HEYDEN, Jan van der

The painting, which is an architectural capriccio, shows a palatial garden, with figures emerging from a palace to the right, an arcade beyond and a balustrade to the left, the roof of the Huis ten Bosch visible in the distance.

When Jan van der Heyden portrayed the new Town Hall of Amsterdam in 1667, the exterior of the building had just been completed. Between 1662 and 1665 the dome had risen over the entrance, making it possible to see the majestic building from any point in the city. Amsterdammers were extremely proud of their Town Hall, a pride eloquently expressed in Van der Heyden’s painting.

The middle distance is dominated by the Town Hall’s bright fa�ade, seen from the south. In the left foreground the house called De Vergulde Ploeg’ [The Gilded Plough] is shown at the north corner of Kalverstraat and Dam Square. The Nieuwe Kerk and the adjacent house at the corner of Eggertstraat close off the composition. Spreading out in front of the Town Hall is the Dam Square itself, the open space at the heart of the city and the centre of its political, economic and religious life. (The figures populating Dam Square may have been painted by Adriaen van de Velde, who often provided staffage for the works of other artists.) The square’s irregular shape allowed artists to depict it from a variety of view-points.

Van der Heyden subjected his composition to a rigorous central perspective construction with a single vanishing point, just next to the Nieuwe Kerk on the right. This resulted in a strict, diagonal arrangement of the image and also several remarkable distortions. The fa�ade of the Town Hall is so foreshortened that the building seems to wobble, as if it might fall forward. This effect is primarily caused by the distortion of the lantern, which, while it is entirely correct as far as the perspective is concerned, is unacceptable to the eye. In constructing the perspective Van der Heyden may possibly have used a camera obscura, as central perspective constructions and lenses cause similar aberrations.

Cosimo de’ Medici acquired Van der Heyden’s picture in 1668 during a visit to Amsterdam. Correspondence has survived concerning Cosimo’s efforts to acquire a second painting from Van der Heyden in 1672. From it we learn that the artist acknowledged a glaring ‘imperfezione’ in his rendering of the lantern in the first painting, one he had not been able to correct with his brush. Thus, Van der Heyden had attached a metal rod to the frame, indicating the point from where the painting could be seen without any distortion.

That Van der Heyden was well aware of the distortion becomes apparent from another version of the same subject (now in the Mus�e du Louvre, Paris) that he completed shortly after the first painting. Here the viewpoint is somewhat further to the right and the perspective is different; the foreshortening of the Town Hall’s fa�ade is less pronounced, and the lantern’s distortion has been corrected.

Many of van der Heyden’s urban views are on the arid side, singularly detailed, seemingly recreating every single brick, as if painted after consulting a telescope or camera obscura. But this Amsterdam view is unusually open and free. Close to Vermeer in its brilliance and sense of surprise, this city view, like so many of the best Dutch landscapes, gives the sky its due, letting that eloquent void stress the intrusive, shabby character of urban sprawl.

Jan van der Heyden, who specialized in the painting of townscapes, was born in Gorinchem but moved as a child to Amsterdam. He is said to have been trained by a glass-painter, an apprenticeship which taught him to paint with the extraordinary degree of precision evident in his topographical views. He lived and worked in Amsterdam throughout his life but travelled widely in Holland, Flanders and the Rhineland. He painted many of the towns he visited, producing more that one hundred views of identified places in Holland, as well as of Brussels and Cologne. From the end of the 1660s he was also involved in projects to improve street-lighting and fire-fighting in his native town and provided the illustrations for books on these subjects. In addition to town views, he painted a few landscapes and still lifes.

In the seventeenth-century Veere, a small town in the province of Zeeland, on the strait between Walcheren and Noord Beveland, was an important port which carried on an extensive trade with Scotland. It is seen here from the south-west with the tower of the Great Church prominent on the left: the church was extensively damaged by fire in 1686. Traditionally the figures have been attributed to Adriaen van de Velde but in fact are probably by van der Heyden himself. The artist painted a number of views of the town of Veere seen from slightly different points of view but none are dated and there is no record of when van der Heyden visited the town. There is relatively little development in van der Heyden’s meticulous and delicate style and his paintings are therefore difficult to date with any precision, but this view was probably painted around 1665.

Van der Heyden explored the city’s unusual corners as in his view of Amsterdam’s New Church seen from the end of the irregularly shaped Dam in strong, late afternoon light that casts long transparent shadows, where we can explore a small street. On one side of the painting, we merely see a little more than a single pavilion of the long, classical fa�ade of the new town hall and on the other only a bit of the weigh house. Among van der Heyden’s numerous depictions of the town hall, not one shows a frontal view of its full fa�ade. For straightforward elevations of the building Amsterdammers called the Eighth Wonder of the World, it is necessary to turn to other cityscapists.

Van der Heyden was one of the first Dutch painters to specialize in the townscape, although he also depicted rural scenes, landscapes, and, late in his life, still-lifes. However, even the recognizable scenes are only loosely based on actual views. Topographical accuracy does not seem to have been van der Heyden’s primary interest and the combination of reality and fantasy often appeared, as it does in this painting, in the form of a contrast between modern, mostly imaginary, buildings and historical settings.

Adriaen van de Velde and Johannes Lingelbach both provided staffage for van der Heyden’s paintings. Van de Velde painted the figures in the present composition.

This painting offers an insight into a private cabinet of art and curiosities, a Kunst- und Wunderkammer, which appears to be the result of one person’s passion for collecting.

Jan van der Heyden was one of the leading architectural painters of his generation and a man of more parts than most Dutch painters. When he was a boy of thirteen his parents settled in Amsterdam; apart from trips to the Rhineland, the northern, and the southern Netherlands he spent his life there. He painted some imaginary cityscapes based on studies done in Germany, which at first blush appear to be true-to-life views, and lovely capriccios which show expert knowledge of the principles of classical architecture. His oeuvre also includes about forty landscapes that reveal a debt to Adriaen van de Velde, who is credited with painting figures in some of his pictures, and a few intriguing still-lifes that can be justifiably categorized as interiors. Van der Heyden is best known for his views of Amsterdam.

Most of van der Heyden’s paintings were done in the sixties and seventies - his work as inventor, entrepreneur, and city official probably slacked his pace. But he continued to paint until the very end. His latest firmly datable picture, Still-life with Rarities, now in Budapest, shows the corner of a ‘Kunstkamer’ in strong even light with meticulous depictions of rarities from the natural and man-made world, but not the collector who assembled them. It is proudly inscribed with his monogram and states he painted it when he was seventy-five years old; he attained that age in 1712, the year he died.

Among the objects displayed in the Kunstkamer, which is most probably a fictive one, are a hanging armour of an armadillo, a copy after an etching of Pietro Testa’s Suicide of Dido above the marble mantle, an inlaid cabinet used for housing treasured coins and natural specimens, oriental weapons, and on the bright red Chinese embroidered cloth that covers the table globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, and an open Blaeu atlas. Next to the table there is a red damask covered chair that supports a folio Bible open at the favourite passage of Dutch moralists: Ecclesiastes, Chapter I, which begins with ‘The words of the Preacher … vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?’ The biblical reference to transience is reinforced by Testa’s Suicide of Dido, a subject taken from Virgil’s Aeneid which can be read as an exemplum of love’s ephemeral nature.

Van der Heyden’s message is obvious and familiar. It is one we have heard from other still-life specialists: preparation for salvation is of greater importance than all the treasures, pleasures, and knowledge that can be derived from this world.

Jan van der Heyden is best known for his townscapes, featuring cities such as Amsterdam, Delft, Brussels, and Cologne. In contrast to Gerrit berckheyde, he did not limit himself to more or less accurate renderings of reality. He regularly included in a single picture various buildings that are actually located in different parts of a city, or in different cities altogether.

A city canal dominates this scene with a wooden drawbridge. The buildings along the quay are reminiscent of Amsterdam canal houses but they cannot be identified. In the foreground, the corner arch supported by columns somewhat resembles that of the Old Amsterdam Town Hall, which burnt down in 1652. That building, however, was nowhere near the water.

This panel and its pendant showing another view belongs to the six autograph pictures by Van der Heyden which are known to represent the Huis ten Bosch (House in the Wood) and its property. The Haarlem painter turned architect Pieter Post designed the Huis ten Bosch about 1645 as a summer residence for Amalia van Solms, wife of the Stadholder, Prince Frederick Hendrick. The house was conceived as a ‘villa suburbana’ at the eastern end of the Haagse Bos (Hague Wood), about a mile and a half east of the centre of The Hague.

This panel and its pendant showing another view belongs to the six autograph pictures by Van der Heyden which are known to represent the Huis ten Bosch (House in the Wood) and its property. The Haarlem painter turned architect Pieter Post designed the Huis ten Bosch about 1645 as a summer residence for Amalia van Solms, wife of the Stadholder, Prince Frederick Hendrick. The house was conceived as a ‘villa suburbana’ at the eastern end of the Haagse Bos (Hague Wood), about a mile and a half east of the centre of The Hague.

This is the second version of the same subject that he completed shortly after the first painting. (The first is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.) Here the viewpoint is somewhat further to the right and the perspective is different; the foreshortening of the Town Hall’s fa�ade is less pronounced, and the lantern’s distortion - too strong in the first version - has been corrected.

The Oude Kerk (Old Church) was not an “old church” when Van der Heyden painted his view. The first stone church on the site went back to the early 1200s, but the Oude Kerk as it has been known in later centuries was built in campaigns of about 1390-1410 (the choir and the side chapels), about 1425-40 (the expansion of the nave), and about 1510-22 (the Mariakoor, or Mary’s Choir, and the transept).

Jan van der Heyden is best known for his townscapes, featuring cities such as Amsterdam, Delft, Brussels, and Cologne. In contrast to Gerrit berckheyde, he did not limit himself to more or less accurate renderings of reality. He regularly included in a single picture various buildings that are actually located in different parts of a city, or in different cities altogether.

A city canal dominates this scene with a run-down stone bridge. The buildings along the quay are reminiscent of Amsterdam canal houses but they cannot be identified.

The staffage in this painting has traditionally been attributed to Adriaen van de Velde but is more likely to be by Van der Heyden himself.

Jan van der Heyden, one of the leading architectural painters of this generation and a man of more parts than most Dutch painters, was born in 1637 at Gorinchem (Gorkum), a town near Dordrecht. When he was a boy of thirteen his parents settled in Amsterdam; apart from trips to the Rhineland, the northern, and the southern Netherlands he spent his life there. He painted some imaginary cityscapes based on studies done in Germany, which at first blush appear to be true-to-life views, and lovely capriccios which show expert knowledge of the principles of classical architecture. His oeuvre also includes about forty landscapes that reveal a debt to Adriaen van de Velde, who is credited with painting figures in some of his pictures, and a few intriguing still-lifes that can be justifiably categorized as interiors.

Van der Heyden is best known for his views of Amsterdam. He took more than a pictorial interest in the city. In 1668 he presented Amsterdam’s municipal authorities with a plan to light the entire city with glass lanterns and oil lamps he invented. Acceptance of his plan in 1669 to install more than 2,500 of his lamps made Amsterdam the first European city to enjoy street lighting. The city fathers also appointed him superintendent of municipal lighting at the handsome annual salary of 2,000 guilders per year for life. His lamps were soon installed in Berlin, Leipzig, and other cities - they even found their way to Japan. Those in Amsterdam continued to serve the city until 1840. His lamps also serve art historians today; when they appear in undated paintings by van der Heyden himself, Gerrit Berckheyde, Jacob van Ruisdael, and others, they establish 1669 as a terminus post quem for the work.

Van der Heyden and his brother made an equally significant contribution to urban life in 1672 when they constructed an improved fire engine with pump-driven flexible coupled hoses, devices that replaced less efficient bucket brigades. Subsequently, Jan was appointed an overseer of Amsterdam’s fire department and established a factory to manufacture the pump. In 1690 he and his son published their Description of the Newly Discovered and Patented Hose Fire Engine and Its Way of Extinguishing Fires. The book is richly illustrated with prints after van der Heyden’s own drawings and he himself etched and engraved some of its plates. Van der Heyden’s inventions and activities related to them made him a very wealthy man. After his death in 1712, the estate of his widow, who died in the same year, was valued at over 80,000 guilders. His estate also included more than seventy of his pictures and a sizeable library.

Most of van der Heyden’s paintings were done in the 1660s and 1670s - his work as inventor, entrepreneur, and city official probably slacked his pace. But he continued to paint until the very end.

Van der Heyden always manages to achieve refinement without prettiness. He is an exquisite composer who keeps great structural clarity. While every brick in his numerous cityscapes is readable, the total impression still dominates through a broad as well as minute disposition of lights and darks, and atmosphere is felt as pervading the whole space and softening the exact definition. In his view of a great bend in the fashionable Herengracht (this picture) lined with huge lime trees that virtually hide the patrician houses that flank the broad canal he combines his gifts as city painter and landscapist, and captures an aspect of the Venice of the North that bewitched seventeenth-century visitors.

As he frequently does, van der Heyden took liberties with the site. To emphasize the grand curve of the Herengracht he shortened the length of the embankment, thereby eliminating some houses, and he also exaggerated its upward sweep. By judicious selection and adjustment, and choosing unusual points of view, he gives a remarkable feel for the character and atmosphere of urban spaces as well as meticulous portraits of buildings.

A prolific Dutch specialist of the newly developed theme of townscape, van der Heyden was in his day better known as an inventor: he organised municipal street lighting in Amsterdam and patented the first fire engine equipped with pumpdriven hoses. With seemingly endless patience and a talent for technical drawing, he painted architectural vistas, real and imaginary, in the greatest and most minute detail. In this picture, for example, one can read some of the tattered posters on the wooden hoardings protecting the young trees in the foreground; one of them advertises a sale of paintings. At the same time, however, he was able to subordinate detail to the whole, and what makes this painting so especially magical is the luminous sky, the light of which reflects from the rosy brick and yellow cobblestone as much as from the sluggish water and, glinting through the leaves, permeates the entire scene.

The picture is exceptional in van der Heyden’s work by virtue of its large size, about three times the scale of similar compositions by him. It was commissioned by the governing body of the Westerkerk to hang in their meeting room in the church, and the patrons must have specified the dimensions.

Unlike older Netherlandish churches, the Westerkerk was purposely built to accommodate Protestant worship. It was designed by Thomas de Keyser, father of the painter, and completed only in 1638. By choosing a viewpoint from across the canal, van der Heyden simultaneously locates it companionably along the city street and isolates it, screening neighbouring buildings and closing off the edges of the painting with foliage (the mature tree on our side of the canal on the left was an afterthought). Lively incidents are added for human interest, although the scale of the figures is less secure than the architectural composition, and they, like the reflectionless swans, may have been painted in by another artist. Such collaboration between a view painter and a figure specialist was quite frequent at the time. An additional point of interest for the modern viewer is that Rembrandt was buried in the Westerkerk in 1669.

The works of Jan van der Heyden, one of the finest city-view specialists, are responsible for our general impressions of seventeenth-century Amsterdam. In paintings such as his View of the Westerkerk he presented a pristine, sunny image of the city in the 1670s. These cityscapes, many of which inventively recombine actual and fictional buildings, are as interesting for their omissions as for their inclusions. Both serious and comic descriptions of Amsterdam called attention to the busy traffic of people and carts, to the crying children and fighting street dwellers, to dirt and to crime, but van der Heyden’s city views edit out congestion, noise, transgression, and dust, and gloss over class distinctions. They thereby present a salutary image of a unified, prosperous city, a beautifully painted fiction affordable only to its prosperous elite.

Van der Heyden’s painting takes as its centerpiece the Westerkerk, a church designed in 1620 by Hendrick de Keyser, then the city’s most famous architect. Although the structure owed much to earlier Netherlandish designs executed in warmly coloured local brick, its details are innovative. To contemporaries the bell tower, completed in 1638, must have looked cosmopolitan with its three levels of classical columns in stone, topped by brackets that support a fanciful bulb. As the largest Protestant church built up to that time, it constituted a local answer to the magnificent tradition of Catholic building.

Although de Keyser’s church primarily served the Jordaan, a modest neighbourhood, van der Heyden represented it as seen from the stately Keizersgracht, the new Emperor’s Canal.