Cold and Wet in the City of Vermeer

Today I went to Delft, the city where Johannes Vermeer--one of the most famous artists of the Dutch "Golden Age"--lived, painted, and died.  During the seventeenth century, Delft was well known for its blue and white china, known as "Delftware."  There's a restaurant not far from where I go to school in Leiden where you can eat delicious Dutch pancakes (similar to crepes) on large Delftware plates painted with villages and landscapes.

When I left this morning to catch the train to Delft, it was an overcast day--nothing out of the ordinary.  The canal on the way to the train station borders a little wood where snowdrops have started to bloom.  As I neared the train station, it started to drizzle--still nothing unusual.  As I rode the train it started to rain.  Then it rained harder.

The misty sky and wet bark of the trees gives a nice ambiance to this picture of the leaning tower of Delft's Oude Kerk, or "Old Church," but it was an acrobatic routine trying to take a photograph without dropping my umbrella in the canal!

I would look around at old stone and brick buildings, sometimes decorated with gilded coats of arms ... and then step in yet another muddy puddle of rain water.

I decided to go inside some churches and museums to wait and see if the rain would stop.  It never did.  The water dripping off my umbrella inside the Oude Kerk made the church feel even more cold.  I could see my breath, my hands practically went numb, and I started to grumble to myself that if they were going to charge admission to go into a church, they could at least install a few heaters.  It was a beautiful building, though, albeit fairly empty, thanks to those ruthless iconoclasts!

Vermeer is buried in the church, and it was amazing to see his grave--admirers of his small, brilliantly painted canvases have continued to leave flowers at his grave well over three hundred years after his death.  It was like an art historians' pilgrimage site!

The Oude Kerk has been damaged and restored many times, but part of it is still medieval, complete with intricately carved buttresses tinged green with moss.

The crowned lions all over Delft remind you of the city's royal heritage.  William the Silent, prince of Orange, led the Protestant opposition to the rule of the Catholic King Philip II of Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century.

During those tense years of strife between Spain and the Low Countries, William sometimes stayed in Delft at the old cloister of St. Agatha, known today as the Prinsenhof.

Like most monasteries in Holland, St. Agatha's was eventually dismantled, but the Prinsenhof Museum still recalls the old days with a few beautiful religious works of art like this carved Deposition from the Cross.  In profound grief, Mary (lower left) collapses in the arms of John the Beloved, mimicking the position of her Son, whose body also "collapses" as he is lowered from the cross.

Philip II called for William's death, and an assassin, disguised as a French Protestant fleeing to William for religious protection, shot and killed the prince of Orange on this stair case.

The bullet holes are still visible in the wall.

Not far from the Oude Kerk and the Prinsenhof is the main market place, and like nearly all Dutch cities, the town hall occupies one end of the space and the main church sits at the the other end.  This is Delft's town hall.  For the Saturday market, vendors had set up tents in between the two buildings.

The tower of the Nieuwe Kerk, or "New Church," soars high above the market, and every half hour the bells ring.  When I frist arrived in Delft, bells from somewhere were playing "Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match" from Fiddler on the Roof, which created kind of an odd disjunction.  Construction on the Nieuwe Kerk began in the fourteenth century after a beggar and another Delft resident had a vision in which heavenly light poured down on the spot where the church stands today.  The legend says that the vision occurred again each year until a portion of the church was completed.

William the Silent, depicted in this stained glass window, was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk since his ancestral burial church was under Spanish control at the time of his assassination.  Necessity started a tradition, and since then nearly all the Dutch royalty from the House of Orange have been interred in the crypt of the Nieuwe Kerk.

William is the only Dutch prince with a mausoleum on the ground level of the church.  The other royal tombs are out of sight, beneath the floor.  The current Dutch monarch is Queen Beatrix, and she, along with her mother and grandmother, are very beloved.