ond period, when the classical style after
Palladio became generally accepted, the variety of aspect and the baroque
details had to yield to monumentality and severity.

[Plate 2. The Old Town Hall in Amsterdam.]

Plate 2. The Old Town Hall in Amsterdam. After an engraving by Cl. Jz.
Visscher.

The spirit of the town's aspirations is best reflected in her town-hall,
which marks the culminating point of her evolution (about 1650). That
imposing square building, still in existence in Amsterdam's centre, called
the Dam, must be familiar to all who have visited the town, and the
interested art-lover may have noted that this building, grand and
magnificent as it is, has no typical Dutch character such as marks
Amsterdam's earlier buildings. He will have remarked a strong tendency to
the classic style of Italy, and the rich marble sculptures inside must
have appeared to him as belonging to another school than the contemporary
Dutch pictures, which he admired in Amsterdam's Ryksmuseum. In this
circumstance we may find the clue to the disharmony which existed between
Rembrandt and his surroundings in his later years. His art and the spirit
of his contemporaries were going athwart with different aims. When the
artist settled down in Amsterdam, at the age of twenty-five, circumstances
were still favourable to a good mutual understanding: the ambitious and
pulsating spirit of the growing commercial city must have felt akin to the
boisterous aspirations of the young, gifted artist. His great material
success during the first years furnishes a proof of this supposition.
Then more and more came the alienation, and it is most instructive to
compare the different results at which the artist and the intelligent
population arrived: the artist, guided by the strength of his immense
personality and talent, remained himself, but his fellow-citizens
gradually changed their taste and predilections in matters of art and
intellect, uncertain as they were of themselves in these matters. Being
more gifted as traders than as artists, they showed that short-sightedness
and narrowmindedness in judging their contemporary artists, which so often
repeats itself in history (even in our time!). They were unable to
understand the strength and value of the country's native art, and turned
to foreign taste, even to foreign workmanship, as in the case of the
commission to Quellinus, the Flemish scu