Page 21 - Nicolaes Witsen & Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

Figure 1.3. Title page of Cornelis Van Yk’s De Nederlandsche Scheeps- Bouw-Konst Open Gestelt (1697).
The allegorical figure Shipbuilding opens a curtain to reveal activities at a shipyard. Below, a ship is being launched in the Dutch way: bow first.
main source for technical information on shipbuilding and later became the curator of Witsen’s extensive collection of rare objects and books.
Witsen was a c ompetent draftsman, and the f act the he produced all the il lustrations for hi s book himself shows that he defi nitely knew hi s subject, even though inconsistencies in both text and drawings are a character- istic feature of his tr eatise. Furthermore, he was seldom hindered by obstacles such as copyright, taking much of
his text and dr awings directly from the work s of Oliveira, Furttenbach, Dudley, Crescentio, and Hayward without ac- knowledgment. Today we shudder at the thought of such plagiarism, but at that time it was common practice.5
Witsen and Van Yk
Witsen’s treatise has often been compared with that of the Delfshaven shipbuilder C ornelis Van Yk, who pub lished his treatise on shipbuilding in 1697, a quar ter century
Introduction
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