The Illustrated Book of the Netherlands

When discussing the early modern culture of the Netherlands, everyone first thinks of painting. This painting was rooted in a healthy sense of reality and a broad, prejudice-free outlook, which the world-encompassing imperialism bestowed upon the entire nation. Holland also shared the characteristics of all merchant-dominated power: prosaicness, dryness, lack of imagination, and narrow-mindedness. The environment in which this art developed imprinted its large-scale everyday nature.

The dullness, rigidity, and mathematical correctness of the respectable and sober merchant, who desired everything neatly and tidily, but carefully avoided any excess or eccentricity, is most clearly reflected in the sparse, business-like style of architecture, exemplified by the long-regarded masterpiece, the Amsterdam City Hall. Franz Hals, Ruysdael, Rembrandt—just to mention three of the most significant artists—died in poverty. On the other hand, Belgium can boast just as many great names as Holland. Art history often treats these two countries as sharply distinct, although there is no real reason to do so.

Dutch Calvinism, with its puritanical prudery, deprived painting of its great themes; as a result, painting had to settle for portraits, genre scenes, and studies of nature, thus acquiring a genre-like character. The spirit of philistinism dominated the public's tastes, and even in the case of historical subjects, there was very little interest. Dutch art, as a whole, was bourgeois. The bourgeoisie primarily wished to see itself reflected on the canvas: itself and what made life worthy of living—its family, businesses, celebrations, and pleasures. They wanted portraits and group portraits, with the entire family posing awkwardly and proudly, shooting pictures of the middle-class man playing soldier, pompous councils, club meetings, banquets; they wanted showy interiors and alluring still lifes with household trinkets, colorful flowerpots, expensive tableware, wine bottles, fish, hams, game, and everything that could make life delectable for the corpulent burghers. All of this was merely an extension of their own persona, and beyond that, the bourgeoisie was only interested in anecdotes: sharply told family scenes, fights, sports reports, moving, humorous, or chilling character portraits—always with a twist, and designed to make the twist as loud and obvious as possible in the image. The painter who enjoyed the greatest popular success was the one who was diligent and sufficiently flat to limit his production to a single theme. The entire Flemish brushwork, with the exception of a few misunderstood geniuses, is essentially one great household treasure, a kind of market comic strip, entertaining light reading, and a family album.

Egon Friedell "Az újkori kultúra története III." Holnap Kiadó, Budapest, 1989