Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, with red and yellowish wash, over graphite

height 325 mm × width 184 mm

Inscriptions

dated and inscribed by the artist, in brown ink: upper centre, De gront vande S.te Pieters kerck. binnen S’hartogen bossch in / brabant. Van mijn gedaen den 13.en Júlij. 1632.; centre left, Dit is de grooste vande voet daer deese meede gemeten is.; above this a numberscale: 150; 100; 50; 40; 30; 20; in the ground plan from upper left to lower right, 15 voet; 23 voet; 14 1/2 voet; 15 1/2 voet; 5; 10 1/2 voet; 6; 8 voet; 5; 12 voet; 22 1/2 voet; 40 voeten; 1 1/2; _6 voet; 14 voet; 6 voet; 4; 11 voet; 14 voet
inscribed: lower centre left, probably in a seventeenth-century hand or a pseudo-seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink, Dit is de Orterstraet.
stamped: upper left, with the mark of Snoeck (L. 1919a)
stamped on verso: centre right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
inscribed on old mount: upper left, in pencil, teekening Saeredam [sic]; upper right, in a nineteenth-century hand, in brown ink, thans 1835 de Diaconie-School

Technical notes

Watermark: None visible through lining

Condition

Laid down

Provenance

…; collection Jonkheer Matthias Adriaan Snoeck (1838-1911), Hintham, near Den Bosch (L. 1919a); his son, Jonkheer Matthias Willem Snoeck (1870-1942), Zwolle; his cousin, Jonkheer Matthias Adriaan Beelaerts van Blokland (1910-90), The Hague;¹ ….; donated by Paulus Wilhelmus Ludgerus Russell, Amsterdam, to the museum (L. 2888), 2007

Object number: RP-T-2007-105

Credit line: Gift of P.W.L. Russell, Amsterdam

Entry

On 16 July 1632 Saenredam made three drawings of the Sint-Petruskerk (church of St Peter), ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a copy after one of its stained-glass windows in the Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch (inv. no. 12130), the present sheet and another drawing in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2063). Based on these last two drawings, he made a painting, dated 1632, which is currently in a private collection.² These works are the few historical documents of this Late Gothic church surviving today. After the capture the city in 1629, the Catholic Sint-Petruskerk was handed over to the Reformed Church. Ultimately, the church was demolished to make room for new city fortifications in 1646.³

The ground plan clearly shows the simple layout of the church, with its wide nave and two narrow side aisles. Throughout the ground plan, Saenredam indicated various measurements of the building in feet. According to his inscription on the drawing, one ‘voet’ measures exactly 24,6 cm. This practice is also visible in the only other surviving ground plan of a church by Saenredam: the drawing of the ground plan of the Sint-Janskerk, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 2012.414).⁴ The two ground plans are dated exactly two weeks apart.

The inscription Dit is de Orterstraet (‘This is the Orterstreet’) at lower left does not appear to be in Saenredam’s hand as was formally thought.⁵ The information provided by this inscription would not be of any use for Saenredam since his focus was on the interior of the church and its dimensions and proportions. Moreover, the indication of a street name by Saenredam is not found on any of his other drawings. The nineteenth-century inscription thans 1835 de Diaconie-School (‘currently 1835 the Diaconie-School’) at upper right seems to be incorrect. Since the church and its surrounding buildings were demolished in the mid-seventeenth century, no buildings were allowed to be erected on these grounds. This was to keep the sight line over the city of the newly built citadel clear of any buildings.⁶ Only after the passing of the Vestingwet in 1874 were buildings erected again on the so-called Esplanade.

Mike Hermsen, 2019

Literature

P.T.A. Swillens, Pieter Janszoon Saenredam. Schilder van Haarlem (1597-1665), Amsterdam 1935, no. 55 (fig. 118); I.Q. van Regteren Altena et al., Catalogue Raisonné of the Works by Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Published on the Occasion of the Exhibition Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, 15 September – 3 December 1961, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1961, pp. 150-51 (no. 102); P. ten Doesschate Chu and P.H. Boerlin, Im Lichte Hollands: Holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts aus den Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein und aus Schweizer Besitz, exh. cat. Basel (Kunstmuseum Basel) 1987, p. 230; G. Schwartz et al., Pieter Saenredam. De schilder in zijn tijd, Maarssen 1989, pp. 83, 90 (fig. 97), 270 (no. 102); A.M. Koldewij, In Buscoducis, 1450-1629. Kunst uit de Bourgondische tijd te ’s-Hertogenbosch. De cultuur van late middeleeuwen en renaissance, exh. cat. 's-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1990, no. 6; A. van Pinxteren, ‘Het oxaal van de voormalige Sint-Pieterskerk te ’s-Hertogenbosch’, Millennium 4 (1990), pp. 40-48 (fig. 2); J. de Hond and P. Huys Janssen, Pieter Saenredam in Den Bosch, exh. cat. 's-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 2013, pp. 94-97 (no. 11)

Citation

M. Hermsen, 2019, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Ground-plan of the Sint-Petruskerk, 's-Hertogenbosch, Den Bosch, 1632-07-13', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.483272

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