Artikelen

• Sturm en het stadhuis. Een Duits architectuurdocent corrigeert het werk van Jacob van Campen en Jacob Roman

  The Amsterdam Town Hall (1648-1665) of Jacob van Campen was undoubtedly one of the major architectonic attractions of the Dutch Republic. Among the many tourists honouring the building with a visit was the North-German architect Leonhard Christoph Sturm (1669-1719), teacher at the Ritterakademie of Wolffenbüttel, who had a large number of treatises on architecture to his name and reported on his findings during his travels in the Netherlands and France in 1697, 1699 and 1712 in his Architectonische Reiseanmerkungen, which appeared in the year of his death.

  Among the many buildings in the classicist building style, which he described and criticised there, were also a few town halls, a theme to which Sturm devoted a separate text in 1718. Three of them are entered into more extensively: besides the Amsterdam Town Hall, the Delft Town Hall (1618-1620) of Hendrick de Keyser and the Deventer Town Hall (1686-'88) of Jacob Roman.

  The Delft Town Hall is denounced as too extravagant; of the Deventer Town Hall Sturm made a far from perfect elevation drawing of the facade on the basis of flawed sketches and memories, for which he subsequently proposed some improvements that had actually already been realised in the building.

  Nor is the Amsterdam Town Hall spared, in which the absence of a monumental entrance section particularly annoys him, besides a few minor 'shortcomings'. He was not the only one; many foreign travelers felt the same, before as well as after him. However, unlike them, Sturm drew an alternative floor plan, in which instead of the seven low semi-circular arches he had designed a grand staircase, possibly inspired by Vingboons' alternative design for the town-hall, which in his view was indispensable for the town hall of such a large town.

  In the German treatises he more or less constituted a standard element in theory, although in practice he was mostly absent in the German towns. Furthermore, without commenting on it, the author - without being aware of it? - made some more corrections in the floor plan, such as increasing the number of windows in the side wall by one window, thus producing an odd number, which gave him the opportunity to highlight the central axis.

  The Amsterdam Town Hall did not only function as a source of inspiration for Sturm in his treatise on town halls. In his Ausführliche Anleitung zur Bürgerlichen Baukunst his younger colleague Johann Friedrich Penther (1693-1749) commended it as the most important specimen of the century, serving as a guiding principle for himself, too, in the relevant chapter of his manual, where he, just as Sturm, presents a few of his own designs for town halls.

  The Amsterdam Town Hall (1648-1665) of Jacob van Campen was undoubtedly one of the major architectonic attractions of the Dutch Republic. Among the many tourists honouring the building with a visit was the North-German architect Leonhard Christoph Sturm (1669-1719), teacher at the Ritterakademie of Wolffenbüttel, who had a large number of treatises on architecture to his name and reported on his findings during his travels in the Netherlands and France in 1697, 1699 and 1712 in his Architectonische Reiseanmerkungen, which appeared in the year of his death.

  Among the many buildings in the classicist building style, which he described and criticised there, were also a few town halls, a theme to which Sturm devoted a separate text in 1718. Three of them are entered into more extensively: besides the Amsterdam Town Hall, the Delft Town Hall (1618-1620) of Hendrick de Keyser and the Deventer Town Hall (1686-'88) of Jacob Roman.

  The Delft Town Hall is...

  The Amsterdam Town Hall (1648-1665) of Jacob van Campen was undoubtedly one of the major architectonic attractions of the Dutch Republic. Among the many tourists honouring the building with a visit was the North-German architect Leonhard Christoph Sturm (1669-1719), teacher at the...

  Thomas H. von der Dunk

  133-157

  • Download PDF
• Petrus Camper en Jacob van Campen. Een polemiek uit 1767 met Cornelis Ploos van Amstel inzake het stadhuis van Amsterdam

  In 1767 the physician and scientist Petrus Camper (1722-1789) made an anonymous attack on 'the taste of the Netherlands' in the journal De Philosooph. Thereby he elaborately directed his arrows at Dutch architecture and particularly at the Amsterdam Town Hall, which had been internationally renowned since the seventeenth century.

  Not long afterwards the well-known Amsterdam art collector Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-1798) published his defense in a detailed pamphlet. In so far as known this developed into the first architecture polemic fought out in the Dutch press, which is particularly interesting in view of the important position of the two opponents. Petrus Camper is considered one of the major Dutch scientists of the eighteenth century, who was uncommonly interested in architecture.

  He was an honorary member of the Amsterdam academy of art, published on the subject of aesthetics (‘over het gedaante schoon’ [on the beauty of form]) and was one of the initiators of the contest for a new town hall in Groningen in 1772. In Camper's opinion Dutch architecture could be blamed for lack of taste and an inclination to imitate, both in his own time and in the seventeenth century.

  According to him this could be solved by informing art lovers and artists of the modern aesthetics or theory of beauty especially promoted by English and French philosophers. Ploos van Amstel, also a prominent member of the Amsterdam academy of art and besides an advocate of the reappraisal of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape art, was considered one of the major art connoisseurs in Amsterdam.

  Camper's frontal attack on the Town Hall, by that time the example of the glory of the Golden Age and thus unassailable in advance, induced Ploos to a defense that is emotional and chauvinist rather than consistent. In many places he refers to Camper's faulty terminology, but on the other hand does not mention that Camper was very well-informed of the changing ideas in international theory of architecture.

  Although Camper does not use the correct terminology, he does succeed in questioning Dutch taste, which had degenerated into something alien due to habituation and blind trust in the authority of the classics with their absolute proportions for the use of the colonnades. Although this polemic appeared to invite further discussion, so far it is not known what impact it had on the further development of Dutch architecture.

  In 1767 the physician and scientist Petrus Camper (1722-1789) made an anonymous attack on 'the taste of the Netherlands' in the journal De Philosooph. Thereby he elaborately directed his arrows at Dutch architecture and particularly at the Amsterdam Town Hall, which had been internationally renowned since the seventeenth century.

  Not long afterwards the well-known Amsterdam art collector Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-1798) published his defense in a detailed pamphlet. In so far as known this developed into the first architecture polemic fought out in the Dutch press, which is particularly interesting in view of the important position of the two opponents. Petrus Camper is considered one of the major Dutch scientists of the eighteenth century, who was uncommonly interested in architecture.

  He was an honorary member of the Amsterdam academy of art, published on the subject of aesthetics (‘over het gedaante schoon’ [on the beauty of form]) and was one...

  In 1767 the physician and scientist Petrus Camper (1722-1789) made an anonymous attack on 'the taste of the Netherlands' in the journal De Philosooph. Thereby he elaborately directed his arrows at Dutch architecture and particularly at the Amsterdam Town Hall, which had been...

  Thomas H. von der Dunk, Freek H. Schmidt

  158-177

  • Download PDF