Impressions of Delft

The Waterways and Light of Delft

The center of old Delft is the market, which is shown as a white oblong in the middle of Blaeu's plan., The market square is not particularly large, but it is dramatic because it is the only wide-open, ornamental mental space within a medieval huddle of houses. Old Delft, which had about 23,000 inhabitants in 1630, actually boasts only three or four real streets; the rest are alleys and canals. The canals were the arteries of Delft, carrying its trade and also its visitors; fact, Holland's waterways were its safest and smoothest channels of transportation until well into the 19th Century. Marcel Proust described one such waterway after visiting Delft: "An ingenious little canal. ..dazzled by the pale sunlight; it ran between a double row of trees stripped of their leaves by summer's end and stroking with their branches the mirroring windows of the gabled houses on either bank."

Now these narrow canals lie quiet under their humpbacked bridges, but they are still used to carry supplies to the flower market, the butter- and-cheese market and the fish market, all located along the waterside. They are almost straight, but their slight bends provide surprising changes in the fall of the light, which is confined by the houses, reflected in windows and water and sifted through the canopy of the trees.

The light of Delft! Thousands of words have been written about it and its real or imagined secrets. The French playwright and poet Patil Claudel wrote that it was "the most beautiful light in existence." Considered coldly, there is no reason why the light of Delft should be different from' the light of The Hague or Rotterdam. But the old town is so still, even today-the heavy foliage, the dark water and the old brick walls envelop it so beautifully that its light, many times reflected and filtered, does seem different once it has reached the level of the eye; it seems to have an especially soft, fluid quality.

Perhaps it is not only Delft, not just the trees or canals, which make this light so special, but also Vermeer. As Stratford-on-Avon or Walden Pond may move the visitor in a manner which has nothing to do with their physical appearances, so the light of Vermeer's town has been given a magical connotation by his work. Here he was born in the autumn of the year 1632

from:
The World of Vermeer: 1632-1672
by Hans Koningsberger, New York, 1967, pp. 29-39

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Museyon Guides, 2010

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Vermeer's City

Just as it does today, seventeenth-century Delft abounded with water and was dissected everywhere by canals. The city's name is derived from the word delf which means canal (or delven, to dig a canal). All this water literally makes Delft a conglomerate of small islands, reconnected by streets and bridges both wooden and stone. In the seventeenth century, stone bridges were a mark of the city's prosperity as they were difficult and expensive to construct. Delft's streets are wide, straight, and laid out in an orderly pattern. The Oude Delft, a wide canal, is even flanked on both sides by spacious roads. The trees along the canals were appreciated for their beauty, and, in the summer, for the shade they provided for roads and houses. The French traveler Balthasar de Monconys, who visited Delft in 1663, explicitly stated that more trees line the streets of Delft than those of Rotterdam. He also noted that the houses in Delft were more beautiful and pleasant than elsewhere.

Dirck van Bleyswijck, Delft's city biographer, who had been burgomaster sometime during the 1670s, proudly asserted that visitors and writers admired the city because..."the houses of Delft are as beautiful, as elegant, as large and as high as can be found anywhere else in the Netherlands."

from:
"The Public and the Private in the Age of Vermeer." Arthur K. Wheelock, in The Public and the Private in the Age of Vermeer, Osaka, 2000. p. 34