Palace of Frederik V, Elector Palatine, and the Church of St Cunera, Rhenen

Rhenen, 1644

Object data

pen and brown ink; later additions in watercolour; framing line in brown ink

height 515 mm × width 395 mm

Inscriptions

signed, dated and inscribed by the artist: lower left edge, in brown ink, Saenredam dit geteijckent den 29 en 30 Júnij 1644.
inscribed: lower left, in an eighteenth-century hand, in brown ink, [...]kx thoren der stadt Rheenen / Coninx van Bohemen sijn Hoff. X.
inscribed on verso: upper left, in pencil, 1 54/4; lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, in brown ink, 1240; next to this, in pencil, 171
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Coat of arms with a fleur-de-lis; close to Piccard XIII, no. 973 (Montbéliard: 1593), the coat of arms in the drawing is a little larger, and the fleur-de-lys extends to the contours of the shield, which it does not in the example in Piccard

Condition

The drawing is on two sheets joined together; a few repaired areas of damage and some stains

Provenance

…; sale, Gerrit Schaak (?-?, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. Verkolje et al.), 28 October 1748, Album D, no. 28 (‘De Tooren en by zynde huizen tot Rheenen door Saanredam, en gestoffeert door J. de Moucheron’), fl. 19:10:-, to Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Amsterdam;¹ by whom sold, fl. 18, 1751;² …; sale, Abraham van Broyel (?-1759 or before, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (H. de Leth), 30 October 1759 sqq., Album B, no. 99 (‘Door Pieter Saenredam, en Izaac de Moucheron, 1644. Een Gezicht van den Tooren der Stad Rheenen, […] hoog 20 breed 15 duim [508 x 381 mm]’), fl. 35, to Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen;³ …; sale, Jan Jansz Gildemeester (1744-99, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 24 November 1800 sqq., Album G, no. 5 (‘Een capitaal gezicht naar de Tooren, en verder Gebouwen binnen de stad Rheenen: op den voorgrond gestoffeerd met twee gaande en een rustende Man, […] door PJ. Saenredam en J. de Moucheron’), fl. 36:10:-, to the dealer C.S. Roos, Amsterdam;⁴ …; purchased from Cornelis Johannes Kneppelhout van Sterkenburg (1856-1938), Kasteel Sterkenburg, near Driebergen, by Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1899;⁵ …; sale, René Jacques della Faille de Waerloos (1830-1902, Antwerpen) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 19 January 1904, no. 325, fl. 1,200, the dealer to F. Muller, Amsterdam;⁶ ...; from Dr Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, fl. 1,000, to the museum (L. 2228), 1904

Object number: RP-T-1904-2

Entry

For the last few days of June and the first week of July of 1644, Saenredam was in Rhenen, in the province of Utrecht. It has been suggested that he undertook this trip in order to make drawings for Jacob van Campen (1596-1657) of the Late Gothic tower of the Sint-Cunerakerk (church of St Cunera). Van Campen was working at the time on a design for a high tower for the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, which was to have a Gothic form, so it is not impossible that he needed drawings of a number of celebrated Gothic towers in the Netherlands.⁷ Whatever the occasion for the journey, the first two drawings that Saenredam made in Rhenen were of the tower of St Cunera’s. A drawing in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. O 081), shows the church from the south-west, with the palace of the Winter King, Frederik V, Elector Palatine (1596-1632), to the left of the tower.⁸ In the Amsterdam sheet, the tower and palace are seen from the north-west, and the church, except for its tower, is completely hidden. On the left is the main front of the palace, the corners adorned with step gables in the Dutch Renaissance style.⁹ The residence of the hapless King of Bohemia is completely dwarfed by the vast mass of the church tower behind it.

Both the Haarlem and Amsterdam drawings were “finished” with watercolour in the eighteenth century. As early as 1748 it is stated that the Amsterdam sheet was “furnished with staffage” by Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744), but in fact it is not clear where Saenredam left off and De Moucheron began. The figures in the foreground are certainly by the latter, and he was very probably responsible for the bushes and the pen work in the foreground, but it is more difficult to say whether the passages in pink and blue watercolour in the palace and tower are by De Moucheron or Saenredam himself. The Haarlem drawing is peopled with small, rather stiff figures in seventeenth-century dress, which are clearly by a different hand to the countryfolk in the museum’s sheet. Plomp suspects that they may be the work of Abraham Rademaker (1675-1735), who once owned the drawing. The mutilation of the inscription at lower left of the present work suggests that the sheet has been trimmed on the left. For a view by Saenredam inside the church, see inv. no. RP-T-1899-a-4085.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, Utrechtse kerken. Teekeningen en schilderijen van Pieter Saenredam, Haarlem 1899, p. 17 (fig. 28); J.C. Overvoorde, ‘Het slot van den Winterkoning in Rhenen’, Bulletin van het Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond 4 (1902-03), pp. 74-79; H.P. Bremmer et al. (eds.), Beeldende kunst, 28 vols., Utrecht 1913-42, VII (1919-20), no. 50; P.T.A. Swillens, Pieter Janszoon Saenredam. Schilder van Haarlem (1597-1665), Amsterdam 1935, pp. 35, 115, no. 162 (fig. 120); Catalogus schilderijen en teekeningen Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (1597-1665), exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans)/Amsterdam (Museum Fodor) 1937-38, no. 58 (fig. XIX); P.T.A. Swillens, Jacob van Campen. Schilder en bouwmeester (1595-1657), Assen 1961, pp. 29, 82; 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, no. 105 (fig. 105); C.J. de Bruyn Kops, ‘De Amsterdamse verzamelaar Jan Gildemeester Jansz.’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 13 (1965), no. 3, pp. 79-114, 95-96 (fig. 19); Saenredam (1597-1665): Peintre des églises, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1970, no. 30, pl. 26; I.Q. van Regteren Altena and P.W. Ward-Jackson, Drawings from the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, exh. cat. London (Victoria & Albert Museum) 1970, p. 22, under no. 17; H.P. Deys, Achter Berg en Rijn. Over boeren, burgers en buitenlui in Rhenen, Zutphen 1981, p. 21 (fig. 43); H.-U. Beck, ‘Goll van Franckenstein als Käufer von Zeichnungen auf der Auktion von Abraham van Broyel in Amsterdam (1759)’, Oud Holland 98 (1984), no. 2, pp. 111-16 (fig. 3); B.P.J. Broos, ‘“Notitie der Teekeningen van Sybrand Feitama”, II: “verkocht, verhandeld, verëerd, geruild en overgedaan”’, Oud Holland 99 (1985), no. 2, pp. 110-54, 113, 148; B.P.J. Broos, ‘Improving and Finishing Old Masters: An Art in itself’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 8 (1989), pp. 34-55 (fig. 15); G. Schwartz et al., Pieter Saenredam. De schilder in zijn tijd, Maarssen 1989, pp. 192, 194-95 (fig. 205), 271 (no. 105); J. Kiers, ‘Honderd tekeningen uit de gouden eeuw’, De Rijksmuseum Kunstkrant 24 (1998), no. 3, pp. 12-15; L. Schoemaker, Tegen de helling van de Heuvelrug. Rhenen in oude tekeningen, 1600-1900, Utrecht 2007, p. 147 (no. 112)

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Palace of Frederik V, Elector Palatine, and the Church of St Cunera, Rhenen, Rhenen, 1644-06-29 - 1644-06-30', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.64675

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