Vermeer's Delft Today

A lone biker at the train station gets ready to take a tour of Delft (the leaning spire of the Oude Kerk can be seen in the distance).

While contemplating period paintings of the silent Oude Delft canal, a grizzly "snapshot" of the infamous Delftse Donderslag (the explosion of the gunpowder magazine), a stately Delft church interior or Vermeer’s View of Delft, the casual viewer may wonder how these places appear today. What has changed in the course of 300 years and exactly what has remained of the past? Is it possible to determine their exact locations? With a tour guide of paintings, engravings and descriptions of Delft , we stand a fair chance of finding at least a few answers.

First of all, how well is Delft conserved? “In the second half of the 17th c. (about the time Vermeer's career was beginning), Amsterdam and Rotterdam, because of their excellent ports, took over more and more of the nation's trade, Delft slowed down. Its famous pottery industry continued to flourish, but other businesses languished. The number of breweries in the city shrank from more than 100 to 15. It became the home of retired people and a stronghold of conservative Calvinism. Gradually the once-vigorous city went into a decline that left it virtually dormant until the 19th Century.

This detail of Dirck Van Bleyswyck's Kaart Figuratief shows the area around the Groote Markt (Market Place).

Click on the Kaart to view four points of interest concerning Vermeer's life and art.

The one lucky result of this misfortune is that the heart of Delft today looks very much as it did in Vermeer's day, since, by the time the town came to light again, men had learned to value and preserve the architectural heritage of the past. Thus Delft still has a few acres of houses, churches, canals and squares which lead us straight into Vermeer's world.”¹

Unfortunately, the situation is not so bright when it comes to Vermeer. All the original buildings which played a major role in the life and works of the Master have been demolished even though many can be pinpointed with security. The Old Church, New Church and City Hall do still stand in glory, but the series of private Vermeer homes and the home of the Guild of St Luke have long since vanished from Delft.

The Great Fire

Two dates crucial for the development of the city of Delft must be considered: the first being the Great Fire on 3rd May 1536, caused by a bolt of lighting that struck the tower of Nieuwe Kerk. Part of the wooden tower was burned down and the organ, bells and the stained-glass windows were lost. Fanned by a strong east wind, the fire ravaged virtually everything west of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft (houses of the time were mainly built with timber). Few of these building which gave Delft its medieval character, withstood the fire. An anonymous painted copy of a map of Delft (below), oppressive in its details, illustrates graphically the devastation’s extent. This map also serves as an invaluable source for locating cloisters and convents and other public houses whose ruins gradually vanished with the reconstruction of the city. The painting represents nearly every house and church, whether still intact (signaled by the red of the roofs) or as a ruin.

"In the next forty years, the reconstruction of the Nieuwe Kerk and scores of houses in brick and mortar which went up absorbed the energies of the city's citizens and depleted their resources. In the 1540s and 1550s, stately houses went up around the Great Market Square near the Nieuwe kerk, along the Oude Delft Canal, and in other neighborhoods where so many dwellings had been burned down, These were the new houses, built along tree-lined canals, where rich burgers lived, who common people said, 'sat on cushions and ruled the city.'" ²

Map of Delft after the fire in 1536
Anonymous
Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft

The Delft Powder Explosion

a detail of Van der Poel's
representation of aftermath of
the Delft powder explosion

The second catastrophe which shaped the topography and character of Delft was caused by the infamous explosion of the gunpowder magazine on Monday, 12th October 1654, in the morning at half-past ten. Once again several parts of the town were leveled to the ground, more than one hundred people were killed and many more wounded thousands. The explosion was so strong that it slammed shut doors in near bye towns and was said to have been heard as far away as the island of Texel, seventy miles north of Delft.

The powder magazine contained some 90,000 pounds of gunpowder.The dubious honor of storing such a frightening amount of explosive material had fallen to Delft because it was protected by firm ramparts. At the time Delft boasted walls, 8 gates and 24-26 turrets for its defense system (only the Oostpoort survives in an extremely picturesque setting, the only surviving gate, dating from the fourteenth/fifteenth century. The powder magazine (it was one of five in Delft), also called 't Secreet van Holland, as it was partly underground and hidden by trees and bushes and was more or less unknown to Delft's citizens, was located on the former convent of the Poor Clares.

Cornelis Soetens, the keeper of the magazine, on that fatal day opened the store to make his weekly check a sample of the powder. “Soetens was accompanied by a colleague from The Hague, wearing a red cloak, and by a servant. A lantern was lit, a door to the store was opened, and Soetens's companion handed his fine cloak to the servant so that it wouldn't get dirty and told him to take it home. The two men went in and down the dark stairs to collect their sample. Some minutes passed. It was still an ordinary Monday morning in Delft. Fiver huge successive explosions merged with one another. The earth shuddered and shuddered again. Flames rose and an intense heat fanned out in a searing wave.“³

Luckily, many citizens were away, visiting a market in Schiedam or the fair in The Hague. But Carel Fabritius, Vermeer’s colleague and Rembrandt’s most talented pupil, who had lived with his family in the Doelenstraat nearby the gunpowder magazine, died at his easel and with him perished presumably a part of his artistic production. Delft’s two principle churches, the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk, were also damaged.

News of the event spread rapidly throughout the country. The States General sent a note of condolence; Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, paid a visit; and many other people came to survey the devastation.

A close neighbor of Fabritius, the painter Egbert van der Poel, miraculously survived but lost his daughter and most likely other family members. Ironically, Poel would furnish in the following years a number of views of the disaster as a sort of souvenir of the even though we do not know if Poel had personally witnessed the event. Thus, an extraordinary event yielded a new market for many townscape views of the devastated areas and Poel became known as the painter of fire.

Upper part of one of the stained-glass windows in the Council Hall ('Raadszaal')
of the Town Hall showing two variations of the Delft coat of arms.
The dark beam in the middle symbolizes the Oude Delft canal, the origin of the city
of Delft.