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Cultural Reflections on Porcelain in the 17Th-Century Netherlands

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Cultural Reflections on Porcelain in the 17Th-Century Netherlands Cultural reflections on porcelain in the 17th-century Netherlands Cultural reflections on porcelain in the 17th-century Netherlands, Amsterdam, Delft, JAPANESE PORCELAIN, Delfts, M. S. van Aken-Fehmers, Geschiedenis van een nationaal product, Netherlands, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Dutch Republic, Vossius, Willem Kalf, H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, 17th-century, 18th century, China, L. Schledorn, pp, M. S. van AkenFehmers, material constitution, Dutch Delftware, WP Amsterdam, J. van Campen, University of Amsterdam, Juriaen van Streeck, Chinese paintings, Oosters porselein Delfts, Dutch Golden Age, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Chinese porcelain, Johannes Pontanus, medicinal properties, medicinal qualities, Asia, porcelain dish, Middle Kingdom, Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, Chinese community, Johannes Vermeer, Hieronymus Cardanus, Seventeenth-Century Netherlands Weststeijn, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Jan Evertsen Kloppenburch, cultural significance, Southern Netherlands, Seventeenth-Century Netherlands, Delfts Blauw, Chinese ceramics, De Pauw, Leiden University, History of Art, Anna Charlotte Amalie, Sir Francis Child, de Nederlanden, Magdalena Wilhelmina, Princess Caroline Louise von HessenDarmstadt, Cornelis de Pauw, Adri van der Meulen, Jan Franssen Bruyningh, Gemeentearchief Rotterdam, Prince John William Friso, Charles Frederick von Baden-Durlach, Antwerp University, Chinese civilisation, Bestandskatalog der Verwaltung, T. van Swieten, intention.76 De Pauw, porcelain painters, household wares, Amsterdam University Press, Stadsarchief Amsterdam, K. van Strien, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Aeltje Cornelis, Joris Joosten de Vlaming, Frederik Hendrik, Chinese medicine, Chinese brushwork, Suzanne Limburg, R. Stratmann, Matteo Ricci, Het Rapenburg GROUP-A, A discipline-specific approach to the history of US science education, Behavior: The control of perception, Clusters in Nuclei, vol. 2, Hearing: Its psychology and physiology, Characterizing the level of inquiry in the undergraduate laboratory, Neuroscience year, Walk like a physicist: an example of authentic education, A study of effectiveness of Computer assisted instruction followed by various teaching methods in terms of achievement of secondary school students, A modern approach UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Cultural Reflections on Porcelain in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands Weststeijn, M.A. Published in: Chinese and Japanese Porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Weststeijn, T. (2014). Cultural Reflections on Porcelain in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands. In J. van Campen, & T. Eliens (Eds.), Chinese and Japanese Porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age (pp. 213-229, 265-268). Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (http://dare.uva.nl) Download date: 05 Jul 2018 CHAPTER XII Cultural refl ections on porcelain in the 17th-century Netherlands* THIJS WESTSTEIJN One of the 17th century’s greatest admirers of Chinese good among all layers of society. Regardless of their porcelain was Willem Kalf (1619–1693), some of social background, many Dutch people saw and whose paintings demonstrate meticulous attention to handled it on a regular basis. Artists in particular its material and optical properties. His 1662 Still Life, lavished attention on its singular optical qualities. now in Madrid, features an extraordinary Chinese jar Moreover, potteries, especially in Delft, tried to with representations of the Eight Immortals (Fig. 1).2 recreate porcelain’s surface, which implied an even Kalf, who probably had no understanding of Taoist more accurate material knowledge; artisans then iconography, may have been aware that this was not decorated the imitations of Asian ceramics with only an exotic object but also an antiquity of sorts, themes and styles that purportedly looked Chinese. dating from a few decades earlier.3 As its material constitution was still unknown at the time, he could Even though – or perhaps because – porcelain also have appreciated porcelain as a curious sample of was a common presence in Dutch houses, it was the natural world, just like decorative tableware made seldom discussed. In the light of the sheer volume from ostrich eggs or the nautilus goblets that also of the China trade and the ubiquity of Chinese- feature in his work. In this painting, moreover, the style ceramics, references in literary sources are porcelain’s refl ective sheen, rendered in meticulous remarkably rare. Before the letters by Father detail with a scattering of dot-like highlights, is François Xavier d’Entrecolles (1712–1722), a Jesuit paired with other surfaces of various degrees of missionary who visited the kilns in Jingdezhen to transparency: the drinking vessels, plate and half- inspect the manufacturing process, European texts peeled lemon. gave scant attention to porcelain’s origin, material, and shape, or to the decoration’s themes and styles. Besides this very sophisticated example, porcelain It is understandable that the Delft potters who had features in hundreds of still lifes painted in the mastered ‘Chinese’ brushwork did not leave a written Northern and Southern Netherlands in the 17th record – their imitations had to pass for authentic.5 century.4 In many cases, it may have been included Yet the contrast between the abundance of visual as no more than a fi tting container for the fl owers material and the paucity of written sources is without or foodstuffs that artists wanted to represent, but it parallel in Dutch 17th-century culture, which was was also a subject in its own right among silverware, highly literate and developed a vibrant tradition glass, and other precious goods. Assuming from the of artistic theory. Oil paintings are therefore the degree of connoisseurship that a work such as Kalf’s most eloquent testimonies to the Low Countries’ Fig. 1 implies, one would expect there to have been some fascination with porcelain. Willem Kalf (1619–1693), awareness among these paintings’ owners of the Still Life with a Chinese Bowl, a origin, history, and cultural signifi cance of Chinese This observation surprises all the more in light of Nautilus Cup and other Objects, 1662. Oil on canvas, 79.4 x rarities. As the present book clarifi es, uniquely for porcelain’s many cultural and natural-historical 67.3 cm. Museo Thyssen- the Dutch situation, porcelain – either the Chinese associations. The artists’ interest seems to refl ect the Bornemisza, Madrid, inv. no. 203 (1962.10). © 2013, Museo original or a Dutch earthenware imitation that was insight that Dutchmen handling a piece of Chinese Thyssen-Bornemisza/Photo also known as porceleyn – was a standard domestic ceramics would be touching a sample of the most SCALA, Florence. 213 130850_p130850_p001_280.indd001_280.indd 213 07-05-14 16:35 Fig. 2 advanced chemical manufacturing that they would EMBLEMS AND CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP Jan de Brune, ‘Wat de man kan, wijst zijn reden an’, ever come across. They would have admired how the engraving from Emblemata body, fashioned with extraordinary thinness, became Art history’s standard approach for establishing the of Zinnewerck, Amsterdam, transparent, resulting in a seemingly impossible meaning of objects, iconography, seems inadequate Jan Evertsen Kloppenburch, 1636, 2nd enlarged edition. combination of fragility and glittering hardness. to decode the cultural associations that were Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Modern science tells us that ordinary steel cannot cut connected to porcelain in the Dutch context. First inv. no. 328 L 3. porcelain and that it is a great isolator of heat and of all, rather than the objects’ imagery, it was their Fig. 3 electrical current. In pre-modern Europe, by contrast, material quality that attracted artists and, probably, Jan Luyken, ‘Het porseleyn’, porcelain was associated with magic and medicine. buyers in general. Even emblem books, which usually engraving from Het leerzaam huisraad, Amsterdam, wed. P. Recreating it presented a serious challenge to Dutch- tried to identify thematic symbolism, foregrounded Arentz en K. van der Sys, 1711. trained artisans and natural philosophers. Porcelain porcelain’s materiality, as two of the century’s most Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. RP-P-OB-45.671. was thus an essential ingredient, and in material and popular authors exemplify. Jan de Brune’s (1588– quantitative terms by far the most substantial one, 1658) engraving (Fig. 2) shows a gentleman checking of the ‘Chinese century’ in the Low Countries: from the quality of a bowl by its sound: porcelain rings the fi rst baptism of a Chinese sailor in Middelburg in beautifully when struck, something that no European 1600, to the closing decades when
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