Leiden University | The Amsterdam Town Hall in Words & Images: Book Launch with Caroline van Eck (Cambridge), Bram Van Oostveldt (Ghent) & Stijn Bussels (Leiden)

The Amsterdam Town Hall in Words & Images (Bloomsbury)

The most famous monument of the Dutch Golden Age is undoubtedly the Amsterdam Town Hall by architect Jacob van Campen inaugurated in 1655. In the period of its construction, many artists and writers tried to capture the overwhelming impact of the building by, among other comparisons, relating it to the ancient Wonders of the World and by stressing its splendour, riches, and impressive scale. In doing so, they constructed the Town Hall as the ultimate wonder, thus offering a silent, but very powerful testimony to the power and position of the City of Amsterdam and its rulers as equals of the other European regimes. To fully understand these mechanisms of power and put it in an international context, Stijn Bussels, Caroline van Eck and Bram Van Oostveldt edited a book volume which relates the Town Hall to other, impressive buildings of the same period-the palace of the Louvre, Saint Peter’s Basilica, and Banqueting House-and their visual and textual representations. In this presentation, the editors will elaborate on their choice not to restrict themselves to a national scope or a purely architectural analysis, but to focus on how artists and writers all over Europe presented buildings as wonders of the world.

Referent

Meredith Hale (University of Exeter) will join this presentation as a referent.

Registration

Would you like to join our online book launch? Please register here.