The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture In the Golden Age

Magnificent. Anyone who wants to understand the Golden Age of Dutch culture or the background of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) or Dutch art needs to read this volume--slowly and carefully. Yes, the prose is overdone and at times too serpentine, but the insights into virtually every aspect of 17C Dutch life make the going worth the journey. Treasures are found at every turn of the page.

The continuous threads are the issues of "vice versus virtue" or "materialism vs. morality" or a "respect for commerce rather than nobility" as experienced in the nursery as well as the Town Hall, but as an art historian, I was particularly interested in the symbolism of Dutch paintings and here's where readers with a similar interest will strike show more gold--symbols of punishment (p. 392 ), metaphors of virtue (p. 416 ), symbols of marital fidelity (pp. 425-6 ), symbols of wantoness (pp. 461-2 ), etc. etc. As in Chinese art ([b:Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery|3911674|Chinese Art A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery|Patricia Bjaaland Welch|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364138720s/3911674.jpg|3957082], virtually every decorative aspect of a Dutch painting has a symbolic meaning --puppies, bowls of fruit, artichokes, a pipe, oysters, apes, maps, a block of cheese, a beached whale, a cripple's crutch, a spinning top, a pretzel, a Chinese blue & white platter, a red stocking, a string of coral beads around a child's neck, a slab of fish.

This said, such riches are not easily found as readers will look for such references in the Index in vain--there are no entries under Maps, Cartography, Apes, Dogs, Puppies, Coral, Pretzels etc. This translates into reading each and every of 622 pages...a task that could have been lightened by more maps, a better index and an explanatory paragraph or two here and there explaining those points of Dutch history that reared up 'out of nowhere' now and then. However, this book is a keeper and one that will, in a few years, inevitably show its value on my bookshelves by having acquired many well-thumbed pages. show less

I've read two previous works by Simon Schama and enjoyed his approach to microhistory, where he takes a few incidents or objects and from them draws a bigger story of an historical place or time. This book about the Dutch Golden Age almost seems the opposite approach as Schama collects lots and lots of little things - art, books, material culture - and attempts to recreate the era bit by bit. I found the book slow going and eventually gave up reading. This shouldn't be considered a negative review as I'm certain that this book would prove valuable to someone with an academic interest in 17th Century Netherlands. In my case, I brought it along as airplane reading for my trip to Amsterdam and found it to be much to much for my purpose.

Amo tutto di questo libro: l'autore, la copertina, l'argomento, l'originalità dell'idea, le centinaia di immagini, la vastità e varietà di conoscenza su cui è costruito. Ma non mi nasconderò dietro a un dito (non servirebbe): questo libro è un mattone. Difficile, a volte noioso è lettura solo per chi crede nel detto che l'amore è cieco e se, per caso, l'oggetto del vostro amore fossero i Paesi bassi del '600 ne sareste ampiamente ripagati. Ma forse, come per la maggior parte degli abitanti del pianeta, una cuffietta in zoccoli con un tulipano tra i denti e un dito infilato nella fessura di una diga sono per voi un'immagine sufficiente del paese sott'acqua. Pazienza, forse avrete maggiore fortuna nella vostra prossima vita.

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A massive huge book this, Schama's attempt to get inside the heads of the Dutch in the last sixteenth and early to mid seventeenth centuries. He is very convincing on the impact of natural as well as political/military disasters, on the formation of Dutch identity after the formation of the state, on the role of religion and the family, and the whole thing is beautifully illustrated with paintings and woodcuts from the period. (I was particularly grabbed by Schama's enthusiasm for Jan Steen.)

However, I could have done with a bit more of the historical outline - the dramatic events of 1650 are actually better described by Russell Shorto, and it is assumed the reader knows all about William the show more Silent - and the only two maps provided are a contemporary small woodcut of the Netherlands and an illegible attempt to show where the brothels of Amsterdam were located. If you're only interested in the culture and not in the context, this would be a very satisfying book; but I like a little more framework to hang the pictures from. show less

I knew Schama from his A History of Britain series via BBC/History and I have been interested about the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, so that's what brought me to this book. My usual history reading were usually biographies or general histories, so a book dealing with cultural attitudes was something new for me. Overall it was very informative and Schama gives ample examples with engravings and prints thus showing his thorough research. But during some sections, it was a grind to read so much so that I was barely making a dent in the book as time went on. I started this book at the beginning of March and instead of getting through by the end of the month, I still had a ways to go. After taking a break to read a fictional work, it show more took me only 8 days after picking this book up again to finish. But don't let my own troubles dissuade you from purchasing this book, the insight into Golden Age Dutch culture gives one a basis in viewing Dutch's political, diplomatic, and military decisions during Europe's early modern period. show less

In my Vintage edition from 1997 the illustrations are printed in halftone and are quite unsatisfactory. Caveat emptor!
Was it thus in the Knopf first edition of 1987 ?
Erudite, virtuosic work. Overladen and occasionally over-written. (e.g. à propos pictorial representations of cetacean beachings: "The great leviathans, their sonar scrambled by the North Sea sand, were migrating not only from Arctic to Atlantic, but from the realm of myth and morality to that of matter and commodity, sometimes becoming stranded on the submarine slopes of Dutch cultural contradiction.”)

This is a BIG book. Strap yourself in for a word and picture journey through the Netherlands of the 15th and 16th century. This is no history book; you are supposed to be somewhat familiar with it. An understanding of the Dutch language also helps. However, there is lots to learn about Dutch life in that period: family, marriage, children, relations between church and state, eating, housing, relationship between the 'classes' etc. One prominent topic is how the Dutch handled the tension between wealth creation and a Christian (indeed Reformed) attitude to money and charity.
A couple of comments:
- The pictures in my edition were in black and white, and do the details he described in the text were not often to be seen.
- He really flogs a show more topic to death - shorter is better?
- Knowing the Dutch language helped me (see above)
- There is a fair bit of focus on Amsterdam, and to a lesser degree Leiden and den Haag; the author does acknowledge this.
Anyway, read it and learn a bit about life in Europe and about words. show less