Trade in Good Taste: Relations in Architecture and Culture between the Dutch Republic andthe Baltic World in the Seventeenth Century by Badeloch NoldusReview by: Erik ThomsonThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), pp. 1097-1098Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20478144 .

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Book Reviews 1097

defenses and bought additional time to await the arrival of the Spanish relief force. Had the Turks concentrated their attack on these places first and bypassed Fort St. Elmo, the defend ers would have most certainly succumbed to the punishing bombardment and superior manpower of the Turks. This is the view of Balbi and many other commentators.

Balbi also employs similar literary conventions in his depiction of LaValette, the grand master of the Knights, who appears as the embodiment of the Christian hero. Such license only serves to highlight his superb leadership during the siege. But Balbi does not simply extol the brave Knights; his account shows the tremendous contribution of the Maltese peo ple to the defense of the island. Without their assistance, Malta would have certainly fallen before help arrived. Although this is a reprint, this new paperback edition will serve as a use ful primary source for undergraduates as well as for scholars who may be unacquainted with Bradford's earlier work.

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Trade in Good Taste: Relations in Architecture and Culture between the Dutch Republic and the Baltic World in the Seventeenth Century. Badeloch Noldus. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. xii + 219 pp.E75.00. ISBN 2-503-51489-8.

REVIEWED BY: Erik Thomson, Society of Fellows, University of Chicago

Most early modern historians would not associate the words "good taste" with the Swedish empire, but sooner think of "military revolution" or even "systematic brutality."Yet at the same time that Sweden's rulers ordered armies to pillage and kill, they sought to create an imperial culture worthy of the kingdom's new status; just as the Swedes enlisted Dutch experts and experience to forge cannon, charter companies, and control troops, they drew upon Dutch architects, styles, and even materials to fashion their imperial style.

Badeloch Noldus's Trade in Good Taste is the first monographic study of the architectural relations between the Dutch Republic and the Swedish empire, a more accurate geographic description than the "Baltic world" of the subtitle. Her work is firmiy grounded in a wide range of primary sources, ranging from printed travel diaries and architectural and agricul tural treatises, to archival sources such as diplomatic letters, accounts, and the records of guilds. Without neglecting style, she places architectural relations in broader contexts. Archi tects or master builders are not absent, but patrons and agents drive the exchange.

Noldus sees architectural ties as not only rooted in political and commercial relations, but also encouraged by a shared cultural mode, the exact quality of which she never explic itly articulates. The existence of a shared style might seem surprising, given that the Dutch Republic was a rich, mercantile republic, where Sweden was a poor, noble kingdom. Yet when she compares the view of architecture in the Swedish nobleman Schering Rosenhane's mid-seventeenth-century Oeconomia with that articulated by Constantijn Huygens, she obliquely, yet successfully, suggests that both sought to express their new wealth and power in a manner informed by a shared Protestant reading of classical, Vitruvian ideals.

Dutch immigrants to Sweden were vital architectural patrons, bringing ideas of style, master builders and other craftsmen, and building material to work on their projects. Noldus's chapter on the influence of Dutch immigrants is dominated by the great arms mer chant Louis de Geer. She painstakingly uses Geer's accounts to rewrite the history of his building projects, occasionally obscuring her argument in the details needed to attribute the design of Geer's house in Stockholm.Yet Geer's building history is not merely of antiquarian interest, for the details allow her to demonstrate how the cannon merchant influenced

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1098 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVII/4 (2006)

Swedish building styles. In a strong chapter, Noldus explores the role of Swedish agents as cultural intermedi

aries in the Dutch Republic. Noldus, like most historians of early modern Sweden, has ben efited tremendously from Arne Losman's classic study of the Swedish general Carl Gustaf

Wrangel's European agents, but by concentrating on the cultural roles of agents based in the Low Countries she demonstrates how important "good taste" was to the careers of even the most prominent diplomats. Most Swedish ambassadors, emissaries, or factors based in the Netherlands, performed a wide variety of cultural tasks; Swedish patrons expected the same person to negotiate with the States General, to provide political and commercial news, to procure munitions, to sell copper, and to have privileged access to artistic circles.

Many agents more than answered these expectations. For example, Peter Spierinck took over the direction of his family's workshop which produced narrative tapestries in Delft, becoming an art dealer and the principal patron of Gerrit Dou, among other artists. Meanwhile, Spierinck organized Sweden's brutally efficient system of Baltic war tolls, audited Geer's Swedish accounts, reorganized the Delaware company, and served as Swedish Resident. The same people who created the institutions that permitted Swedish expansion often also exploited artistic knowledge and connections to assist the crown and other patrons to fashion a new imperial style.

Swedes' taste was also formed by their travels and reading. Noldus analyzes travelers' journals and letters to suggest how travels shaped noble architectural taste, and library cata logues and architectural plans to see how books contributed to Swedish architectural prac tice. The chapter concludes with an excursus on gardeners in Sweden, which, though it shows Dutch influence, also reveals the increasing prominence of French models from the middle of the seventeenth century.

The switch from Dutch to French definitions of "good taste" affected more than gar dens, a switch Noldus ties to the establishment of absolutism in 1680, the Reduction's effects on noble income, and even the decline of the Amsterdam market. Perhaps the switch to French and Roman style, however, also reflects a significant shift in Swedish notions of nobility and courtliness; the experience of empire might have weakened the exemplary function of the Dutch Republic and eroded the attractiveness of a style of display based on decorous restraint.

This book can serve to introduce a cultural world to English readers who otherwise have few options. There are a few slips: Schering Rosenhane was most certainly influenced by his friend Diego Saavedra Fajardo's Idea de un principe politico christiano (1640), but did not write it (20); and the Swedes conquered Riga in 1621, not 1561, the year when Reval placed itself under Erik XIV's protection (47). Historians of art and architecture will appre ciate the precision with which Noldus has documented the transmission of style. However, even historians interested only in the most brutal aspects of state building should consider what Noldus reveals about the Swedes' consequent refinement through Dutch models of "good taste," for Swedish statesmen and Dutch arms dealers drew upon Dutch examples in similar manners-whether they were building houses or the Swedish state.

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