Old Houses in HollandJones, Sydney R. (Sydney Robert)
History
Old Houses in Holland
Jones, Sydney R. (Sydney Robert)
Architecture, Domestic -- Netherlands
Rembrandt's house at Amsterdam (page 54) is an able achievement,
sober and dignified. The walls are built of ochre-coloured bricks,
with stone used for the dressings. The date of 1606 appears on the
upper storey. It has no gabled front, but a projecting cornice and
pediment make division between the roof and wall surface. Above
are two dormers placed in balanced order; while the roof, steeply
rising and hipped and having a chimney at each end of the ridge,
completes the studied arrangement. So far the work is in the style
of the Renaissance, and it is only by the windows below that earlier
influences are recalled: but the two themes are so well blended as
to be perfectly harmonious. The net result is simple and reasonable
and by no means lacking in scholarship. Very different is the Guild
Hall at Zwolle (page 55), erected thirty-five years earlier. Its too
fussy elaboration is in sharp contrast with the comparative
restraint of Rembrandt's house, just mentioned. Classicism was
applied without the Classic spirit and with little understanding
of its real import. The general effect is rich and complex, but the
composition lacks breadth and is overladen with ornament. Some of the
details disclose good craftsmanship, notably the frieze which runs
across the entire front at the first floor level, carved with cupids
on horseback, old men with tridents, satyrs and flowing foliage,
and broken at intervals by lion-heads worked on the bases of the
pilasters. At the second storey is a Doric frieze, with sculptured
circular ornaments and heads of bulls appearing in the metopes between
the triglyphs. The gable, mediæval in feeling, is curly in outline;
it is further complicated by the introduction of reclining satyrs and
lascivious demi-gods that quaintly break the skyline. The designer
evidently proposed to himself the Italian ideal, but did not grasp
the meaning or refinement of it. Many details came to be used in
a similar way, such, for instance, as those shown from Dordrecht
(page 50) and Flushing (page 56), but, although often of admirable
workmanship, they were never coherent parts of a self-evolved whole.
A house of somewhat unusual appearance is that in the Voorstraat at
Dordrecht, dated 1626 and illustrated on page 57. At the top is an
open arcade constructed wholly in bricks, with the exception of the
stones upon which the arches rest. The brick walls are relieved by
stonework, while projecting pilasters separate the large lead-glazed
and shuttered windows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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