Fabritius ripped off the frame so hurriedly that he left some of the nails in the panel. Then he fussed with the background, applying more white paint to simulate plaster. Uncertain if he would try a different frame, or leave the work unframed, he covered a good part of the exposed edge with white paint. Then, an idea came to him. He painted a wider semi-circular perch a few inches below the first one. Since this element was not a part of his original plan, he had not left a reserve for it on the panel, and had to paint over the box and the background, Then, the new element required its own set of shadows.
When Fabritius stepped back from the panel, he saw that the second perch was exactly what the painting needed to complete its trompe l’oeil effect. Suddenly, with its sides pronounced and outlined, the feeder stood out from the wall. If seen from below, the goldfinch, looked incredibly real and alert, as if it might actually spread its wings, leap off its perch, and take flight. Varnishing was the final step. When done, Fabritius was ready to sign his name at the bottom of the panel.
C. Fabritius 1654.
Chapter Six
It was a busy fall for Fabritius, who was preoccupied with thoughts of the goldfinch and Simon Decker’s portrait. But there was something else on his mind: it was almost time to pay off the debt he owed to The Target, the inn where he had run up the sizable food and drink tab of 110 guilders. The notion of coming up with that kind of money in a few weeks was so troublesome that Fabritius walked around in a fog, barely noticing the overgrown property near his house on the Doelenstraat.
In the previous century, the crumbling old cloister and its environs used to be the Clarissenklooster, a convent that was home to a contemplative order of nuns known as the “poor Clares.” These sainted women willingly withdrew from the world to live in poverty and silence, believing sacrifice would bring them closer to God — at least, most of them felt that way. Some rebellious (or unmarriageable) girls were banished to the nunnery by punitive parents, a common method of dealing with difficult daughters at the time.
The nuns were forced to abandon the Clarissenklooster during the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, a time when most Roman Catholic churches and institutions in the Netherlands were shuttered. The convent fell into disrepair and most people forgot about the old building and its grounds. In 1570 these very things were what made it a perfect location for a covert military operation called “The Secret of Holland.” At the height of the eighty-year war with Spain, the Dutch needed a safe place to store their large supply of gunpowder, along with all of the substances used to manufacture it. After some deliberation, officials selected Delft because it was close to The Hague, the seat of the country’s government, and a city protected by walls. The question was, should the ammunition be stored outside those walls, which would make it accessible to the enemy, or inside them, where it could be a hazard?
Ultimately, military strategists decided that the Doelenstraat cloister was their preferred location, and moved nearly 100,000 pounds of potent Dutch gunpowder into its underground dungeons and tunnels. When the war ended, the munitions stash became irrelevant and, by 1654, the “Secret of Holland” really was a secret. The only person who visited the powder magazine with any regularity was a low-level civil servant named Cornelis Soetens, who was the property’s new custodian. He was a little annoyed when his superiors informed him that a higher-up from The Hague was coming to Delft to obtain a large sample of gunpowder for testing. Since the Dutch Republic was again at war, this time with England, it made sense to evaluate the potency of munitions that had been stored in the arsenal for decades. But Soetens suspected they sent an emissary because they didn’t trust him to do the job properly himself.
On the morning of Monday, October 12, Soetens grudgingly showed up at the arsenal to meet the gentleman from The Hague and his helper. The timing was unfortunate from his point of view because most of the townspeople were at a fair in Schiedam, while he was stuck in Delft with these two. The men arrived, explaining that all they needed to do was take the gunpowder sample and transport it back the capitol. Soetens unlocked the door and motioned for the visitors to follow. Suddenly, the official hesitated. Remembering the messy mountains of black gunpowder stored below, he carefully removed his fashionable scarlet cloak, folded it neatly, and handed it to his companion, instructing him to wait outside. Then, he turned to descend the stairs.
Soetens, who was inexperienced and a little nervous in the presence of this well-dressed visitor, clutched a lantern in his hand. He should have left it outside the powder magazine but, stepping into the enveloping darkness, all he could think of was lighting a path for the superior walking behind him. He carried the flickering light in his hand — a small mistake with gigantic consequences.
In a few seconds, at approximately 11 am, something terrible happened. Perhaps Soetens stumbled and dropped the lantern, or a random spark took flight and landed in the wrong place. But, at the first touch of fire, the dormant gunpowder awakened from its long sleep, ignited, then exploded, ripping apart the earth with a thunderclap so loud it could be heard almost a hundred miles away on the remote island of Texel.
Fabritius’ house on the Doelenstraat was so close to the explosion’s epicenter that, simultaneous to the ear-shattering blast, a wave of sound slammed into him with the force of a deadly weapon. He was disoriented because he could feel it, but couldn’t hear it. His ear drums had blown, leaving him in deafening silence. Fragments of windows, walls, tiles from nearby roofs, and other debris flew into the room in a fast-moving cloud of hot, noxious smoke. Fabritius’ lungs burned with the few breaths he managed to take, and his clothes caught fire. He lost his balance because the house was swaying. No, it was collapsing! As the building went down, Fabritius fell with it. Canvases swirled around him, all his carefully-painted images now in flames. But not The Goldfinch. The powerful wind ripped the wooden panel off the wall and carried the little bird away into the darkness.
Delft had been struck by a disaster of catastrophic proportions, and its victims had no idea what hit them on that ordinary Monday morning. The gunpowder — the equivalent of sixteen tons of TNT — detonated underground, causing massive devastation throughout the city and its environs. Suddenly, it was hailing stone, wood, and glass. And the shrieking! Those who heard the ungodly sound emanating from the bowels of the earth would never forget it. Dirck van Bleyswijck, a fifteen-year-old who was living in Delft at the time, precociously penning a history of the city, was one of the lucky survivors. He described the explosion in detail in his journal. It was “like Hell had opened up its throat and was spewing her toxic breath over the entire world,” he wrote.
Although it was still morning when the city stopped shuddering, the sky was black as night, smothered by gigantic clouds of smoke, dust, and chalk. The only light came from the fires erupting everywhere. After the first shock, which had a paralyzing effect on the population, people slowly came to their senses, opening their eyes to a terrifying vista of carnage and annihilation. The houses and businesses in the northeast part of the city, especially along the Doelenstraat, were the first to be destroyed, but the damage extended throughout Delft. More than two hundred houses were blown to pieces; three hundred buildings lost their roofs; and windows were broken everywhere. The explosion tore a large hole in the roof of the Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church) and fractured the walls of the Oude Kerk (the Old Church). Both churches lost their precious glass windows. In fact, so much shattered glass moved through the air at such high speeds that it killed people two miles away.
The gunpowder depot was gone, and in its place was a giant crater, sixteen feet deep and filled with vile, steaming black water. Many trees were uprooted, others burned. The Mayor’s estate, with all its beautiful foliage, was almost leveled. In a matter of minutes, the jewel-like city of Delft had been transformed into an apocalyptic nightmare, a vision of Hell.
The damage to property was shocking to see. But the human wreckage was even more horrific. Cornelis Soetens and his visitors f
rom The Hague, including the servant dutifully waiting outside with the scarlet cloak, disappeared without a trace. The smoldering cloud of fire, and the gale force winds it unleashed, carried human remains — including heads and limbs separated from their bodies — and scattered them throughout the city. “Whole streets with their inhabitants, whole schools with their pupils, lay buried beneath the ruins,” one distraught observer wrote. The artist Egbert van der Poel, who was not at his house on the Doelenstraat when the explosion hit, was frantic about the fate of his family. He raced home, passing one nightmarish sight after another on the chaotic streets, to find that his house was demolished and his young daughter had been killed by the blast. Similar, agonizing discoveries were taking place all over town.
Rescue teams formed quickly, but the volunteers were too overwhelmed by the enormity of the undertaking to make much progress. “How could men begin?” Van Bleyswijck asked. The search for survivors had to be conducted building by building, beam by beam, with bare fists doing all the work. The bodies of twenty children were found under the wreckage of two schools, while a collapsed clothing factory claimed the lives of twenty-two weavers, who died at their looms. Their bodies had to be collected and prepared for immediate burial, lest the dreaded Plague move in to claim even more lives.
Poor Fabritius was found in the smoldering wasteland that the Doelenstraat had become. When his house collapsed, he and Matthias Spoors, Simon Decker, his mother-in-law, Judick van Pruyssen, and one of his brothers, or a brother-in-law, were buried under the rubble, and it was six or seven hours before they were found. Straining rescuers pulled them out one by one, but the news was grim. Of the five, “Fabritius alone had a little life in him” wrote Van Bleyswijck. The artist’s injuries were very serious. He was rushed to the Old Hospital, where surgeons did everything in their power to help him, but their efforts were in vain. “After about a quarter of an hour his oppressed soul left the terribly bruised body, which was not more than 30 years old,” Van Bleyswijck reported. Two days later, on October 14, Fabritius was buried at the Old Church.
Had the adventurous artist chosen to live in a more conventional part of the city, as did Vermeer, he might have survived the Thunderclap.
The shaken townspeople continued to work day and night, searching for survivors, burying their dead, and heroically attempting to restore order to their devastated community. Medical help poured in from The Hague and Rotterdam to care for the injured, while other workers tried to keep an inventory of the victims. Eventually, they gave up, because it was impossible to identify so many of the bodies. Estimates varied widely, placing the casualties anywhere between one hundred and one thousand. Though the number was not enormous, it was a tragedy that affected every family. Had it not been for the fair in Schiedam, the toll would have been worse.
Thankfully, in the midst of so much carnage, there were also miraculous rescues and many survivors who emerged from the ruins, “as if rising from the dead.”13 An eighty-year-old man who lay buried beneath his house for over thirty-six hours was pulled out unharmed. An elderly woman who spent four long days under rubble timidly asked her saviors, “Is, then, the world not yet come to an end?” A maid who worked at the militia hall was lifted out from under a pile of stones a full fifteen days after the disaster, and eyewitnesses reported that, instead of being grateful, she was “miserable from having been buried.” Twins were found sleeping peacefully in their cradle, protected by the body of their dead mother.
Everyone’s favorite story — the one that would be talked about for as long as anyone spoke of the Delft Thunderclap, or the “Donderslag,” as it was called, involved the dramatic rescue of a toddler. An adorable fifteen-month-old girl was found in the wreckage of her home, sitting in her high chair, happily clutching an apple. “She thanked her rescuers with a friendly laugh,” eyewitnesses reported, and didn’t start to cry until after she was saved.
The brave citizens of Delft rose to the occasion and focused on recovery. According to Van Bleyswijck, “they could not look at what had happened without having their hearts melt … because it was such a horrible spectacle.” People were moved to help each other and collected money from both the rich and the poor for the victims. A group of wealthy merchants philanthropically bought a large supply of roof tiles and distributed them to the needy free of charge. The government created a fund of 100,000 guilders to distribute among homeowners whose houses had sustained damage. Moreover, these unfortunates would be exempt from paying taxes for the next twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the town fathers came up with a plan to rebuild the city. It would take some time to execute, but it confirmed that Delft would have a future.
News of the Thunderclap spread throughout the world, and the story was so momentous that writers and artists were inspired to memorialize it. A tabloid who-what-where pamphlet was rushed into publication to satisfy voyeuristic readers desperate for quick-breaking news about the disaster. Jan Philipsz Schabaelje’s Historical Account of the strange and dreadful explosion of the Magazine-House offered a colorful, sensationalized account, short on facts and long on drama. The story counted “the famous painter,” Fabritius, as one of the dead.
Joost van den Vondel, the country’s most important poet and playwright, composed a poem, essentially a eulogy, about the tragedy. The “angry capital weeps,” he wrote, because the gunpowder arsenal that was meant to protect Holland turned out to be “the nation’s enemy.” He described Delft as a mass grave, with “waves of glowing ashes and human flesh covered in glass.”
Fine artists approached the subject as documentarians, using their diverse skills to create compelling — and in some cases, highly personal — images of the Thunderclap and its aftermath. Daniel Vosmaer, Fabritius’ friend and collaborator, painted the scene as it looked on that morning. He transformed the normally picturesque Delft skyline into a wasteland, blighted by demolished buildings and blackened trees. In the foreground, concerned townspeople gathered around a body while, off to the side, a man stood alone, contemplating the disaster. Vosmaer’s prominent placement of the spires of the Old Church and the New Church in the picture suggested that he believed God was still watching over Delft, despite the recent catastrophe. On October 29, the artist Herman Saftleven captured the scene in a panoramic, finely etched drawing, complete with notes highlighting the locations of points of interest, such as the crater filled with water. His etching resembled the broadsheets, or one-page newspapers, that were so popular at the time.
The most powerful representations of the Thunderclap were painted by Egbert van der Poel. He was so devastated by the death of his daughter, who was buried on the same day as his friend Fabritius, that he used his art as a form of therapy. Before the explosion, Van der Poel specialized in middling landscapes and genre paintings, generally presenting quotidian scenes of life on a farm or other bucolic settings. After October 12, however, he focused on one subject: the fateful explosion that changed everything.
Van der Poel recreated scenes he’d observed with his own eyes — the blast, with its thunderous flash of fire and light; people running frantically to find safety, holding their hands over their ears to block the terrifying sound; blazing buildings against a smoky sky; the charred landscape strewn with prostrate bodies. As he relived these painful memories, he painted them on panels of wood, enabling others to experience what he had seen. Though he did so for years to come, each work bore the same date — October 12, 1654 — as if the artist were frozen in time. Detractors accused Van der Poel of capitalizing on the public’s ongoing interest in a gruesome subject. However, the grieving father had a more personal motive for obsessively revisiting the tragedy. With familiarity, the images might lose their power over him. Perhaps he also hoped, albeit futilely, that the next time he could paint a different outcome to the story.
Chapter Seven
Fabritius’ dramatic death in the Thunderclap turned him into a local celebrity, and collectors happily discovered that his paintings increased in value following
his spectacular demise. His oeuvre was larger than it seemed. While Fabritius was laboring over View in Delft, The Sentry, and The Goldfinch, his signature works of 1654, he was also quietly producing and selling landscapes, tronies, wall installations, and other works. The best indication of the robust market for Fabritius in Delft can be found in death inventories filed between December 1654 (only two months after the explosion) and December 1777. His paintings turned up on many of those lists.
To name a few: Catharina Scharken’s estate contained a self-portrait by Fabritius. The artist Pierter Lenndrsz van der Vin, who died young and bankrupt, had held onto his Fabritius portrait, and it was valued at 45 guilders, a high price at the time. Similarly, a portrait Fabritius painted for the linen merchant Justus de la Grange was worth 40 guilders. Maria Duijnevelt, the widow of a brewery owner, sold the family business, but stipulated as a condition of sale that she be permitted to remove a wall painting by Fabritius; she was so determined to walk away with the mural that she volunteered to pay for any damages to the premises. Abraham de Potter II, the son of Fabritius’ benefactor, had a heated legal battle with Daniel Vosmaer because he mistakenly thought he owned an interest in the large work the three artists painted for the Town Hall. There was a sense, in Delft at least, that Fabritius was on the rise, albeit posthumously.
Fabritius’ paintings may have been doing well, but his widow was not. Agatha was in the throes of a financial crisis. Her husband died as he had lived — in debt — and she had to assume responsibility for his bills. Creditors emerged, including one who demanded immediate repayment of the 100 guilders he claimed to have given Fabritius. Agatha had no choice but to borrow 1200 guilders, a considerable amount of money, from her sister, Maria. Despite such troubles, she held her head proudly, insisting that Fabritius had been “painter to his Highness the Prince of Orange” in his day. Eventually, she left Delft to start a new life elsewhere. Evidence of her since that time has vanished.
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