“The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal).”
This photograph is a two-image panorama. Claude Monet painted this scene around 1874 and titled his work “The Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (Looking up the Groenburgwal).” https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104453
The geography of a place and the predominant professions of its inhabitants and visitors determine the area’s public, religious, and government building styles and art. Amsterdam, “the city of wise merchants,” is a case in point. It has had a dual personality since the 15th century — the Oude Zijde (Old side) on the east side of the Amstel River and the Nieuwe Zijde (New side) on the west. Sailors and the millers. Oude Kerk was the oldest church, built on the west, and was dedicated to St John the Baptist and St Nicholas. Nieuwe Kerk, the second church, was dedicated to a woman, the patron saint of millers. These were catholic churches.
On 26 May 1578, the Calvinists replaced the catholic government with a protestant one. Subsequently, Hendrick de Keyser — “the architect” working for the department of Steefabryc (public works) — built other churches, including the first protestant church in the Republic, the Zuyederkerk (1603–11), a distinctly non-Catholic name referring to wind direction and infinite geography.
But Amsterdam with gold so heavily
Crowned, and from God’s lap
Dewed with blessings,
Carries her banner of war into the dusk of day.
— Joost van den Vondel, Inwydinge van ’t Stadhuis, 1648
