Stone Pediment with Skulls on the Oude Hoogstraat Painting

About halfway along the Oude Hoogstraat, at the point it is joined by the Bethaniëndwarsstraat, lies this gateway. It is, I am told, a side entrance to a church, De Waalse Kerk, that like many churches in Amsterdam, lies concealed on three of its sides. I have noted that many of the city’s churches have these elaborately decorated carved stone entrance gates to advertise the church’s presence where the facade is concealed. Like many others, this archway is adorned with an engorged blood-red shield on a decorative mantle. The shield bears the city’s iconic three X’s emblem. There is a triptych of Fleur-de-lis along the lintel which is possibly a reference to French nobility as for the past four hundred years the sermons here have been exclusively delivered in french. But it is the stone skulls on either side of the deconstructed arch that caught my eye. I have been led to believe that the pair of skulls were added to the ledges of the archway during the great plague to indicate that the churchyard was the location of a plague pit, or some such disease related facility. Passers-by would be advised by the addition of the ornaments as to the risks of coming too close to the site; as with the skull and crossbones motif on a bottle of poison. However it is the way that time and the elements have conspired to add their two-penneth that really interests me. The surface of these carved crania is a clearly much more hospitable environment for moss and lichen than the surface of the archway itself. The resulting green staining and subsequent slime streaking below, have given these harbingers of death a more poignantly pestilent air.