A sign on the wall tells us discretely in Dutch that we are in a library:
“Thou hast two eyes and but one mouth. Let this be a sign to you—read much, and not to speak.”
This is no ordinary library. The Rijksmuseum Research Library is an archival work of art. Perhaps you don’t remember where this soaring, four-story architectural wonder is situated. One step outside the doors on the second floor toward the museum proper and the life-size masterpiece by Rembrandt, depicting the men of “The Night Watch,” will fill your vision with warm mustached guardsmen drawn forth dramatically in chiaroscuro. This is Amsterdam.
The time is 10 a.m. Now, although the doors at Rijksmuseum Research Library are open, you can be sure the staff who work here would appreciate your respect. This is an office. It has that office buzz. Originally, it was just the museum’s catalog archives, conceived by Pierre Cuypers, the Dutch architect famous for his neo-gothic style, and built in 1885. After renovations, it finally opened to the public in 2004. Now visitors can feast their eyes on the fruits of his labors.
How the light from the grand arched ceiling fills the hall. The skylight over the library’s main reading room was indeed a modern innovation in its day. It meant that visitors did not need candles or gas lamps to read by. Mr. Cuypers wanted a space with grandeur that seemed larger than it really was (a gothic tradition). That’s why the dainty pillars are thinner at the top and at the base than in the middle, which makes them seem taller. The whole hall seems to lift itself higher.
Through it all, we are enticed to read. There is a little room on the second floor, off the large reading room, with chairs and tables and a few guests where we may enjoy its offerings: “The Latest News of June 11, 1633,” a donation of an early Dutch newspaper and other ephemeral publications. “Color Theories Through the Eyes of Artist Bookmakers,” two recently acquired artists’ books. “A Monument on Paper for Bouchardon’s Equestrian Statue of Louis XV,” Pierre Jean Mariette’s description of the design. The hours have induced a stupor.
How better to spend a rainy Saturday?
Some 400,000 monographs rest within the library’s walls. The tall shelves on the main floor and three balconies are filled with books and periodicals. They had just 3,500 items in 1885, and some 70,000 now—but that’s a fraction of what is held unseen in tunnels beneath the building. The archives are the largest historical art library in the Netherlands, then as now. And the oldest.
From the second balcony, Mr. Cuypers’s archival dream is on full display.
Our eye glides along a cast iron skeleton of railings, a 19th-century innovation, whose ribs repeat, taking us from floor to sky. The upper wall sections are painted a light color to bounce as much sunlight down into our space as possible. The decorations are small and sparse to keep that feel of air and lightness going. Modern form and function are exposed with iron rivets shown bare; a 19th-century touch adds gold faux rivets to match—thus completing a decorative rhythm. Shields with the names of leading publishers adorn the columns.
A student of the gothic style, Mr. Cuypers clearly had an eye for symmetry. A spiral stair in a corner winds all the way up; a stairless corner opposite across the hall is beset with an obligatory circle mosaic on the floor.
This Saturday morning is seeming pleasingly unusual. The damp rain and gloomy day outside hardly dim the light atmosphere inside the Rijksmuseum Research Library at all.
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