2.1 Stone’s Training in London and Amsterdam
The case in question is that of the Stone family of London and their relations, the De Keyser family of Amsterdam. The story begins with the birth of Nicholas Stone I in the late 1580’s.1 Stone was to emerge as the leading English stone and marble sculptor and the country’s leading master mason in the second decade of the 17th century, and he maintained this position up to the outbreak of the English Civil Wars in 1642 [1].
Stone was born in Devon, in the west of England. According to George Vertue, the 18th century antiquary, his father was a ‘quarry man’, that is a stone mason who owned his own quarry from which the stone which he worked was taken.2 He probably learnt the basic elements of his trade from his father. That would certainly have included instruction in building; whether it included any training in sculpture is unclear. Very likely not, for the next thing we know about him is that he went to London and was apprenticed to a sculptor named Isaac James (living 1600; last recorded 1624-1625). With James, he served a two-year apprenticeship and worked for a further year as a journeyman, or workshop assistant.3 James appears to have been of Dutch descent, for he is said on good authority to have had a forbear called James van Hawstert whose name was corrupted from the Dutch town of Haastrecht, near Gouda. He was an important sculptor who by the year 1600 had established himself in the parish of St Martin in the Fields in the City of Westminster, immediately to the west of the City of London and close to the court at Whitehall Palace.4 His masterpiece is the monument to Henry, Lord Norris and his six sons in Westminster Abbey [2]. Norris had fought in the Dutch wars. So had all his sons and the monument is a kind of celebration of the family’s military achievements with the male effigies in armour and a pair of military reliefs on the top stage of the canopy, front and back [3]. Though highly stylised and not at all realistic, with effigies in Roman armour, the reliefs are clearly intended to represent, in a semi-symbolic way, the English and the Dutch fighting the Spaniards in the Dutch War of Independence.
We do not know for certain which years Stone spent in James’s workshop but it is likely that they were the years 1604-1607. In the latter year, 1607 Hendrick de Keyser I (1565-1621), Master Sculptor and Mason to the City of Amsterdam, was sent by the City Council to investigate the Royal Exchange in the City of London as a possible model for a new exchange in Amsterdam that the Council intended to erect.5 De Keyser was already eminent in his profession and by the time of his death in 1621 he had become one of the leading sculptors and architects in northern Europe [4]. The project with which he had been entrusted was of great importance to Amsterdam. It was to result in the Amsterdam Beurs, one of De Keyser’s major works which was completed in 1611 and regrettably demolished in the 19th century [5]. The building in London which he had been sent to investigate as a possible model for it was by no means an entirely home-grown product. Unlike the Amsterdam exchange, it was a piece of private enterprise rather than a civic project, having been erected by the merchant Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579) in the second half of the 1560’s. Gresham employed a Flemish master mason, Hendryck van Paesschen, who used materials which were partly, if not entirely imported from his native land.6 His exchange was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 but engravings of it were made which show its influence on De Keyser’s work [6].
1
Thomas Chambars
Portrait of Nicholas Stone Sr and Nicholas Stone Jr
London (England), National Portrait Gallery, inv./cat.nr. NPG D28067
2
Monument to Henry, Lord Norris and his family, c.1611 by Isaac James
Engraving by James Cole from John Dart, Westmonasterium or the History and Antiquities of the Abbey Church of St Peter’s Westminster, 1723-1742
3
Norris monument. Detail of one of the military reliefs on the canopy
Reproduced by courtesy of Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey
4
Jonas Suyderhoef after Thomas de Keyser
Portrait of Hendrik de Keyser I (1565-1621), in or shortly after 1621
The Hague, RKD – Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis (Collectie Iconografisch Bureau)
5
Emanuel de Witte
The courtyard of the Beurs in Amsterdam, dated 1653
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv./cat.nr. VDV 91
De Keyser must have seen Gresham’s Exchange, but who did he meet and who did he discuss it with? It would seem likely that he came to London supplied with introductions to the leading sculptors and master masons working there of whom Isaac James, Nicholas Stone’s master was one.
The next thing we know for certain is that on 25th April 1613, Stone was in Amsterdam and applied for a licence to marry Mayken, De Keyser’s daughter.7 Relations had evidently blossomed between the two families. The couple were married three weeks later, on 14th May in the Nieuwe Kerk and in the same year they left for England.8 They settled in the parish of St Martin in the Fields where they became neighbours of Isaac James9 and they remained there for the rest of their lives. Her name was anglicised as Maria or Marie in the English records.10
6
attributed to Frans Hogenberg
The Royal Exchange, London, c. 1569
London (England), British Museum, inv./cat.nr. 1880,1113.3671
Notes
1 White 1999, p. 118-119 and p. 128, note 1. The date of Stone’s birth is uncertain and could be 1586, 1587 or 1588.
2 Vertue I, p. 92. In the church of St Peter and St Giles, Sidbury, Devon, there is a memorial to one John Stone, freemason (died 1618) who may have been Stone’s father.
3 This according to Stone’s own statement in his Notebook (Spiers 1918-1919, p. 38).
4 White 1999, p. 61.
5 White 1999, p. 118-119 and p. 128, note 5.
6 Saunders 1997, particularly p. 37-41. For Gresham’s portrait by Anthonio Moro, see RKDimages 23975.
7 Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsarchief, Register of notices of marriage, part 417, Period 1613-1614, Amsterdam, archive 5001, inventory number 417, April 25, 1613, Ondertrouwregister, folio p. 100.
8 Weissman, p. 156; Spiers 1918-1919, p. 3.
9 White 1999, p. 61, 118-119.
10 The second of these spellings is given in the will of the Dutch stone merchant Elizabeth Vandesteene in which Marie Stone is mentioned as one of the witnesses (National Archives, London, TNA, PROB 11/175/47).