Wednesday, 5 April, Amsterdam: its golden age

Written 1 June 2023

Back in the late Pleistocene (1971, to be exact) David and I moved to San Diego to start graduate school, and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where David would work on his doctorate, we soon met and became good friends with his classmate Everett Sinnett. The following year, Ev married Rachel, née Cooper, and she joined him in San Diego. We have been fast friends ever since, always spending New Years together, and now that we're retired, we visit them (and their grown children and grandchildren and long-time neighbors) several times a year at their home in Maryland. The four of us cruised Russia together (with Viking) in 2017, and their daughter Carolyn features in several of my earlier travel diaries (as "CJ").

Rachel is an avid fan of the fine arts; Ev, not so much. So this year, they decided to divide and conquer—Ev would spend time in Maine supervising a major remodel of the kitchen in his family's summer cottage while Rachel came to Europe with us.

In early January, Rachel was therefore very excited to show us a newspaper feature about an unprecedented, and probably never to be repeated, exhibition of the work of Vermeer (28 of his 37 extant works) to be held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam from February through June! We would be there in April! We instantly fired up my laptop and tried to make reservations—we had in mind two or three time windows when we could go during our time in the city. Unfortunately, as we soon discovered, every single time slot to see the exhibition, for the entire length of its run, was already sold out! And it hadn't even opened yet! The website said to check back in March; they were trying to generate more slots. Rats. But "friends of the museum" had season-long free admission, to the museum and to the exhibition, without reservation! How much would that cost? Just $5 more than the general-admission tickets for the exhibition! But "friends of the museum" slots were entirely sold out for the year. Drat and a half!

Written 2 June 2023

So, for this date on our cruise, we passed up the regular morning Amsterdam canal cruise and the afternoon trip to Delft for a walking tour and procelain ware and all three signed up for the 8-hour "Amsterdam's Golden Age," which at least included a visit to the Rijksmuseum (plus, as it turned out, an Amsterdam canal cruise).

This is Rachel (photographed standing next to a life-size bronze of kids playing leapfrog outside a shop in Amsterdam on this date). She is not a person who gives up easily, so she wrote to the highest levels of Viking administration—directly to Torstein Hagen, I think. Your ads go on and on, she said, about all the stuff you can show us "behind closed doors"; well here's a closed door for you . . .

She got a polite acknowledgement of her message, but nothing beyond that. So last night, during Tour Director Emelie's briefing on today's excursions, we nearly fell off our chairs when she said, "And the three of you who signed up for Amsterdam's golden age will leave at 9 am for your visit to the Rijksmuseum, which includes the Vermeer exhibition"!

We looked at each other in shock. Did she really just say that? And we're the only ones signed up?!

The briefing broke up, and that latter point changed by the time we got down the stairs to dinner—another couple made a bee-line to the desk and signed up to join us, so we were five, plus our guide, who boarded our 8-passenger chauffeured black limo van at 9 am.

First stop was the Rijksmuseum, another of those buildings that you just can't fit into one shot, mainly because there wasn't time to back up for a wider shot or even to study the façade for long. Our guide was anxious to get us inside, so he's have time to show us some of the non-Vermeer offerings before our Vermeer time slot.

Here's a quick shot of the floor plan. Not as big as the Louvre, but clearly more than a day's job to see everything, even briefly. It's pretty blurry, but at the very top right, I can clearly make out a gallery label reading "Aircraft"!

At the right here is the central atrium, from which you can go down to the brightly lighted gift shop or up a few steps to the coffee shop above it on the mezzenine.

During Amsterdam's 17th-century golden age, any man wishing to be considered a gentleman of substance and status served a term on the "watch" or "militia" of his precinct of the city, and as each crop of such men stepped down at the end of their term, they commissioned a group portrait—it must have been a serious source of income for the city's painters, as the museums of the world are practically wall-papered with these portraits.

The one at the left here is "Militia Company of District VIII under the Command of Captain Roelof Bicker" by Bartolomeus van der Helst. It's huge, 7.5 m wide. A panel next to it, written by the museum's curators, points out many of its interesting features, like the way the artist arranged the members in the lightest-colored clothing at intervals across the front to balance the composition. It takes special note of the small black-skinned boy in a red robe, a servant (and status symbol) of Captain Bicker, who's standing next to him, saying that, although no one knows how he came to be in Amsterdam, he was probably brought from Africa as a slave. At least theoretically, he would have been free, since the city's laws at that time said that any slave who came within the city limits was automatically free, but did the boy even know that? The painter even included himself in the group, at the far left.

At the right is the "Militia Company of District XVIII under the Command of Captain Albert Bas" by Govert Flinck. The group had to be arranged for a vertical format to fit the spot on the wall it was to occupy in the Kloveniersdoelen, the headquarters of the militia companies. "Klovenier" is actually Dutch for musketeer; the guns they're carrying are arquebuses, an early type of musket.

At the left is, no, not the "Night Watch" by Rembrandt but a 17th-century copy of it attributed to Gerrit Lundens. At some point in its history, it was cropped on all sides to fit in a smaller space.

At the right is the real "Nightwatch." Both photos are pretty blurry, but you can see more of the skylight above the watchmen and more figures at the left-hand side in the genuine Rembrandt. For fun, Google "nightwatch rembrandt flashmob" sometime (without the quotes) and watch the short video—it's a hoot.

At the left here is the "Wardens of the Drapers' Guild" by Rembrandt, made famous the world over by is use on Dutch Masters Cigars boxes.

And at the right the well known self-portrait of Rembrandt as the Apostle Paul. The panel next to it said "his first and only self-portrait as a biblical figure," but Google turns up one where he painted himself as the prodigal son.

In this central area of the museum, the galleries themselves were worth seeing and often included "built-in" artwork on the walls or ceilings that I often couldn't find labels for. Through the arch here, you can see part of the Night Watch (the real one, I think), and above it, on the right-hand side of the arch, the three X's of Amsterdam's symbol, standing for fire, flood, and plague.

I was struck by this painting of an angry swan defending its nest from a dog (by Jan Asselijn) even before the guide pointed it out. Well after it was painted, it was interpreted as an allegory for Johan de Witt (remember him? lynched in 1672 with his brother Cornelis?) defending the country from its enemies. It turns out to have been the very first painting acquired by the collection that was the precursor of the Rijkmuseum.

As my regular readers know, David and I are suckers for still life, and the old Dutch masters do gorgeous ones. We didn't see many on this trip, but a few caught our eye, like this table arrangement Floris Claesz van Dijk, featuring a large Dutch cheese. He painted this cheese, or ones just like it, often.

The figure in the wall painting at the right (one of several in this room for which I couldn't find attributions) is St. Willibrord. Remember him from the cathedral in Wesel? The style reminds me of the WPA paintings that decorated the old post office in my home town (Chapel Hill, NC).

The floors incorporated many small mosaics, like the four seasons (fall is shown at the left) and the signs of the zodiac (Sagittarius is at the right).

We saw a lot of other great art before our turn came up for the Vermeer exhibition, but I won't bore you with it all here. You can probably see better images of it on the Rijksmuseum website than I can provide anyway.

Written 4 June 2023

The Vermeer exhibition was great, but I'm pretty disappointed in the photos I was able to get—only a few even hinted at how great the works were in person. At the left here, "The Procuress," and at the right "Allegory of the Catholic Faith."

Almost every painting was accompanied by extensive and revelatory curators' notes, and the time line that ran around the sides of one room, with small images of the paintings at the appropriate time points, made it easier see Vermeers development and the changes that took place in his choice of subjects.

The real revelation, though, were a few of the earliest works, which were views of Vermeer's home town, Delft. They were gorgeous, as detailed as Canelettos. Rachel now has a new favorite Vermeer, which she hadn't even realized existed before this exhibition.

"The Girl with the Pearl Earring" wasn't there, but Rachel was not troubled, secure in the knowledge that she's waiting in her usual spot in the Hague, in a museum Rachel plans to visit during her postcruise extension there.

On our way out of the museum, we passed along a balcony above a staircase, where this marvelous piece of "kinetic" art was suspended overhead. Little electric motors near the ceiling raised and lowered each one through rings partway up. At the top of its travel, each one was neatly folded inside its ring, like three of the ones in the left-hand photo.

At the bottom, each one flared out like a parachute or a nodding flower, as in the right-hand photo. Hypnotic!

From the museum, we walked only a short distance to board our canal cruise, which we shared with others, not part of our tour. On the boat's roof and sides were the words "Flagship Amsterdam," but on the bow, it said "Iris" next to a nice little painting of an iris flower.

The cruise covered some, but not all, of the same ground our earlier one had. Rachel and I have decided that, when we move to Amsterdam, we want to buy this house (provided we can get it out of the hands of the firm of tax attorneys that now occupies it).

We passed the Ann Frank house (as we had on the earlier canal cruise) but didn't stop. Rachel toured it during her precruise extension.

The house on the left here goes the gablestones one better. On the corner, where the building widens out a little above the door, is a niche, tucked under the wider part as under a breaking wave, sheltering a life-size, realistically painted statue of a stork. The light covered oval on the wall to the left of the door is a sundial, dated 1993 and engraved with words I take to mean "Gerard Prins, Architect." The street sign reads "Prinsengracht," Prince's Canal, one of the city's principal canals and among its most prestigious addresses.

The grand building on the right is the International Theater Amsterdam.

Written 5 June 2023

On our walk from the canal boat to our lunch restaurant, we passed this little square (actually a large triangular traffic island) densely populated with bronze reptiles. The guide said they included all different kinds of lizards, but I spotted only iguanas and monitor lizards. Any knowledgeable and sharp-eyed readers out there spot any others? Or different species of these two? Some of the iguanas did have larger spines down their backs than others—they weren't just multiple copies of a single exemplar of each.

This is my idea of wonderful public art.

Here's our lunch restaurant, Den Blaue Hollander (The Blue Dutchman). I'm not sure whether that's, e.g., the name of a famous ship or just a description of a depressed citizen of the Netherlands.

We started with a salad heavily sprinkled with shredded aged Gouda cheese. Among my notes for the day, I found a reminder to remind Rachel to serve one like it to her husband Ev, who is heavily into cheese of all kinds. She doesn't often read my diaries, so I sent her an email.

The main course was a thick tender slice of braised beef, with gravy, draped over a timbal of roughly mashed potatoes. Excellent.

Dessert was poffertjes, little Dutch pancakes, but I didn't get a photo of them.

Two doors down from The Blue Dutchman, beyond Miami Burger ("plant-based made good"), was Bourbon Street, advertising live rhythm and blues and topped with life-size figures of the Blues Brothers.

Our next destination was Rembrandt's house, now a museum dedicated to him, but on the way, we paused to have a look at the flower market, which sold seeds, bulbs, live plants, and gardening supplies and equipment as well as vast quantities of cut flowers, including hyacinths, alstroemerias, lilies, chrysanthemums, daffodils, and roses but leaning heavily, just now, to tulips.

at the right is the plaque above the door of Rembrandt's house.

Left and right here are period and modern maps of the neighborhood. On both, a small red circle indicates the location of the Rembrandt house.

First, for orientation, note that north is not at the top of either map, it's to the right. Second, note how much the configuration of the canals and islands has changed! The U-shaped body of water at the top is the Amstel River. The others are canals. Under the road that crosses the canal nearest the house is a narrow tunnel that still allows boats to pass.

The cutaway model at the left here shows the organization of the house, which is tall and narrow (on five levels), like all those in the city, with a steep and narrow spiral staircase in the center.

In the basement was the kitchen, shown here at the right. I'm always grateful when they don't convert the kitchen into the giftshop.

In a corner of one room was this hand-cranked press for prints and engravings.

Tucked under the stairs was Rembrandt's office.

The "large studio" is where Rembrandt himself worked, and a couple of walls of it were given over to objects an artist might find useful in composing a scene for a painting or in setting a task for a student. Note the stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling. Smaller shelves and drawers held tiny bones and seashells.

At the right is the smoothly polished stone on which pigments were ground, with an equally polished large stone pestle. In Rembrandt's day, artists had to make their oil paints by grinding vegetable, animal, or mineral materials with linseed oil until they reached the right texture. An established artist like Rembrandt would make his students do it—it would be part of their apprenticeship in the painter's craft.

Rembrandt would have 4 to 5 students at a time, and the "small studio" was partitioned into cubicles where they worked.

At the right, above the studios, is the print studio. You can see the cross-shaped handles used to crank the press in an upper room in the cutaway model .

Our limo returned to pick us up outside the Rembrandt house and whisked us back to the ship in time to join the daily 5 pm "happy hour" in the lounge, though we tended to use the time to shower and change before dinner.

THe evening's menu was made up of dishes we'd already had at one time or another aboard the Freya, so I didn't take many photos. I think I had the pumpkin soup and the steak (once again choosing the always-available ribeye over the current-menu NY strip). The novelty was this lovely crème brûlée from the always-available menu (which, on the Freya offered only chocolate mousse).