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Jan Van Der Heyden
A Fanciful View of Amsterdam, late 17th century
Paintings of city scenes -- sometimes accurate, sometimes invented -- were very popular in Holland. This painting by Jan van der Heyden, Amsterdam's leading painter of cityscapes, shows a fanciful view along the city's canal. The cupola in the distance belongs to the town hall, but the large palace in the foreground is imaginary.
Van der Heyden, who sold his carefully detailed, harmonious pictures for large sums, was also an important inventor. He devised a greatly improved system of streetlights for Amsterdam, which was especially important because the canals had no protective railings, as this painting shows. These oil streetlamps increased the likelihood of fires, but van der Heyden and his brother also invented fire hoses and pumps that could send water to the tops of tall buildings. |