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Figuration and Semiotic Potential Figuration and Semiotic Potential ∵ Anthropomorphosis and Its Critics ‥ chapter 11 Prodigies of Nature, Wonders of the Hand: Political Portents and Divine Artifice in Haarlem ca. 1600 Walter S. Melion My essay examines a pair of prints recording the two whales famously stranded on the Dutch littoral in 1598 and 1601 [Figs. 11.1 & 11.2]. Designed or engraved by Hendrick Goltzius and his associates, the premier printmakers in Holland, these monumental broadsheets function exegetically, reading the whales not as political prognostics, but as expressions of divine artifice writ large on the Book of Nature.1 In truth, it would be more accurate to claim that they substi- tute one kind of exegetical reading, closely associated with Lutheranism, with another based in the Psalms and the Gospels, but not confessionally bound, and therefore, not overtly political. In order to explain how and why these prints deflect political commentary, I first distinguish them from earlier prints that construe beached whales as political omens portending God’s intentions for the new Dutch state. Then, situating the prints within Goltzius’s larger proj- ect of staging artifice itself as the figure of Christian piety, I further contex- tualize them by reference to the rhetorical spelen van sinne (allegorical verse dramas) regularly performed throughout the Low Countries by civic chambers of rhetoric, with whose discourse of const (art, artifice, artisanship) Goltzius was intimately familiar. In passing, I also locate the Goltzius workshop’s beached- whale prints within the distinctive socio-political circumstances of Haarlem, where they were produced: this prosperous city had three clear demograph- ics—Mennonites, Catholics, and the Reformed—whose peaceable interaction the city fathers fostered through policies of civic détente, that aimed tactfully and pragmatically to suppress the rhetoric of political difference and religious dissension. As will be obvious, my essay thus inversely complements the topic 1 On the ‘Book of Nature’ as an expression of the belief that all of creation, having been written by the finger of God, accords with Holy Writ and likewise certifies the existence of an all- powerful Deus Artifex, see Jorink E., Het Boeck der Natuere: Nederlandse geleerden en de won- deren van Gods Schepping, 1575–1715 (Leiden: 2007), esp. 13–185; and idem, Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575–1715, trans. A. J. Vanderjagt, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 191 (Leiden – Boston: 2010), esp. 1–179. On divine artifice as expressed in the wonders of creation, and the allied conception of nature as artist, see Daston L. – Park K., Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: 1998) 255–301. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�75034_��3 278 Melion Figure 11.1 Jacob Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, Beached Whale in the Vicinity of Katwijk (1598). Engraving, 31.7 × 42.8 cm. London, British Museum. By permission of the British Museum. Figure 11.2 Jacob Matham, Beached Whale at Wijk aan Zee (1601). Engraving, 31 × 43 cm. London, British Museum. By permission of the British Museum. Prodigies Of Nature, Wonders Of The Hand 279 of this volume—anthropomorphosis—by examining two examples of partial resistance to this impulse: the prints’ designers and commentators, instead of apprehending nature solely in human terms, choose also to appreciate its won- ders per se without personifying them. They treat them as indices of divine artifice, which is most clearly discerned in the prodigious, as opposed to por- tentous, works of nature. In conclusion, I offer as a counter-example one of Goltzius’s signature poëterijen (poetic fictions), the Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres of 1593, a penwerck (pen-work) replete with natural prodigies that are viewed through an anthropomorphic lens [Fig. 11.11]. The earlier of the two prints, Beached Whale in the Vicinity of Katwijk, engraved by Jacob Matham after a large drawing executed nae t’ leven (after the life) by his stepfather, the celebrated draughtsman Hendrick Goltzius, depicts the whale beached at Berkheij between Scheveningen and Katwijk on 3 February 1598 [Fig. 11.1].2 The second print, Beached Whale at Wijk aan Zee, engraved by Matham after one of his own drawings made nae t’ leven, records the whale beached at Wijk aan See on 19 December 1601 [Fig. 11.2].3 The two whales, one lying toward the east, the other toward the west, have attracted a mixed viewership: in 1598, there are city folk (the well-dressed couple watching as a man measures the animal’s membrum), country folk (the couple at far left accompanied by a pointing boy), and aristocrats (the three horsemen being addressed by a quartet of fishermen); in addition to onlookers, there are fig- ures who climb, measure, or harvest the creature, cutting its blubber and gath- ering its tranen (oily droplets). A similar cast of characters has assembled in 1601, amongst whom one peers into the beast’s mouth, while another clambers up its head to examine the eye. Both in 1598 and 1601, the beholders respond attentively to the curious sight that has drawn them to this place (some from 2 On the Beached Whale in the Vicinity of Katwijk, see Melion W., “Introduction, Memory, Cognition, and Image Production”, in Küchler S. – Melion W. (eds.), Images of Memory: On Remembering and Representation (Washington, D.C. – London: 1991) 19–22; Widerkehr L. (comp.), The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450–1700: Jacob Matham, ed. H. Leeflang, 3 parts (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: 2008) II 135–137, no. 202; and Leesberg M. (comp.), The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 145–1700: Hendrick Goltzius, ed. H. Leeflang, 4 parts (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel – Amsterdam: 2012) IV 16–21, no. 632. This print was copied at least three times between 1598 and 1605, on which see ibidem 16–17, nos. 632b, 632f, and 632g. On the drawing by Goltzius that served as Matham’s modello, see Reznicek E. K. J., Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, 2 vols. (Utrecht: 1961) I 442–443, no. 419. 3 On the Beached Whale at Wijk aan Zee, see Melion, “Introduction: Memory, Cognition, and Image Production”, in Küchler – Melion (eds.), Images of Memory 22–23; and Widerkehr (comp.), The New Hollstein: Jacob Matham, ed. Leeflang, II 138–139, no. 203. 280 Melion far away, as the carts and carriages attest). The paired subscriptions, as we shall soon see, project onto these engaged but otherwise impartial beholders two distinct sorts of response: the one text either mocks or fears the colossus and the events it presages; the other admires and appreciates it not as a drama- tis persona but as something divinely manufactured. The latter response (in Dutch), unlike the former (in Latin), refrains from anthropomorphizing the whale; the Dutch verses, composed of quatrains rather than distychs, take up far more space than the Latin and make their case more descriptively, as well as less discursively. Moreover, the letters are larger and written more boldy, so that the Dutch texts qua text predominate visually. In what follows, I concen- trate on this Dutch reading of the visschen stranded at Katwijk and Wijk aan Zee: what are we asked to see and know about the whale; how are we prompted to read it as a page from the Book of Nature? Published respectively by Goltzius and Matham, these spectacular plates were amongst the grandest issued by the Goltzius workshop. The long Dutch inscriptions were furnished by Karel van Mander, the Flemish emigré, poet, painter, print designer, and fellow citizen of Haarlem, who was then at work on his monumental Schilder-Boeck (Book on Picturing), the art theoreti- cal and historical treatise that would establish Goltzius’s canonical status as an inimitable master of teyckenconst (art of delineation).4 Commissioned by Goltzius and/or Matham, these inscriptions, counterpointed by shorter Latin texts composed by the humanist poet Theodorus Screvelius, assistant director of the Latin School of Haarlem, are essential to the prints’ semantic fabric. As major productions of the most renowned engraver’s workshop in the Northern Netherlands, these prints implicitly proclaim the excellence of Goltzius’s burin-hand, wielded in emulation of earlier masters such as Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert and Cornelis Cort, and bequeathed to Matham by his master Goltzius. In subject and handling, then, these prints appeal to a taste for the curieus (curious), exemplifying contemporary usage of the term to mark what appears strange, in the sense of rare, alien, or abnormal—that is, the whale, an unusual sea creature, displayed on shore under exceptional circumstances—but also to characterize what is exquisite, in the sense of expertly and conscientiously worked—that is, Matham’s plate, which from 4 On teyckenconst in Van Mander’s “T’leven van Henricus Goltzius”, see Melion W. S., Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s ‘Schilder-Boeck’ (Chicago – London: 1991) 43–51. The “Life of Goltzius” exemplifies the theory and practice of tecykenconst peculiar to the Low Countries, in Book IV of the Schilder-Boeck, “Het leven der doorluchtighe Nederlandtsche en Hoogh-duytsche schilders”, on which see ibidem 60–91; and Miedema H. (ed.), Karel van Mander: The Lives of the Illlustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, trans. D. Cook- Radmore, 6 vols. (Doornspijk: 1998) V 175–225. Prodigies Of Nature, Wonders Of The Hand 281 close up resolves into concentric hatches, swelling and tapering along their ambit, that are the basic unit of Goltzius’s signature burin-hand.5 Accordingly, Matham’s beached-whale prints can be seen to function as epitomes of both natural and artisanal curiosity. They also operate, as will soon become evident, as devotional images, reconciling the claims of divine and human artifice upon our powers of attention and our perceptual and spiritual faculties.
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