A Voice from the Past: Pieter Saenredam’s The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam, Historical Continuity, and the Moral Sublime

Abstract

Although now fairenesse of beautifull bodies doth very much take our minds, yet are wee more ravished by an accurate Imitation of this same beauty: for our thoughts cheered up and elevated by the contemplation of an absolute Imitation of perfect beautie, cannot containe themselves any longer, they doe leape as it were for joy, being extolled with the gallant bravery of what the eye beholdeth.9 Junius's book is a compendium of classical citations, primarily on oratory and poetry, shaped by the author into a discourse on the visual arts.It is at once the first work of modern art criticism to engage substantially with the classical rhetorical treatise of Longinus, 10 Peri Hypsous (On the Sublime).11 In the passage above, Junius defines the experience of beauty in art by drawing on what Longinus calls the "true sublime" in oratory: that which "naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled with joy and pride." 12 In this essay, I will argue for the sublime effect of The Old Town Hall upon its audience.In doing so, I will identify sublimity with Longinus's notion of the morally uplifting as it is adapted by Junius in The Painting of the Ancients.While Houbraken's lines appeared in the eighteenth century, I will argue that they do not represent an anachronistic reading of Rixtel's poem but suggest what was the elevating effect of The Old Town Hall upon the seventeenth-century burgomasters of Amsterdam.

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