Blood and money
Eric Christiansen
THE BURGUNDIAN NETHERLANDS by Walter Prevenier and Wim Blockmans
Cambridge University Press, f50
From 1384, the Netherlands and much of eastern France belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy; after 1482, to their Hapsburg descendants. See Quentin Durward and Don Carlos for two not entirely sympathe- tic portrayals of what this meant to the natives. It would have been better without the bloodshed, and the Reformation spoilt everything, but on the whole this abrupt alliance of the bluest blood and the readiest money supported a remarkably free and elegant civilisation. Not exactly a state, but a collection of institutions work- ing together most of the time for fairly disreputable purposes and with rather beautiful results.
It was safer to live there in the 15th century than in France or Germany, perhaps safer even than in England; cer- tainly more interesting for the businessman and the artist. On the other hand, there were aspects of Low Country life which we might find all too familiar.
Excessive numbers of people were cram- med into towns, either as slum-dwellers or in over-priced brick houses with much- loved furniture, curtains, books and pic- tures on the walls, if they could afford them. Their conduct was regulated by interfering bye-laws and expensive fashions, and their wealth was steadily depleted by a falling groat and rising taxes. There were all the middle-class anxieties; social-climbing, envy of the neighbours, professional incompetence, health, discon- tented wives, high interest rates. The workers were often on strike, or unem- ployed, or addicted to crime. The nobs were deathly proud, usually parvenu, and grabbed all the best jobs. Over those teeming pink townscapes rose a fog of complaint about materialism and moral values and the cost of living and the price of beer. Yes, this was one among several cradles of modern civilisation.
But when it came to expressing them- selves by what we call art, it was another matter. Whatever the form, painting, music, jewellery, sculpture, textiles, architecture, glass, books, whatever the motive or occasion or cost, these flat-land burghers and low-budget cavaliers had the advantage over us. I know it has been said before, ad nauseam, but I was never so struck by the contrast between them and us as when looking at this brightly and copiously illustrated work. We, who make beauty into a sort of spiritual value, cannot achieve it. They, who seem merely to have enjoyed spending money in the most os- tentatious way possible, hit the mark un- erringly again and again.
Look at the small-eyed profiteers and officials who laid out the groats, the stivers and the guilders in this way, and then at the value they got for their money: the works of the Van Eycks, Van der Weyden, Van der Goes, Memling, Bosch, Patenier and Metsys, and the fragments of glory that appear in their lesser competitors. Ignore the quality, feel the width; the abundance of art, in every cranny of the great Low Country churches, and at one time encrust- ing hundreds of fine houses and flaunted in the dress and adornment of the moderately well-off. We are not in the same league.
Most of them couldn't afford it, of course, but they could see it, and the artists were not shy about depicting the poor. They appear all over the place, the chorus to innumerable nativities and martyrdoms and processions, sometimes pushed to the foreground as with Bosch and the wood- carvers. See the carving of the old forester resting on his staff, now in the Wallace Collection. Good example of the crushing of the human spirit by mediaeval catholic- ism, as they used to say.
Why this surge of creation, which for a century carried much of Europe with it?
A few days ago I heard someone saying that he didn't object to having a hereditary head of state as such, but when it gave rise to mass-hysteria, and social envy, and exclusiveness, and exploitation, then he did. Conoisseurs of the British Prig will recognise his pure, indignant baritone with delight. He would have had much to sing about in the dominions of the dukes of Burgundy, those arch-inheritors with their envious, exclusive and often hysterical subjects. Prevenier and Blockmans suggest that `Burgundy' throve precisely because it was a combination of outrageously theatrical hereditary power with a population dedi- cated to industry, decency and mediocre enjoyment. Each gave the other what it wanted. Without the skills and money of the Netherlanders, the dukes and duches- ses and the supporting cast of bastards and bureaucrats would only have been indigent satellites of the French court. Without the vast egotism of the dukes, the Netherlan- ders would have constantly devastated each other in small-scale civil wars. After a few decades of 'theatre government' dukes and plebs even came to like each other. The dukes began to learn a little Flemish, and the plebs began to imitate the court in any ways they could afford. The two sides postured and paraded, and celebrated their ill-assorted union in art and literature. BY 1478 their sympathy was so strong that when the heiress of the dynasty produceda i son, the people of Bruges gathered n strength to applaud the public showing of his infant testicles. Interesting occasion for the British Prig. We still have much of the art, and the big book of Prevenier and Blockmans, which weighs seven and a half pounds and costs 50, reminds us democrats of what it was like. The pictures are tremendous, although this means that the paper has the irritating shiny surface that makes it diffi- cult to read by artificial light. Fix the page at an angle of 20 degrees from the surface of the table, and the bulb of the lamp nt), higher than the apex of a right-angled triangle of which they hypoteneuse is a line two feet long at an angle of 40 degrees from the spine of the book, and the inconvenience will be much reduced. The text is learned, and forms a fairly complete survey of the history and culture of the place and time, with maps, dia- grams, and tables of the price of bread, butter and cheese. They don't tell you wil° the translator is, if there is one, and the English is not flawless. There is quite an important difference between 'national conscience' and national consciousness, and a Church which was 'less and less able to improve its ethos effectively' seems to need a new script-writer for a start. The , 'scholarship is not consistently sound either. The statement that the art of the jeweller was 'unknown' in England before 1435 is misleading, and the 'English noble: man, Sir Donne' who had his portrait painted by Memling sounds rather fishY. However, there really was a hospitable Brugger called Lewis van Gruuthuse wig) was created Count (i.e. Earl) of Winches- ter by Edward IV in 1472, for services to the king in exile. His son resigned the title in 1500, preferring to govern Picardy for the French. In point of lavishness this book leaves nothing to be desired, and if people exist who are prepared to spend £50 in this way, 1am sure they will not be disappointed. A rich uncle could choose no better present for a niece or nephew who is tired of London, life, and the primacy of welded sculpture.
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