BRINGING HOME THE EXOTIC:
Cornelis de Bruyn
Voyages de Corneille Le Brun
(1718)
Cornelis de Bruyn (also spelled de Bruijn) was born in The Hague just as the Dutch Republic began to
descend from its peak as Europe’s mercantile and visual arts center. He studied with noted civic painter
Theodoor van der Schuer and could have followed in the footsteps of countrymen Rembrandt and
Vermeer. But de Bruyn wished to use his talents for a different purpose: documenting a world that,
under modernization and industrialization, was rapidly vanishing.
During the artist’s youth, the Dutch Republic enjoyed a lengthy peace under de-factor Stadtholder
Johan de Witt, but in 1672 Louis XIV of France attacked, provoking a wave of mob violence that
included an attempted assassination of de Witt by a man named Cornelis de Bruyn. Unsurprisingly,
the coincidentally named artist found this a good time to leave town. At the age of 22, he departed on a
journey that would eventually take him from Vienna to Rome and on to Smyrna, Constantinople, Egypt,
Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey. Everywhere he went de Bruyn documented the scenes around
him, especially places of antiquity or historic interest, from the pyramids to the Holy Sepulchre. “I want
to offer accurate pictures of those cities, towns, and buildings that I have visited,” he wrote, “and without
recklessness I can claim to have done something that no one has done before.”
After an eight-year stay in Venice, he returned to The Hague in 1693 to publish his first book, Travels in
the Principal Parts of Asia Minor, featuring 200 of his detailed renderings of historic places. De Bruyn
was acclaimed a master artist, even receiving the unusual privilege of copyright, and was inducted into the
group now called the Dutch Royal Academy of Art.
Around 1700, de Bruyn befriended Nicolaes Witsen, burgomeister of Amsterdam and a director of the
VOC with contacts and scholarly interests around the world. At Witsen’s instigation, the artist departed
on his second voyage, eventually to be described in
Travels Into Moscovy, Persia, and the East Indies.
Unlike his earlier destinations, all three of these lands already had significant Dutch political and business
influence.
Moscow boasted a thriving Dutch quarter when de Bruyn arrived in 1702, one of the many western
European sources on which Peter the Great was modeling the modernization of Russian society. By
painting the portraits of various imperial family members and other persons of note in both traditional
and modernized clothing, de Bruyn preserved images of what was being lost while confirming to the
outside world Peter’s quest to make Russia a modern power. He also made influential anthropological
observations and drawings of the Samoyede culture.
The centerpiece of his voyage was three months among the ruins of Persepolis, where he anticipated later
archaeologists by identifying them as the capital of the ancient Achaemenid Empire. This level of insight
was owed to de Bruyn’s comparatively objective approach to his subjects. He was also unusually willing
to relate history and anecdote as the locals told it to him (although in both Russia and Persia he showed a
Calvinist’s disdain for extensive ritual). Because of their objectivity and exactness, de Bruyn’s drawings of
Persepolis remained the primary source for Western historians up to the advent of photography.
In 1706 de Bruyn moved on to Dutch-run Java, where the First Javanese War of Succession and an
economic revolution caused by the introduction of coffee largely prevented him from investigating
cultural artifacts. Instead he turned his pen to the local fauna such as the kangaroo-like dusky
pademelon, now scientifically named Thylogale Brunii in his honor. De Bruyn fell ill after about six
months in Java and because of international unrest had to travel home by a long route back through
Persia, Russia, and Poland. One leg of the trip shipwrecked him along the Volga; later his luggage was
misdirected.
Travels Into Muscovy...
outdid its predecessor with more than 300 illustrations and was translated into
several languages (including our French version). However, it was much less commercially successful,
and de Bruyn, confined to Holland by illness, would die in poverty as his country’s Golden Age ended.
Nevertheless, his drawings of traditions and innovations in Russia, important ruins in Persia, and wildlife
in Indonesia made him a valued resource and a popular read for years to come.
Further Reading:
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