17세기 네덜란드 미술에 나타난 재난: 1654년 10월 12일 델프트의 탄약창고 폭발을 중심으로

Abstract

This study examines disasters in the seventeenth-century Netherlandish art focusing on the explosion of the powder magazine at Delft on Monday, October 12th, 1654. Since the explosion was one of the most dramatic accidents among many disasters that happened in the Netherlands, many artists, including Herman Saftleven, Daniel Vosmaer and Egbert van der Poel, had repeatedly depicted the theme as an independent subject of art. However, critical researches have tended to interpret the dramatic elements of the paintings, attending to how the art works document the unprecedentedly large-scale damages of the incident. Claiming that the prevailing view neglects the communicative dimension of the artistic representations, this essay proposes that the works, first of all, served to inspire nationalistic sentiments among the people of the newly emerging Dutch Republic. Based on this thesis it further interprets the paintings as an allegory intended to convey the religious and moralistic messages to the Dutch viewers of the day. The present study starts with an historical review of the Delft explosion and the immediate artistic responses to it. For instance, seven days after its outbreak, Herman Saftleven portrayed the incident in the form of a landscape which seemingly maintains a detached look over the city in the aftermath of the calamity. But in his five comments placed below the illustration Saftleven stresses that the New Church and the Old Church remain intact. Considering that both churches enshrined the founding fathers of the Dutch Republic, it seems obvious that the painter’s work was designed to promote Dutch national pride and spirit of independence. In a similar way, Daniel Vosmaer, who made as many as twenty paintings on the subject matter, consistently put forward the church buildings as the symbol bearing the message that the disaster, albeit overwhelming, cannot undermine the nation’s peace and ecurity. Egbert van der Poel’s works also utilize the images of the churches; however, in this case the Delft explosion could be interpreted with biblical phrases to warn that such a catastrophe erupted as a divine intervention to make his compatriots spiritually awake. Such biblical explanation suggests that the disaster subjects summoned not only nationalism but also a wide range of religious and moral principles upholding Dutch culture at the time. This study holds that the dramatization of disasters in the seventeenth-century Dutch paintings was centered around three allegories of redemption, divine judgment and national loyalty. Willem Schellinks, for instance, rendered the flood which destroyed St. Anthony’s Bank on East Amsterdam in 1651. Schellinks’s painting advances the survivors, not victims, of the casualty to transmit a sense of redemption. Romeyn de Hooghe visualizes the collapse of the Coevorden bank constructed by Bishop of Münster to facilitate the German army’s infiltration into the Netherlands. De Hooghe, in this case, celebrates the incident as a godly punishment against the invaders. Lastly, both Esaias van de Velde and Jan Abrahamsz. Beerstraaten see the disasters as the trials allowed by God to strengthen national loyalty of Dutch people. In conclusion, this study calls attention to Dutch people’s transcendental attitude toward the irresistible natural disasters. They utilized the incidents as opportunities not only to consolidate Dutch national identity, but also to renew their understanding of the divine providences such as judgment and repentance.