8. Rue Royale, Brussels - 10 Sept 1900 | Glass Plates
It is a Monday morning in the summer of 1900; crowds wander down Brussels’s royal thoroughfare, horse-drawn trams glide along the centre of the street, and a tourist sets up his camera. The above photo looks south down the Rue Royale into the Place Royale, a Neoclassical square bordering the Royal Palace of Brussels.
In the foreground of the photo, dwarfed by one of the ornate lampposts lining the street, is a boy strolling along and glancing off at something to the left of frame. There are two gentlemen in the centre of the frame; one carrying a wicker basket, and the other staring down at the cobbles as he walks. To the right of frame, with a little dog trotting ahead of them, are a group of stylish ladies who appear to be chatting as they approach the camera.
Hazy on the distant skyline is the dominating dome of the Palace of Justice, demonstrating the architect’s intention of building a constant reminder of the power and presence of the law courts in the capital.
This glass plate photograph is a glimpse of everyday life along the Rue Royale, Brussels.
The Rue Royale, Place Royale, and Statue of Godfrey of Bouillon
The Rue Royale was laid out in 1777 and was extended over the next century. Along its length is the Royal Palace, Brussels Park, and Congress column, amongst numerous other monuments and civic structures. The Rue Royale starts in the square in the photograph: the Place Royale. The avenue is referred to in Dutch as the Koningsstraat, and the Place Royale is the Koningsplein (translated to the King’s Street and the King’s Square).
While the glass plate is listed as depicting the Rue Royale, the street itself is behind the photographer, and what you see is the Place Royale and down the Rue de la Régence to the Palace of Justice in the distance.
In the centre of the Place Royale is a triumphant looking equestrian statue of Godfrey of Bouillon (1060-1100), depicted leaving for the First Crusade. Due to his heroic actions in the recapture of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon was made ruler over the new Kingdom of Jerusalem under the title of "Defender of the Holy Sepulchre" – preferring not to be called a King or "wear a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns" (Porter, p. 18).
The statue was sculpted by Eugène Simonis and erected in 1848. It is placed on the spot where an earlier statue of Prince Charles Alexander Emanuel of Lorraine, governor of the Austrian Netherlands, stood. This earlier statue was destroyed by the iconoclastic hysteria of French Revolutionaries when they took the city in 1794. At the same time, the Revolutionaries requisitioned the Church behind it, the Saint-Jacques-sur-Coudenberg, naming it the Temple of Reason.
It is no accident that an ancient Flemish hero stands in the place where once a statue of a foreign overlord of Belgium, when it was part of the Austrian Netherlands, stood. Instead, the statue calls back to an ancient linage to legitimize the newly independent Belgian state. This intention to establish a national mythology by drawing from ancient and medieval history is noted in the 1854 art encyclopedia The Works of Eminent Masters in Painting Sculpture, Architecture, and Decorative Art published by John Cassell:
“The present King of Belgium is making praiseworthy efforts to foster the spirit of nationality in his prosperous kingdom, by reviving, in every way in his power, reminiscences of the past glories of old Flanders, and of the distinguished part it played in ancient times in all the great movements of the continent under the Dukes of Burgundy, so famous in war, and love, and romance.”
Illustration from The Works of Eminent Masters in Painting Sculpture, Architecture, and Decorative Art: Part II (London: John Cassell, 1854)
A Monday Morning in 1900
It is not the setting alone that is striking with this photograph, but the people. The photographer managed to capture on this fragile glass plate a moment of sublimely mundane life in Brussels; an everyday happening that, while the costumes have changed, continues in its manner today. It is a glimpse of the past, and not merely the stage it took place on, but the cast that stepped upon it.
This sense of the bustling streets of Brussels is also displayed in the next glass plate, this time in the shadow of the city’s impressive gothic cathedral.
References
Porter, Whitworth, A History of the Knights of Malta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 18
The Works of Eminent Masters in Painting Sculpture, Architecture, and Decorative Art: Part II (London: John Cassell, 1854), p. 128 [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_dzIXAAAAYAAJ/page/n133/mode/2up?q=Bouillon]
1900 Glass Plates: This project explores a series of glass plates from the year 1900 with the eventual goal of travelling the same route as the photographer. It will be a varied journey that will stretch from simple blog posts examining each photo to videos and more. This project is in collaboration with photographer Aleksandar Nenad Zecevic, who’ll be restoring the photographs to bring out details dimmed by time. More to follow.
Read Another:
