Façade Decoration with a Bust of Hugo de Groot (1583-1645)

Entry

This richly decorated trefoil façade decoration with the portrait of the seventeenth-century writer and lawyer, Hugo de Groot (also known as Grotius) comes off the lower front of 10 Kalverstaat in Amsterdam. The building has a wealth of book-related history.² From 1662 to 1883 it housed a succession of important publishing companies and bookstores, including those of Clement de Jonghe (1624-1677), Johan Hendrik Wetstein (1649-1726) and his sons, the Wetstein brothers, Isaak Tirion (1705-1755), Johannes Müller (1786-1853) and his son Christiaan Müller (1824-1883). After the latter’s death, the building was to serve a different purpose and lower part of the façade was supplanted by a neo-Renaissance store front. The façade decoration, together with a gable stone of the Wetstein brothers bearing the year 1728 taken from the rear façade (KOG-ALS-60), was rescued by Sybrand Jan Hingst, a brother-in-law of the last owner and presented to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (KOG).³

A painting by Isaak Ouwater of 1779 (SK-A-4026) shows the relief still at its original location above the entrance of 10 Kalverstraat.⁴ At that time the building was owned by Jan de Groot, who used it as a bookstore-cum-lottery office. With the exception of the grey-blue background around the portrait, the wooden relief was painted cream, in the same colour as the stone of the façade. It is not known whether they were the original colours, at some stage the paintwork was completely removed.

The well-known publisher-bookseller Isaak Tirion moved into the building in the Kalverstraat in 1742. According to a misconception in the nineteenth-century historical, genealogical and literary research magazine De Navorscher he had taken the present relief from his former dwelling at Amsterdam’s Nieuwendijk, and placed it into the façade of his new shop in the Kalverstraat.⁵ We are also told that the Wetstein gable stone that adorned the façade until then was moved to the rear façade.⁶

In 1728, the year recorded on the Wetstein gable stone (KOG-ALS-60), the premises had undergone a thorough restoration, which entailed adapting the entire façade in the Kalverstraat and adding the present gable top with busts of Minerva and Mercury. The Wetstein façade decoration was indeed moved to the back of the building at Jonge Roelensteeg.⁷ That decoration was taken down in 1883, together with the one featured here, and handed over to the KOG.⁸

Although hanging signs, gable stones or other façade decorations quite often moved with their owners to new premises (they were very useful means of identification, since prior to 1796 house numbers were not used in the Netherlands), it is more than likely that in this case Tirion had a completely new sign made for his shop in the Kalverstraat. In fact the measurements of the present façade decoration are a perfect match to fit in the space between the two corbels of the existing lower front. Stylistically too, it is far more plausible that the carving was done around 1742. In 1730, when Tirion moved into his old premises at Nieuwendijk, the highly naturalistic form of the grasses and bulrushes in the background was not yet fashionable in Amsterdam.⁹

Isaak Tirion was the publisher of Jan Wagenaar’s Tegenwoordige Staat der Vereenigde Nederlanden, amongst other things. Clearly he was fond of his façade decoration, because he used a print after the relief for the title page of the volume on the province of Holland he published in 1744.¹⁰ His association with the political martyr, Hugo de Groot, probably stemmed from the republican sympathies that he, as the publisher of Jan Wagenaar, is almost bound to have had.¹¹

Grotius’ likeness derives from the portrait that Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt (1566-1641) painted of him in 1631 (SK-A-581) and a year later was made into a print (RP-P-OB-50.076) by Willem Jacbsz van Delff (1580-1638). On the façade decoration, the cartouche with the portrait is flanked by two female sphinxes and two hovering putti holding attributes that refer to the business that was established in the building: an open book and two tampon pads for inking the type.

Fischer convincingly associated the decoration with Frans Blancard (1704-1744) on stylistic grounds.¹² This Bremen-born designer and sculptor of architectural ornaments settled in Amsterdam around 1726 where he worked in Dutch regency style.¹³ A preliminary study, signed by him and dated 1736, of an unrealized end piece for the façade of 387 Herengracht (fig. a) contains a number of close parallels with Tirion’s decoration. For instance, it has very similar volutes decorated with acanthus leaf, and is also flanked by sphinxes.¹⁴

Bieke van der Mark, 2025