of transition between land and sea. Another, as an immense crust of earth floating on water. Others, an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe, the end of the earth, and the beginning of the ocean, a measureless raft of mud and sand; and Philip II. called it the country nearest to h.e.l.l.

But they all agreed upon one point, and all exprest it in the same words:--Holland is a conquest made by man over the sea--it is an artificial country--the Hollanders made it--it exists because the Hollanders preserve it--it will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall abandon it.

To comprehend this truth, we must imagine Holland as it was when first inhabited by the first German tribes that wandered away in search of a country. It was almost uninhabitable. There were vast tempestuous lakes, like seas, touching one another; mora.s.s beside mora.s.s; one tract covered with brushwood after another; immense forests of pines, oaks, and alders, traversed by herds of wild horses; and so thick were these forests that tradition says one could travel leagues pa.s.sing from tree to tree without ever putting foot to the ground. The deep bays and gulfs carried into the heart of the country the fury of the northern tempests. Some provinces disappeared once every year under the waters of the sea, and were nothing but muddy tracts, neither land nor water, where it was impossible either to walk or to sail. The large rivers, without sufficient inclination to descend to the sea, wandered here and there uncertain of their day, and slept in monstrous pools and ponds among the sands of the coasts. It was a sinister place, swept by furious winds, beaten by obstinate rains, veiled in a perpetual fog, where nothing was heard but the roar of the sea, and the voice of wild beasts and birds of the ocean.

Now, if we remember that such a region has become one of the most fertile, wealthiest and best regulated of the countries of the world, we shall understand the justice of the saying that Holland is a conquest made by man. But, it must be added, the conquest goes on forever.

To drain the lakes of the country the Hollanders prest the air into their service. The lakes, the marshes, were surrounded by dikes, the dikes by ca.n.a.ls; and an army of windmills, putting in motion force-pumps, turned the water into the ca.n.a.ls, which carried it off to the rivers and the sea. Thus vast tracts of land buried under the water, saw the sun, and were transformed, as if by magic, into fertile fields, covered with villages, and intersected by ca.n.a.ls and roads. In the seventeenth century, in less than forty years, twenty-six lakes were drained. At the beginning of the present century, in North Holland alone, more than six thousand hectares, or fifteen thousand acres, were thus redeemed from the waters; in South Holland, before 1844, twenty-nine thousand hectares; in the whole of Holland, from 1500 to 1858, three hundred and fifty-five thousand hectares.

Subst.i.tuting steam-mills for windmills, in thirty-nine months was completed the great undertaking of the draining of the lake of Haarlem, which measured forty-four-kilometers in circ.u.mference, and for ever threatened with its tempests the cities of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Leyden. And they are now meditating the prodigious work of drying up the Zuyder-Zee, which embraces an area of more than seven hundred square kilometers.

But the most tremendous struggle was the battle with the ocean.

Holland is in great part lower than the level of the sea; consequently, everywhere that the coast is not defended by sand-banks, it has to be protected by dikes. If these interminable bulkwarks of earth, granite, and wood were not there to attest the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Hollanders, it would not be believed that the hand of man could, even in many centuries have accomplished such a work. In Zealand alone the dikes extend to a distance of more than four hundred kilometers. The western coast of the island of Walcheren is defended by a dike, in which it is computed that the expense of construction added to that of preservation, if it were put out at interest, would amount to a sum equal in value to that which the dike itself would be worth were it made of ma.s.sive copper.

Around the city of Helder, at the northern extremity of North Holland, extends a dike ten kilometers long, constructed of ma.s.ses of Norwegian granite, which descends more than sixty meters into the sea. The whole province of Friesland, for the length of eighty-eight kilometers, is defended by three rows of piles sustained by ma.s.ses of Norwegian and German granite. Amsterdam, all the cities of the Zuyder Zee, and all the islands--fragments of vanished lands--which are strung like beads between Friesland and North Holland, are protected by dikes. From the mouths of the Ems to those of the Scheldt Holland is an impenetrable fortress, of whose immense bastions the mills are the towers, the cataracts are the gates, the islands the advanced forts; and like a true fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tops of its bell-towers and the roofs of its houses, as if in defiance and derision.

Holland is a fortress, and her people live as in a fortress on a war-footing with the sea. An army of engineers, directed by the Minister of the Interior, spread over the country, and ordered like an army, continually spy the enemy, watch over the internal waters, foresee the bursting of the dikes, order and direct the defensive works. The expenses of the war are divided; one part to the State, one part to the provinces; every proprietor pays, besides the general imposts, a special impost for the dikes, in proportion to the extent of his lands and their proximity to the water. An accidental rupture, an inadvertence, may cause a flood; the peril is unceasing; the sentinels are at their posts upon the bulwarks at the first a.s.sault of the sea; they shout the war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and money. And even when there is not a great battle, a quiet, silent struggle is for ever going on.

The innumerable mills, even in the drained districts, continue to work unresting, to absorb and turn into the ca.n.a.ls the water that falls in rain and that which filters in from the sea.

But Holland has done more than defend herself against the waters; she has made herself mistress of them, and has used them for her own defense. Should a foreign army invade her territory, she has but to open her dikes and unchain the sea and the rivers, as she did against the Romans, against the Spaniards, against the army of Louis XIV., and defend the land cities with her fleet. Water was the source of her poverty, she has made it the source of wealth. Over the whole country extends an immense net-work of ca.n.a.ls which serve both for the irrigation of the land and as a means of communication. The cities, by means of ca.n.a.ls, communicate with the sea; ca.n.a.ls run from town to town, and from them to villages, which are themselves bound together by these watery ways, and are connected even to the houses scattered over the country; smaller ca.n.a.ls surround the fields and orchards, pastures and kitchen-gardens, serving at once as boundary-wall, hedge, and roadway; every house is a little port. Ships, boats, rafts move about in all directions, as in other places carts and carriages. The ca.n.a.ls are the arteries of Holland, and the water her life-blood.

But even setting aside the ca.n.a.ls, the draining of the lakes, and the defensive works, on every side are seen the traces of marvelous undertakings. The soil, which in other countries is a gift of nature, is in Holland a work of men's hands. Holland draws the greater part of her wealth from commerce; but before commerce comes the cultivation of the soil; and the soil had to be created. There were sand-banks, interspersed with layers of peat, broad downs swept by the winds, great tracts of barren land apparently condemned to an external sterility. The first elements of manufacture, iron and coal, were wanting; there was no wood, because the forests had already been destroyed by tempests when agriculture began; there was no stone, there were no metals.

Nature, says a Dutch poet, had refused all her gifts to Holland; the Hollanders had to do everything in spite of nature. They began by fertilizing the sand. In some places they formed a productive soil with earth brought from a distance, as a garden is made; they spread the siliceous dust of the downs over the too watery meadows; they mixed with the sandy earth the remains of peat taken from the bottoms; they extracted clay to lend fertility to the surface of their lands; they labored to break up the downs with the plow; and thus in a thousand ways, and continually fighting off the menacing waters, they succeeded in bringing Holland to a state of cultivation not inferior to that of more favored regions. That Holland, the sandy, marshy country that the ancients considered all but uninhabitable, now sends out yearly from her confines agricultural products to the value of a hundred millions of francs, possesses about one million three hundred thousand head of cattle, and, in proportion to the extent of her territory, may be accounted one of the most populous of European states.

But however wonderful may be the physical history of Holland, her political history is still more so. This small territory invaded from the beginning by different tribes of the Germanic races, subjugated by the Romans and the Franks, devastated by the Normans and by the Danes, desolated by centuries of civil war with all its horrors, this small people of fisherman and traders, saves its civil liberty and its freedom of conscience by a war of eighty years against the formidable monarchy of Philip II., and founds a republic which becomes the ark of salvation to the liberties of all the world, the adopted country of science, the Exchange of Europe, the station for the commerce of the world; a republic which extends its domination to Java, Sumatra, Hindustan, Ceylon, New Holland, j.a.pan, Brazil, Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, the West-Indies, and New York; a republic which vanquished England on the sea, which resists the united arms of Charles II. and Louis XIV., and which treats on equal terms with the greatest nations, and is, for a time, one of the three Powers that decide the fate of Europe.

ROTTERDAM AND THE HAGUE[A]

[Footnote A: From "Holland and Its People." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, S.P. Putnam's Sons.

Copyright, 1880.]

BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS

It is a singular thing that the great cities of Holland, altho built upon a shifting soil, and amid difficulties of every kind, have all great regularity of form. Amsterdam is a semicircle, the Hague square, Rotterdam an equilateral triangle. The base of the triangle is an immense dike, which defends the city from the Meuse, and is called the Boompjes, signifying, in Dutch, small trees, from a row of little elms, now very tall, that were planted when it was first constructed.

The whole city of Rotterdam presents the appearance of a town that has been shaken smartly by an earthquake, and is on the point of the falling ruin. All the houses--in any street one may count the exceptions on their fingers--lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbors, which may be straight, or not so visibly inclined; one leans forward as if it would fall into the street; another backward, another to the left, another to the right, at some points six or seven contiguous houses all lean forward together, those in the middle most, those at the ends la.s.s, looking like a paling with a crowd pressing against it. At another point, two houses lean together as if supporting one another. In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing wind; and then another long row will lean in the opposite direction, as if the wind had changed.

Sometimes there is a certain regularity of inclination that is scarcely noticeable; and again, at crossings and in the smaller streets, there is an indescribable confusion of lines, a real architectural frolic, a dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that nod forward as if asleep, others that start backward as if frightened, some bending toward each other, their roofs almost touching, as if in secret conference; some falling upon one another as if they were drunk, some leaning backward between others that lean forward, like malefactors dragged onward by their guards; rows of houses that curtsey to a steeple, groups of small houses all inclined toward one in the middle, like conspirators in conclave.