High flights of the low country Influence of the Netherlands in Estonian cultural space
	Mariann Raisma

	The exhibition Low Sky. Wide Horizon: Art of the Low Countries in Estonia at the Kadriorg Art Museum, 18 September 2004 - 17 April 2005
	What catches the eye first of all, while looking at the map of influences on older Estonian cultural history, are the Hanseatic and Order cultures. These constituted an essentially natural domestic exchange of culture that had an impact on local medieval towns, churches and fortifications. However, there is a lot of culture in Estonia which has come from outside and has been integrated into the local context. One of the most significant fields of influence, both directly and indirectly, is the Netherlands. Economic, but also cultural, contacts between the Low Countries and Estonia have progressed through the centuries - after all, these two regions have quite a few things in common, such as cool seas, flat lands, hard-working and religious people, and a pragmatic way of thinking. As early as the Middle Ages, the trading towns of the Netherlands set an example for the Nordic Hanseatic centres. A special fondness for the Netherlands could also be detected in Estonia beginning in the late 15th century. At that time altars meant for the bigger churches in Tallinn were no longer commissioned from Lübeck, but from Bruges. Even today we can admire St Mary's altar in St Nicholas Church, ordered by the Brotherhood of Blackheads for St Catherine's Church, the altar of Christ's Passion made in Adriaen Isenbrant's workshop, and the altar of the Holy Family by the Brussels workshop, which are among the few remaining examples of Catholic art from the churches of medieval Reval. A more extensive influence of the Netherlands on the whole of Northern Europe, and therefore also on these parts, occurred in the 16th-17th centuries. Before Holland's independence, the greatest impact came from the southern Netherlands (eg the tapestries in the Tallinn Town hall commissioned from Enghien), and beginning in the late 16th century from the northern parts (graphic art and the spread of panel painting). The earlier periods paid more attention to architectural forms and sculpture, whereas beginning in the 'Dutch Golden Age' in the 17th century, the role of painting and graphic art became increasingly important. Even in the 18th-19th centuries German artists, as well as the local Baltic German masters, were inspired by the manner of painting and compositional rhetoric of the 'little Dutch'. The influence of the Netherlands in the cultural space during the Swedish period in the 16th-17th centuries was relatively modest, but consistent. The mannerism of the Netherlands is a term without which it would be impossible to say anything about Estonian art history. Professional architecture starts with Arent Passer, a man from the Netherlands who in 1597 designed the façade of the house of the Brotherhood of Blackheads. For the first time in Tallinn, a medieval high building with a triangular gable was transformed into a modern and compact masterpiece. The front, with a streamlined gable, was enhanced by symbols and metaphors, and the simple practical façade became a refined Renaissance narrative.
	More than the buildings themselves, the mannerism of the Netherlands in Tallinn is reflected in the surviving window pillars, carved stone ornamentation, and stone reliefs. These architectural details in particular reveal the taste of the era. The formal rhetoric derives both from the masters of the Low Countries who settled here, and from various pattern books, the most influential of which were Hans Vredeman de Vries's and Cornelis Floris's works, which saw several reprints. Besides the Blackheads' House, the mannerist form is vividly expressed in Pontus De la Gardie's tombstone in Tallinn Cathedral church, designed by Arent Passer. The grandeur and plentiful details of the monument, dedicated to the memory of the great Swedish nobleman and his wife, are some of the most beautiful manifestations of late 16th century visual culture. The town palace type, which also came from the Netherlands, arrived via Sweden and Germany and became quite familiar in the local urban space. The most vivid examples may be the cubic form of the Tartu and Narva town halls. The box-like building with a high roof, low pilasters and few but precisely measured décor details was very popular in the whole of Northern Europe throughout the 17th century and until the end of the 18th century. Such town palaces were erected along the canals in Holland, but elsewhere they framed town squares.
	Besides the spatial realm, perhaps even more attention should be paid to the pictorial culture of the Low Countries. In the course of the twists and turns of history, the foreign art that has remained in Estonia largely consists of an extensive and fascinating collection from the Netherlands. Today's Museum of Foreign Art contains a hundred or so paintings and three hundred prints, most of which once belonged to the collections of Baltic German landowners. Art from the Low Countries was a highly desirable collectable because of its mentality, size and subject matter: it formed about half of all private collections in Estonia. The architectural impact of the Netherlands reached Estonia fairly quickly, whereas figurative art of the same time arrived in Livonia only a century or two later. What travelled relatively fast was the reproduced prints of famous masters (Rembrandt, Rubens), which local masters could take as examples while painting in the Tallinn Town Hall and Kadriorg Palace in the 17th- 18th centuries. Only a small number of works from the Netherlands remained in Estonia after so much was scattered around and sold during the first half of the 20th century. However, even these works provide an insight into the mentality and spirit of the art of the Low Countries in Estonia. For example, the 16th century masterpieces, Pieter Breughel the Younger's Marriage Procession and The Presentation of the Wedding Gifts, found abandoned in the Nõva manor house, are depictions of the life of the peasantry that were hugely popular in the golden age of Dutch art, but also in the 19th century, in the Düsseldorf school of painting. In addition, there are landscapes, still-lifes, hunting scenes, portraits, pictures of animals, to give but a few examples. On the one hand, the thematic division of 17th century Netherlands art reflects the demands of the art market at the time, and on the other hand, it reflects the existing values that admirably suited the way of thinking of 19th century Baltic German landowners. Whether in architectural or visual form, culture from the Netherlands managed to become familiar, both in the urban and rural environment, among merchants and landowners. Besides its quality, the value of the Dutch and Belgian art that was accepted in Estonia by different consumers of culture also lay in its diverse nature. No other cultural space that has influenced Estonia could offer quite as rich a choice - textile art, altars, architecture, interiors, applied art, painting, and graphic art. Mariann Raisma (1974), art historian, PhD student at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
	| Estonian Art 2/04 (15) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2004 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |