Real-Life History

- In "The Miniaturist" we see Petronella's doll's house, and there are really only five surviving doll's houses from the 17th-century in the Dutch Golden Age, and here in our galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts we have a piece that evokes what those doll's houses might have looked like.

All of the pieces inside of it are from the 17th- and 18th-century.

I thought I'd start by looking at the entry hall, this central room, because it's this transition period between the exterior, the public life, and the private interior life of the home.

In "The Miniaturist" we see much of the action, much of the drama taking place in this kind of limbo space.

It's the place where you would have wanted to show your wealth, because all of your visitors would come and go by that space.

We see this beautiful marble floor, there's a painted ceiling to look like the sky, and tucked at the back, the blue and white porcelain, that's Chinese.

It's Kangxi porcelain and it would have been imported from China by the Dutch East India Company.

- [Male Character] The guilds have a monopoly on trade and set the prices.

- [Courtney Harris] In this period in the 17th-century there was a huge influx of wealth coming from the increased trade, and the Netherlands was really the center for trade for much of the rest of Europe.

So, people were starting to rise to a new class, a merchant class.

Showing your wealth was a way of showing that you had arrived in society.

-I see you are working your usual magic this evening.

-And a way in which they could express their wealth was by either, for men, collecting art particularly, or books; and for women, the way in which they could show their collecting and use their wealth was to have something like a doll's house.

- You cannot hold wealth, Nella.

It's like the sea, try to hold onto it too tightly and it'll slip through your fingers like water.

- We see Petronella and her family leading a very different life publicly than they lead privately, and that was something that would've been common in the Dutch Golden Age, where the kind of Calvinist religious sympathies would've made someone lead a sober life but at home you would've had other opportunities in which to lead a more opulent and extravagant life.

While you might not have been able to furnish your home richly and lavishly, you could furnish your miniature home in that way.

These doll's houses are very much tied to women.

They are not for children, they were not toys.

We think of them more as truly collector's pieces at this point, and someone like Petronella Oortman, who received it as a gift upon her marriage, that's very common.

Almost all of the surviving doll's houses in the Netherlands today are tied to a marriage.

- [Man] A wedding gift.

For you.

- [Harris] When we see Petronella's doll's house arrive, we see that it's actually a piece of furniture up on legs, so that the rooms are at eye level, all the better for viewing and for manipulating the figures within and the pieces within, and it also has doors on it so that you would've had this moment when you would've opened them up and revealed the interior to your guests, who might've come specifically to see it.

While women in the Dutch Golden Age might not have had much agency outside of the home, the doll's house was a place in which they could have dominion over it.

It was like a miniature home that they would control, they would commission pieces for it.

They could take ownership of something.

It was a way that they could work with craftsmen, go to shops, furnish these homes with a wide range of materials.

In our doll's house here, most of the pieces are silver.

That would've been the highest example of wealth, but there are also pieces in porcelain, paintings, pen and ink drawings, a wide range of materials.

This room here is the best room or salon and we can tell at a glance that it's meant to be one of the spaces for receiving visitors.

We have this beautiful marquetry inlaid floor and the walls are covered in fabric as well.

And, again, we have a painted ceiling here with birds.

This room would've been for receiving guests, you might have dined there, and here we have it set up as though it's a kind of music or a gaming room.

We have a virginal here and a keyboard instrument on the table, there's a viola da gamba and a trumpet, and then on the wall, a number of pen and ink drawings, some of seascapes.

A doll's house like you would see in "The Miniaturist" would have been incredibly valuable, and we know this because we have a first-hand account from 1718.

Petronella Oortman's doll's house, the one now in the Rijksmuseum, had descended to her daughter and was available for visitors to visit in Amsterdam.

We have someone who visits from Germany who actually writes in his journal that it would've cost twenty to thirty thousand guilders, which would be the equivalent of a fully furnished canal home of the period.

- [Female] A family could live on that for years.

If you had money to spare you should've given it to the church.

- Enough of your piety.

- Another symbol of wealth in the 17th-century would be having white, clean, well-pressed linens.

It meant that you had the money to pay someone to take care of your linens for you, likely meant that you could pay to have them go out of the home, or that you had a servant specially dedicated to caring for your linens, and that's why there's an entire room dedicated to that.

We have an iron here on the table, and then against the wall a small linen press, so I think the fact that there are surviving silver miniatures related to linens is a symbol of how important linens were to the household.

This doll's house has two kitchens in it.

I'm going to focus on this kitchen.

It's called the display kitchen, and it wouldn't have actually been used by the servants or for any practical purpose.

It's really, again, about showing your wealth.

- [Man] The world in a set of plates.

- [Harris] One of my favorite pieces in the entire doll's house is here in the front.

It's a wicker basket, it's actually made in a technique of silver called wirework.

It's very thin strands of silver that have been woven together to make the impression of wicker.

Here in the top left corner we can see a small bird's cage with a bird inside of it and Peebo features prominently in "The Miniaturist" and he's often relegated to the kitchen as I guess this bird was as well.

- Hello.

- You can also see just the wide range of different shapes and sizes for silver.

We know quite a lot about these silver pieces because when a maker creates a piece of silver, they mark it with a symbol that identifies it as theirs, and they also put something that identifies the year that it was made and the city that it was made.

We know that the pieces within this doll's house were made in over five different cities within Holland and by more than 25 makers.

As an art historian, that type of information is hugely valuable, and the fact that it's miniature is all the better.