Manuscript journal recording two trips, combining business and leisure, from Hoorn to Zeeland and Antwerp, taken by three Dutch East India Company (VOC) officials (the first between 21 March and 16 April 1761), which has never appeared in print. Cornelis Gallis (1715-1767), the author of the present manuscript, travelled together with Floris Abbekerk Tromp (1721-1783), one of the directors of the VOC, and Dirk Merens (1730-1801), who worked for the VOC in a supervisory role ("be-edigt hooft participant"), on a VOC yacht from Hoorn to Middelburg to attend a shareholder meeting and take the opportunity to go sightseeing in the area. The men were interested in art and undertook various day trips to see important paintings, sculptures and buildings in Zeeland and especially in Antwerp, which are described in detail. Some of the artworks they visit have since been moved, stolen, or destroyed, so the journal is an extraordinary mid-18th-century source on these artworks.
In addition to details regarding the weather, winds, tides and other navigational information, the journal contains 11 separately titled sections describing particular churches and monasteries in Antwerp. These descriptions are followed by an alphabetised index of the names of the 87 artists mentioned in the descriptions of Antwerp, including Rubens, Dürer and Van Dyck. Gallis, Tromp, and Merens visited the Dominican St Pauls monastery for the Rubens altarpiece, Caravaggio's "Madonna of the Rosary" (now in Vienna), and the "Calvary" (a group of sculptures outside the church, that had been completed in 1747). They took note of prominent epitaphs, for example they admired the triptych showing the resurrection of Christ by Rubens (serving as an epitaph for Jan I Moretus (1543-1610) and Martina Plantin (1550-1616) in the Cathedral of Our Lady, visited the professed house of the Jesuits in Antwerp (now part of the KU Leuven), and browsed the Library of St. Bernards Abbey in Hemiksem. The second part of the work recounts a trip Gallis undertook between 12 September and 12 October [1761], possibly with the same or similar people (also VOC officials). It focuses more on Zeeland and describes the streets, gates and buildings in Middelburg, Veere, and surroundings. In an "old castle" in the neighbourhood of Middelburg (without name, but mentioning a very old (supposedly 900 years) mulberry tree(?) "moerbesien boom") the travellers were spontaneously invited to visit a collection of scientific instruments, including a telescope, a microscope, and even an electrostatic machine.
The present work gives a captivating contemporary insight into 18th-century tourism in the Low Countries.
The binding shows very slight signs of wear. The endpapers and edges of the leaves are very slightly browned. Otherwise in very good condition.