Who would have ever heard of Maria van Nesse if her household book had not been discovered? Because of the find, the wealthy single Alkmaar woman is suddenly ‘alive’. In her cash book she wrote down to whom, how much and why she spends money and made many extra notes that she wanted to remember. “This suddenly gives you a complete picture of the entire middle class in Alkmaar in the early 17th century.”
“It is a golden find”, says Christi Klinkert, curator of the Municipal Museum Alkmaar. An exhibition about Maria van Nesse (1588-1650) is currently being organized there. “We don’t know much about women at that time. They weren’t as well documented as men. But because of her book, we now know exactly how things went. She gives us a lot of detail.”
In the video below you can see which shop in the Langestraat was her old home. Text continues below video.
The so-called ‘memory book’ was found in 2019 in a Belgian family archive by researcher Robbert Jan van der Maal. Van Nesse kept track of her expenses from 1623 to 1644. When she died, her wealth was about 70,000 guilders (800,000 euros today).
Rich, Catholic and single
Maria van Nesse was therefore rich, through inherited money. In addition, she was Catholic at a time when that was not allowed in public, and she remained single. She was unique in her time, says art historian Judith Noorman van de University of Amsterdam. Together with Van der Maal, they delved into her life and wrote a book about the Alkmaar woman that forms the basis for the exhibition in the museum.
“You can only dream of a find like this source,” says Noorman. “Her costumes and jewels, paintings and religious art and donations to the church; the detail with which she described her art purchases is unprecedented.”
Volunteers of it Regional Archive Alkmaar have written out the two hundred pages of the memorial book and provided a glossary of terms.
The exhibition about Maria van Nesse in the Alkmaar museum opens Thursday 26 November.