The commission called on Frederick de Houtman (1571–1627), the former VOC governor of Ambon, to order “a skillful map” ( eene bequame karte) “made of the island, the fortresses and the villages, with a perfect scale and compass orientation.” The work sheds crucial light on the VOC directors’ aesthetic prerogatives and the value ascribed to authentic, accurate, and “perfect” ( perfecte) representations of the VOC’s overseas operations. Its production and early reception are remarkably and unusually well documented in the VOC archives in The Hague. View of Ambon is the earliest recorded VOC-commissioned painting. For more than a century, this View of Ambon hung prominently beside the hearth in the Great Hall of Amsterdam’s Dutch East India House, commemorating the VOC’s 1605 victory over the Portuguese at Ambon and its first major overseas territorial acquisition. Ambon, one of hundreds of so-called Spice Islands in the South Pacific, is shown from above in the painting, blown up to monumental proportions and rendered with remarkable cartographic accuracy. View of Ambon offered the VOC directors based in Amsterdam an all-encompassing, bird’s-eye view of newly conquered commercial territory. Dutch trade in such treasures as Chinese porcelain and silk, Japanese lacquerware, Indian pepper, and Ambonese cloves both fed and fueled European interests in all manner of exotica. For nearly two centuries (1602–1800), the commercial, military, and diplomatic enterprises of the VOC, the world’s first joint-stock global trading company, would yield access to luxury Asian commodities in abundance. 1617), for the Great Hall of their Amsterdam headquarters, the Dutch East India House ( fig. In 1617, the directors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) commissioned a large-scale oil painting, presently known as View of Ambon (ca. SK-A-4482 (artwork in the public domain)
1 Anonymous (attributed to David de Meyne), View of Ambon (Gezicht op Ambon), ca.
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