to and from Delft on the
Schie Canal, which ran southward to Schiedam and Rotterdam on the Rhine. Tied up at the quay in the foreground to the left
is a passenger barge. Built long and narrow in order to pass easily through canal locks, horse-drawn barges like this operated
on fixed schedules and linked Delft to cities and towns throughout southern Holland. Several people have gathered on the quay
near the barge. Their dress and demeanor suggest that they will take their places among the eight first-class passengers who
paid to sit in the cabin at the back of the barge, rather than jostle in among the twenty-five second-class passengers in
the front. A hint of breeze ruffles the water, but otherwise nothing is moving. On the other two sides of the harbor, all
the boats are tethered or out of commission. The only suggestions of restlessness are the jagged skyline of buildings and
the shadow cast by the huge cumulus cloud hanging at the top of the painting. But the overall effect is one of perfect tranquility
on a lovely day. There are other boats tethered around the Kolk: small cargo transports tied up beneath the Schiedam Gate,
and another four passenger barges tethered beside the Rotterdam Gate. The two I want to draw our attention to, however, are
the wide-bottomed vessels moored to each other at the right-hand side of the painting. This stretch of the quay in front of
the Rotterdam Gate was the site of the Delft shipyard. The back masts of these two vessels are missing, and their front masts
partially struck, which indicates that they are there for refitting or repair. These are herring buses, three-masted vessels
built to fish for herring in the North Sea. Here is another door to the seventeenth-century world, but it requires some explaining
to open.
If there is one overwhelming condition that shaped the history of the seventeenth century more than any other, it is global
cooling. During the century and a half between 1550 and 1700, temperatures fell all over the world, not continuously or consistently,
but they fell everywhere. In Northern Europe, the first really cold winter of what has come to be called the Little Ice Age
was the winter of 1564–65. In January 1565, the great painter of the common people of the Low Countries, Pieter Bruegel the
Elder, did his first winter landscape showing hunters in the snow and people playing on the ice. Bruegel may have thought
he was painting an anomaly that would not return, but it did. He painted several more winter scenes in the following years,
starting the fashion for winterscapes. Vermeer never painted skating scenes, but we know he went out in them, as he bought
an iceboat rigged with a sail from a Delft sail maker in 1660, for which he agreed to pay the considerable sum of eighty guilders.
His timing was not great, for the canals of Holland failed to freeze for the next two winters. Then the cold returned. Temperatures
elsewhere declined too. In China, heavy frosts between 1654 and 1676 killed orange and mandarin groves that had been producing
fruit for centuries. The world would not always be this cold, but this was the condition under which life was lived in the
seventeenth century.
Cold winters meant more than ice sailing. They meant shorter growing seasons and wetter soil, rising grain prices, and increasing
sickness. A fall in spring temperature of just half a degree centigrade delays planting by ten days, and a similar fall in
the autumn cuts another ten days off the harvest. In temperate climates, this could be disastrous. According to one theory,
cold weather could induce another evil consequence, plague. All over the world in the century from the 1570s to the 1660s,
plague stalked densely populated societies. Plague struck Amsterdam at least ten times between 1597 and 1664, on the last
occasion killing over twenty-four thousand people. Southern Europe was hit even harder. In one outbreak in 1576–77,
Schie Canal, which ran southward to Schiedam and Rotterdam on the Rhine. Tied up at the quay in the foreground to the left
is a passenger barge. Built long and narrow in order to pass easily through canal locks, horse-drawn barges like this operated
on fixed schedules and linked Delft to cities and towns throughout southern Holland. Several people have gathered on the quay
near the barge. Their dress and demeanor suggest that they will take their places among the eight first-class passengers who
paid to sit in the cabin at the back of the barge, rather than jostle in among the twenty-five second-class passengers in
the front. A hint of breeze ruffles the water, but otherwise nothing is moving. On the other two sides of the harbor, all
the boats are tethered or out of commission. The only suggestions of restlessness are the jagged skyline of buildings and
the shadow cast by the huge cumulus cloud hanging at the top of the painting. But the overall effect is one of perfect tranquility
on a lovely day. There are other boats tethered around the Kolk: small cargo transports tied up beneath the Schiedam Gate,
and another four passenger barges tethered beside the Rotterdam Gate. The two I want to draw our attention to, however, are
the wide-bottomed vessels moored to each other at the right-hand side of the painting. This stretch of the quay in front of
the Rotterdam Gate was the site of the Delft shipyard. The back masts of these two vessels are missing, and their front masts
partially struck, which indicates that they are there for refitting or repair. These are herring buses, three-masted vessels
built to fish for herring in the North Sea. Here is another door to the seventeenth-century world, but it requires some explaining
to open.
If there is one overwhelming condition that shaped the history of the seventeenth century more than any other, it is global
cooling. During the century and a half between 1550 and 1700, temperatures fell all over the world, not continuously or consistently,
but they fell everywhere. In Northern Europe, the first really cold winter of what has come to be called the Little Ice Age
was the winter of 1564–65. In January 1565, the great painter of the common people of the Low Countries, Pieter Bruegel the
Elder, did his first winter landscape showing hunters in the snow and people playing on the ice. Bruegel may have thought
he was painting an anomaly that would not return, but it did. He painted several more winter scenes in the following years,
starting the fashion for winterscapes. Vermeer never painted skating scenes, but we know he went out in them, as he bought
an iceboat rigged with a sail from a Delft sail maker in 1660, for which he agreed to pay the considerable sum of eighty guilders.
His timing was not great, for the canals of Holland failed to freeze for the next two winters. Then the cold returned. Temperatures
elsewhere declined too. In China, heavy frosts between 1654 and 1676 killed orange and mandarin groves that had been producing
fruit for centuries. The world would not always be this cold, but this was the condition under which life was lived in the
seventeenth century.
Cold winters meant more than ice sailing. They meant shorter growing seasons and wetter soil, rising grain prices, and increasing
sickness. A fall in spring temperature of just half a degree centigrade delays planting by ten days, and a similar fall in
the autumn cuts another ten days off the harvest. In temperate climates, this could be disastrous. According to one theory,
cold weather could induce another evil consequence, plague. All over the world in the century from the 1570s to the 1660s,
plague stalked densely populated societies. Plague struck Amsterdam at least ten times between 1597 and 1664, on the last
occasion killing over twenty-four thousand people. Southern Europe was hit even harder. In one outbreak in 1576–77,
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