Men at work in Dutch art, or keeping one's nose to the grindstone

77. In his late-seventeenth-century painting of a Zwolle square, Gerrit Grasdorp included a hand-cranked grindstone, which Lydie van Dijk suggests was connected with the city stone yard; van Dijk, "Zwolse schilders in de 17de eeuw: Kracht in variatie," in J. Streng and van Dijk, Zwolle in de Gouden Eeuw, Cultuur en Schilderkunst, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (Zwolle: Waanders, 1997), 48. The position Ter Borch's grinder takes, with his nose close to the grindstone, is the obvious origin of the English expression (for which there is no equivalent in Dutch). An example of a prone grinder operating a hand-cranked grinding mechanism can be seen in Karel van Mander's satirical The Grinding of Tongues, ca. 1592 (Hollstein 106), pendant to his The Forging of Heads (Hollstein 107).

78. Alf Schroeder, Entwicklung der Schleiftechnik bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Braunschweig: Technische Hochschule, 1930), figs. 62, 69, 73. For the primary sources, see The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli: A Classic Sixteenth Century Illustrated Treatise on Technology, trans. Martha Teach Gnudi, with annotations by E. S. Ferguson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); V. Zonca, Novo teatro di machine et edificii (Padua: Appresso Pietro Bertelli, 1607), pl. 33; and G. A. Bockler, Theatrum machinarum novum (Nuremberg: Verlegung Paulus Fursten, 1661), pl. 38.

79. The Zwolle archives include reference to a slypmolen on the Walstraat, just a block from where Ter Borch grew up (RA 001-00026, December 17, 1620). RA 001-00032 and RA 001-00035 refer to one on the Diezerstraat in 1669 and 1688. I would like to thank J. H. van den Hoek Ostende for discussing slypmolens with me.

80. See Ach Lieve Tijd, 1000 Jaar Deventer, en Deventenaren en hun Nijverheid (Zwolle: Waanders, 1990), 297, with an illustration of the derelict condition of this sliepmolle, in 1863, as recorded in a watercolor by C. N. Storm van 's-Gravesande. The half tower in the watercolor bears no resemblance to the structures in Ter Borch's painting, nor is there any suggestion in Ter Borch's painting that the horse mill is collectively owned. My thanks to Nina Herweijer for additional information on this mill. See further G. Dumbar, Het Kerkelyk en Wereltlyk Deventer (Deventer, 1752), 14, who records that the slypmoolen had been used by smiths for grof ijzerwerk, that is, large iron items in need of sharpening. It should be emphasized that most ordinary, nonspecialist smiths producing smaller items would have used a hand-powered grindstone, as pictured in Metsu's painting (Fig. 3).

81. Luyken shows a common type of horse mill (rosmolen) built with a main lantern wheel raised high above the horse; he includes the three smaller gear wheels that it engages to drive the grindstones. Ter Borch shows a similar type of horse mill, also common, whose main lantern wheel is positioned close to the ground. It therefore requires a series of diagonal shafts to attach to the central post. In both images, the animal is harnessed to a bar that attaches to the main wheel. My thanks to both Stanley Challenger Graham and Emile van Binnebeke for discussing the mechanisms with me. Ter Borch would also have seen horse mills used for dredging, such as the one pictured by Gerrit Berckheyde in his 1671 painting of the modernization of Haarlem's ramparts, the only painting of such a mechanism that I have seen. See Quentin Buvelot and Hans Buijs, eds., A Choice Collection: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings from the Frits Lugt Collection, exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague, 2002, 58-61. For a drawing by Jacob van Ruisdael of a dredging machine, again, a highly unusual image, see Haverkamp Begemann, "Ruisdael's Interest in Construction," 98. On Amsterdam horse mills, none of them for grinding, see J. H. van den Hoek Ostende, "Rosmolens in Amsterdam 1519-1919," Jaarboek Amstelodamum, 1981, 15 (my thanks to Marten Jan Bok for this reference). Although windmills were built in huge numbers in the Dutch Republic owing to the absence of waterfalls and the presence of prevailing winds, animals provided a more consistently reliable source of power than wind, hence the frequent construction of horse mills.