Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
make the carillonneur's job easier, plus player-piano mechanisms
to automate the playing.
Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach—all of whom lived dur-
ing the carillon's heyday—wrote Baroque music that sounds beau-
tiful on bells.
Sit down and pound your fists on the keys (that's why they're
there). Hitting the red-marked keys, play a chromatic scale (suc-
cessive keys) as fast as you can. Hit 'em hard. Try to pound out
“Louie Louie” (Hint: The notes are “C,” “F,” and “G”). Then push
the buttons on the walls to hear recordings of actual Amsterdam
carillons in action—and imagine the fists flying.
• Cross the skybridge (over the Civic Guard's Gallery) into Room 11,
where you'll find...
Rembrandt's
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deijman
His famous
Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp
(1632) put young Rembrandt
on Amsterdam's artistic map two decades earlier. Now, in 1656,
Rembrandt returned to the dissection room for another anatomy
lesson—this time from Dr. Jan Deijman.
A fire in 1732 damaged this group portrait, incinerating the
surrounding spectators and leaving us with just the stars of the
scene —Dr. Deijma n a nd t he
corpse. The body of this recently
hanged thief (“Black Jack”
Fonteijn) was donated to the sur-
gery theater in the Waag (today's
Red Light District), where Dr. D.
held a dissecting demonstration
for med students and the pay-
ing public. Rembrandt attended,
sketch pad in hand.
The corpse's feet are right in our face (similar to Mantegna's
famous
Dead Christ
), a masterpiece of foreshortening. We stare
into the gaping hole of his disemboweled stomach. The doctor (his
head was burned off in the fire) does the work, opening the head
and exposing the brain, while the assistant looks on calmly, hand
on hip.
• Enjoy the rest of the paintings here. Return to Room 10, pass directly
through it, and continue through Rooms 12-16 until you reach Room
17. Hop on the bike—that's what it's for—and take a ride through
Amsterdam in the 1920s. The next few rooms, “Modern City,” give you
a sense of...
Rooms 17-21: 20th-Century Sociology
Room 19 shows housing in contemporary Amsterdam. Many
residents are crammed into small apartments, either in historic
