1.
Jacob van Campen
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Jacob van Campen, was a Dutch artist and architect of the Golden Age. He was born into a family at Haarlem, and spent his youth in his home town. Being of noble birth and with time on his hands, he took up painting mainly as a pastime, in 1614, he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, and studied painting under Frans de Grebber - a number of Van Campens oils survive. About 1616 to 1624 he is thought to have lived in Italy, on his return to the Netherlands, Van Campen turned to architecture, applying ideas borrowed from Andrea Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi and classical influences from Vitruvius. Van Campen was friendly with Constantijn Huygens, and together designed a new house for Huygens. Even after Van Campens death, his work greatly influenced Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, the designer of the Kleefse gardens, the latter to own a book by Van Campen regardless of the expense. The city hall and the city palace of Potsdam owe a debt to ideas by Van Campen, Van Campens first known building was the Coymans house built in 1625 in Amsterdam. About 1645 Van Campen designed the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem, a church that influenced Christopher Wren and his best-known work is probably the large Town Hall of Amsterdam, now the Royal Palace in Dam Square. Van Campen worked as an architect, a painter and a designer of decorative schemes and he was assisted in his work by Pieter Post, Daniël Stalpaert, Matthias Withoos, Philips Vingboons, Artus Quellinus, Tielman van Gameren and Rombout Verhulst. During the building of the city hall, Van Campen lived in very expensive lodgings in the nearby Kalverstraat, in 1654 Van Campen left after an argument, probably in connection with the design of the barrel vaults. Stalpaert won, but his completion of the project was reported to be less fine than Van Campens designs, after a long career, Van Campen died in 1657 in his buitenplaats Randenbroek near Amersfoort, which he had inherited from his mother, and was buried there. He had expanded it himself and had it decorated by Caesar van Everdingen, Van Campen never married, but had one son, Alexander Van Campen. Van Campen was selective in what projects he took on and his best known works are, The Royal Palace, Amsterdam, former city hall. In 1647, his name is mentioned for the first time in connection with the design of the new city hall and it was to be a perfect building, perfect in its proportions and in the message it conveyed to the spectator. Its power lies in its strict and perfect proportions and extremely moderate decoration, critics loathed the simple entrance - without stairs - on the ground floor. He is suspected to have had a hand in the alteration of the Rembrandthuis at the Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam, the Theatre of Van Campen, based on the example of Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, in Amsterdam. The Paleis Noordeinde, a palace in The Hague. As well as houses and palaces, he designed a number of churches, such as those at Renswoude and at Hooge Zwaluwe
2.
Assendelft
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Assendelft is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Zaanstad, Assendelft was a separate municipality until 1974, when the municipality of Zaanstad was formed. It is part of the Amsterdam Agglomeration, the North Sea Canal connects Assendelft with Amsterdam and Velsen, and it lies about 13 km northeast of Haarlem and about 15 km south of Alkmaar. The statistical district Assendelft, which covers the village and the countryside, has a population of around 22,500. Assendelft is one of the oldest settlements in Noord-Holland, with signs of settlement dating from as early as 500BC, the earliest written form of the name appears as Ascmannedilf in 1063. The name is derived from the old Germanic word for Norsemen, dilf most likely meaning dug by. The town is served by Krommenie-Assendelft railway station, from here, there are four trains an hour to Amsterdam, with a journey time of 25 minutes. Known is the chicken breed, called Assendelfter. It is an ancient pencilled breed, related to the pencilled Hamburg chicken, J. Kuyper, Gemeente Atlas van Nederland, 1865-1870, Assendelft. Map of the municipality, around 1868
3.
Haarlem
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Haarlem is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland and is situated at the edge of the Randstad. Haarlem had a population of 155,758 in 2014 and it is a 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam, and many residents commute to the countrys capital for work. Haarlem was granted city status or stadsrechten in 1245, although the first city walls were not built until 1270, the modern city encompasses the former municipality of Schoten as well as parts that previously belonged to Bloemendaal and Heemstede. Apart from the city, the municipality of Haarlem also includes the part of the village of Spaarndam. Newer sections of Spaarndam lie within the municipality of Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude. The city is located on the river Spaarne, about 20 km west of Amsterdam and it has been the historical centre of the tulip bulb-growing district for centuries and bears the nickname Bloemenstad, for this reason. Haarlem has a history dating back to pre-medieval times, as it lies on a thin strip of land above sea level known as the strandwal. The people on this strip of land struggled against the waters of the North Sea from the west, and the waters of the IJ. Haarlem became wealthy with toll revenues that it collected from ships, however, as shipping became increasingly important economically, the city of Amsterdam became the main Dutch city of North Holland during the Dutch Golden Age. The town of Halfweg became a suburb, and Haarlem became a bedroom community. Nowadays many of them are on the Dutch Heritage register known as Rijksmonuments, the list of Rijksmonuments in Haarlem gives an overview of these per neighbourhood, with the majority in the old city centre. The oldest mentioning of Haarlem dates from the 10th century, the name probably comes from Haarlo-heim. This name is composed of three elements, haar, lo and heim, there is not much dispute about the meaning of lo and heim, in Old Dutch toponyms lo always refers to forest and heim to home or house. Haar, however, has several meanings, one of them corresponding with the location of Haarlem on a sand dune, the name Haarlem or Haarloheim would therefore mean home on a forested dune. There was a stream called De Beek, dug from the peat grounds west of the river Spaarne as a drainage canal, over the centuries the Beek was turned into an underground canal, as the city grew larger and the space was needed for construction. Over time it began to silt up and in the 19th century it was filled in, the location of the village was a good one, by the river Spaarne, and by a major road going south to north. By the 12th century it was a town, and Haarlem became the residence of the Counts of Holland
4.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
5.
Jan Saenredam
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Jan Pieterszoon Saenredam was a Dutch Northern Mannerist painter, printmaker in engraving, and cartographer, and father of the painter of church interiors, Pieter Jansz Saenredam. He is noted for the many allegorical images he created from classical mythology, as an orphan Jan lived with his uncle, Pieter de Jongh, a bailiff in Assendelft who first sent him to learn basket weaving as a profession. Being an apt student, he was reading and writing. An example of his penmanship could once be seen on display at Assum House near Heemskerk, despite a decision that he follow a career in a trade or farming, he showed such artistic talent that he started as an apprentice cartographer. His first map is dated 1589 and is of the province of Holland, after working for some time with Goltzius, he encountered the almost inevitable professional rivalry and jealousy, prompting his departure to work in Amsterdam for two years. He then returned to Assendelft where he married and set up his own workshop and his first engraving was of the 12 apostles after a drawing by Karel van Mander. He produced prints after Goltzius, Abraham Bloemaert, Cornelis van Haarlem, Polidoro da Caravaggio and he made over 170 plates of which the last one was a history of Diana and Callisto by Paulus Moreelse in 1606. Two plates he was working on, after drawings by Bartholomeus Spranger, according to the Rijksmuseum, he returned in 1595 from Amsterdam to Assendelft, where he married Anna Pauwelsdochter. Jan left his wife an estate as a result of lucrative investments in the Dutch East India Company. He died of typhus on April 6,1607 and was buried in the choir of the Saint Adolphus church at Assendelft and he died in Assendelft, aged about 41. Media related to Jan Saenredam at Wikimedia Commons Spaightwood Galleries
6.
St. Martin's Cathedral, Utrecht
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St. Martins Cathedral, Utrecht, or Dom Church, is a Gothic church dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours, which was the cathedral of the Diocese of Utrecht during the Middle Ages. It is the countrys only pre-Reformation cathedral, but has been a Protestant church since 1580 and it was once the Netherlands largest church, but the nave collapsed in a storm in 1674 and has never been rebuilt, leaving the tower isolated from the east end. The building is the one church in the Netherlands that closely resembles the style of classic Gothic architecture as developed in France, all other Gothic churches in the Netherlands belong to one of the many regional variants. Unlike most of its French predecessors, the building has one tower, the 112-metre-high Dom Tower. The first chapel in Utrecht was founded around 630 by Frankish clergy under the patronage of the Merovingian kings but was destroyed during an attack of the Frisians on Utrecht shortly thereafter, the site of this first chapel within Utrecht is unknown. Saint Willibrord, the Apostle to the Frisians, established a chapel devoted to Saint Martin on the site of the current building. This church was destroyed by the Normans in the 9th century during one of their raids on Utrecht. During this period St. Martins came to be the church of Utrecht. The church had its own small territorial close and was led by a chapter of canons. The church was destroyed by fires and then rebuilt. A Romanesque style church was built by Bishop Adalbold and consecrated in 1023 and it is thought to have been the center of a cross-shaped conglomeration of 5 churches, called a Kerkenkruis, built to commemorate Conrad II. The construction of the Gothic cathedral continued into the 16th century, the first part to be built was the choir. The Dom Tower was started in 1321 and finished in 1382, after 1515, steadily diminishing financing prevented completion of this building project, of which an almost complete series of building accounts exists. In 1566, the Beeldenstorm or Iconoclast Fury swept across much of the Low Countries, as a result, many of the ornaments on both the exterior and interior of the cathedral were destroyed. In 1580 the Utrecht city government devolved the cathedral from the Diocese of Utrecht to local Calvinists. From then on Protestant services were held in the building with one exception, in 1672 and 1673, during the Franco-Dutch War. A year after the French retreat, the unfinished and insufficiently supported nave collapsed on 1 August 1674 during a massive storm that caused a tornado. Over the subsequent centuries, much of the building fell into further neglect
7.
Hoofdwacht, Haarlem
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The Hoofdwacht is a historically important rijksmonument. It was built in the 13th century and it is considered the oldest building in Haarlem and it has served as a printshop for Coornhert, as a temporary council meeting location across from City Hall and even as a jail. It is located on the Grote Markt across from the St. Bavochurch, from 1250 to around 1350 the building served as the first city hall of Haarlem. After the current city hall was built across the square, various important families lived in the house, the lower part of the building was used as a printing shop, a general store and for storing beer. Though it had lost its function, as a large and imposing building in medieval Haarlem. A plaque above the states, Wanneer de Graef hier op het Sand Sijn Princenwoning had geplant. Tot Haerlems Raedhuys opgericht This text in old Dutch says that whenever the Count planted his court here on the sand, the humanist Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert once ran a printshop from the basement in the 16th century. The baroque facade is newer and dates from circa 1650, on May 17,1755 the building was bought by the municipality to serve as headquarters for the civic guard. This is the reason for the current name. Each evening and morning the gates of the city would be unlocked by the militia who lived here, until the Spaarne prison was built on the east side of the river in 1899, there were a few jail rooms upstairs here. Ironically it was Coornhert himself who wrote the first treatise on criminals, the latter 17th century saw some reforms and a restriction in public executions, which came to be seen as barbaric. Before this change, prisoners were held until sentencing, and their stay in jail was relatively short. With abolishment of public displays of corporal punishment, there was no solution for convicted felons that were not suited for the workhouse, for these prisoners, imprisonment became their punishment, but there was no longer any need to house them near the courthouse or near the Grote Markt. This building could not house longer term prisoners and thus the function was moved. The upstairs was also the place where the watchmen would stand guard near the balcony. The church opposite had a lookout posted in the steeple who could signal the guards on the balcony using red flags so that the guards in the Hoofdwacht could react to fires or other unrest. This sentry position was still in use in 1919, from May to September it is open to the public as a free mini-museum on weekend afternoons from 1, 00-5,00 PM. History on website of the Vereniging Haerlem
8.
Dutch Golden Age painting
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The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe, and led European trade, science, and art. Most work, including that for which the period is best known, a distinctive feature of the period is the proliferation of distinct genres of paintings, with the majority of artists producing the bulk of their work within one of these. The full development of specialization is seen from the late 1620s. A distinctive feature of the period, compared to earlier European painting, was the amount of religious painting. Dutch Calvinism forbade religious painting in churches, and though biblical subjects were acceptable in private homes, the development of many of these types of painting was decisively influenced by 17th-century Dutch artists. The widely held theory of the hierarchy of genres in painting, whereby some types were regarded as more prestigious than others, however this was the hardest to sell, as even Rembrandt found. Many were forced to produce portraits or genre scenes, which much more easily. In descending order of status the categories in the hierarchy were, history painting, including allegories, most paintings were relatively small – the only common type of really large paintings were group portraits. Painting directly onto walls hardly existed, when a wall-space in a public building needed decorating fitted framed canvas was normally used, painted delftware tiles were very cheap and common, if rarely of really high quality, but silver, especially in the auricular style, led Europe. With this exception, the best artistic efforts were concentrated on painting and printmaking, the volume of production meant that prices were fairly low, except for the best known artists, as in most subsequent periods there was a steep price gradient for more fashionable artists. In particular the French invasion of 1672, brought a depression to the art market. The distribution of pictures was very wide, yea many tymes, blacksmithes, cobblers etts. will have some picture or other by their Forge, such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native have to Painting reported an English traveller in 1640. There were for virtually the first time many professional art dealers, several significant artists, like Vermeer and his father, Jan van Goyen. Rembrandts dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh and his son Gerrit were among the most important, typically workshops were smaller than in Flanders or Italy, with only one or two apprentices at a time, the number often being restricted by guild regulations. In many cases involved the artists extricating themselves from medieval groupings where they shared a guild with several other trades. Several new guilds were established in the period, Amsterdam in 1579, Haarlem in 1590, the Leiden authorities distrusted guilds and did not allow one until 1648. The Hague, with the court, was an early example, there were many dynasties of artists, and many married the daughters of their masters or other artists. Many artists came from families, who paid fees for their apprenticeships
9.
Whitewash
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Whitewash, or calcimine, kalsomine, calsomine, or lime paint is a low-cost type of paint made from slaked lime and chalk (calcium carbonate, sometimes known as whiting. Various other additives are also used, whitewash cures through a reaction with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form calcium carbonate in the form of calcite, a reaction known as carbonation. It is usually applied to exteriors, however, it is used for interiors in food preparation areas, particularly rural dairies. Occasionally, it is coloured and used on such as the hallways of apartment buildings. In Britain and Ireland, whitewash was used historically, for interiors and exteriors, in workers cottages, and still retains something of this association with rural poverty. In the United States, an attitude is expressed in the old saying, Too proud to whitewash. Whitewash is especially compatible with masonry because it is absorbed easily, lime wash is pure slaked lime in water. It produces a unique surface glow due to the refraction of calcite crystals. Limewash and whitewash both cure to become the same material, when whitewash or limewash is initially applied, it has very low opacity, which can lead novices to overthicken the paint. Drying increases opacity, and subsequent curing increases opacity even further, limewash relies on being drawn in to a substrate unlike a modern paint that adheres to the surface. The process of being drawn in needs to be controlled by damping down. If a wall is not damped, it can leave the lime and pigments on the surface powdery, if the wall is saturated, then there is no surface tension, damping down is not difficult but it does need to be considered before application of the limewash. Additives traditionally used include glass, glue, egg white, Portland cement, salt, soap, milk, flour. Whitewash is sometimes coloured with earths to achieve colours spanning the range of white, cream, yellow. The blue laundry dye formerly widely used to give a tinge to boiled white textiles was a common 19th century addition. Historically, pigs blood was added to give the colour Suffolk pink, if animal blood is applied excessively, however, its iron oxide can compromise the lime binders strength. Pozzolanic materials are added to give a much harder wearing paint finish. This addition, however, creates an open time
