Object data
oil on panel
support: height 67.7 cm × width 105 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame and climate box)
Peeter Neeffs (I)
1636
oil on panel
support: height 67.7 cm × width 105 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame and climate box)
…; anonymous sale [A. van Kinschot], Rotterdam (Buurt), 20 September 1756, no. 19 (‘P. NEFS. De Kerk der Paters Predikheeren te Antwerpen, 1636 geschildert […] gestoffeert door Staalbent. Hoog 2 voet 2 d. breet 3 voet 4 duim. [68 x 104.6 cm]’), fl. 415;1…; sale, Gerard Hoet II (1698-1760, The Hague), sold on the deceased’s premises, The Hague (A. Franken and O. van Thol), 25 August 1760 sqq., no. 90 (‘Een dito [Brabantse Kerk] fraaije en ryk gestoffeerde Kerk, door den denzelfden [P. Neefs] Hoog 26½, breed 40 Duim [69.3 x 104.6 cm]), fl. 330, to Ketelaar;2…; collection Stadholder Willem V, and displayed in the picture gallery, Stadhouderlijk Hof, The Hague, 1763-64, no. 13 (‘Een groot stuk, zijnde de Lievevrouwekerk van Antwerpen door Pieter Neefs […] h. 2 v. 3 d. w. 3 v. 4½ d. [64.5 x 106 cm] NB. Gekocht op de verkooping van G Hoet, 1760’);3 acquired by the museum (‘Preekheeren Kerk te Antwerp’), 1800;4 on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2002-11
Object number: SK-A-288
Copyright: Public domain
Peeter Neeffs I (Antwerp c. 1578 - Antwerp 1656-61)
Although Peeter Neeffs (Pieter Neefs or Nefs) I left a considerable body of work – as we now know it chiefly church interiors5 – the facts about his life are scarce. He was the third son of Aart Neefs and Margareta Verspreet; his father’s fortunes as a merchant seem to have been badly affected by the Spanish Fury of 1576. Peeter’s date of birth is not known but has been estimated as circa 1578. His mother died in 1582 and his father, after a second marriage, died impoverished in 1609 in Mechelen.
Neeffs was in his twenties when he enrolled as a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1609, but is not recorded in Antwerp as having been an apprentice and so was probably taught elsewhere. The close relationship between his early work and that of Hendrik van Steenwyck II (c. 1580-1649) has recently been clarified by Fusenig.6 If, as is probable, Neeffs’s means of establishing the novel, geometrically calculated perspective of his views related to that of Van Steenwyck, it would seem indeed likely that Neeffs was early active in his studio. Fusenig has rejected the Dresden Interior of a Church, which bears a date of 1605, as Neeffs’s earliest work. He charts his activity from 1615, but presumably his legitimate activity in Antwerp began when he became a master, although there are no dated works to prove it. Later Neeffs may have been assisted by his sons Lodewyck (b. 1617) and Peeter (b. 1620); neither was ever registered in the guild, and the latter’s work – at least when working independently – was inferior.
Neeffs relied on other artists to provide the staffage and probably also architectural embellishments. Among his collaborators are notably Frans Francken II (1581-1642) and Frans Francken III (1607-1667), Adriaen van Stalbemt (1580-1662), Bonaventura Peeters I (1614-1652) and possibly his brother Gillis (1612-1653; see SK-A-288 below), and Jan van den Hecke (1620-1684).7 He also painted in 1650 the room in which Gonzales Coques (1618-1684) portrayed members of the Antwerp patriciate while other artists contributed the paintings on display.8
In the guild’s accounts of 1612/13 Neeffs was one of nine entrants listed as not having paid their dues in full. His circumstances may have improved by his marriage – in fact – in 1612 to Maria Lauterbiens (or Louterbeens; but spelt by Neeffs Lauterbeins, see the inscription on SK-A-289) whose family owned properties in Antwerp in which Neeffs lived until at least the last years of his life. In the same year Neeffs took on what was to be his only apprentice.
Neeffs was never called on to perform official duties in the guild of St Luke; but an indication of his close to middling social standing is that one of Jan Brueghel I’s daughters acted as godmother to a child born in 1623. Works by Neeffs were in such distinguished Antwerp collections as those of Cornelis van der Geest, 1628, Arnold Lundens, 1639-49, Jeremias Wildens, 1653, and Suzanna Willemssens, 1657.
The Lundens inventory shows that in this instance Neeffs’s work was valued in the lower range of market prices. In the 1650s he was in financial difficulties, as is shown in records concerning his sale of his share of the Lauterbiens’s house in the Hobokenstraat. Mortuary dues to the guild incurred by his wife’s death at this time were unpaid. Although he continued to work (e.g. SK-A-287), his circumstances are obscure and his date of death and place of burial are unknown. That he was dead by 1661 can be inferred by the past tense used by Cornelis de Bie in his brief tribute in Het gulden cabinet.
REFERENCES
F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, vol. ?, pp. 608-14; E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, IV, pp. 144, 379, Ibid. V, p. 57, Ibid. VI, p. 492, Ibid. VII, p. 351, and Ibid. IX, p. 3; T. Fusenig, ‘Neeffs und Co. Die Antwerpener Architecturmalerei im frühen 17. Jahrhundert’, in H. Borggrefe and V. Lüpkes (eds.), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Folgen: Ergebnisse des in Kooperation mit dem Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Gdanska durchgeführten internationalen Symposions am Weserrenaissance-Museum Schloss Brake, Marburg 2005 (Studien zur Kultur der Renaissance 3), pp. 143-51; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), I, pp. 454, 487, 493 and Ibid. II, p. 272
There is no reason to doubt that the architecture and furnishings in this view of the Antwerp Dominican church are by Peeter Neeffs I. The painting is on a composite oak support of four pieces of timber and is dated 1636 (two dendrochronological datings can be deduced for the earliest use as from 1631 or from 1637). The figures are by another hand as was recognized in the 1756 sale catalogue when attributed to Adriaen van Stalbempt (1580-1662), but they seem insufficiently refined for that artist. Waldorp in 1804 also recognized that they were by a different hand, ascribing them to a ‘Jan Heus’.9 A possibility is that they are by Gillis Peeters I (1612-1653) by virtue of a comparison with those in his Milkmaid Embarking on a Dinghy in Breezy Weather of 1641;10 the same hand was responsible for most of the figures in Interior of a Gothic Church at Night Looking East (SK-A-289). Gillis’s brother, Bonaventura (1614-1652), was a more frequent collaborator with Neeffs.11 The paintings and stained glass may be the work of a third artist.
The church of the Dominican monastery in Antwerp, renamed the Sint-Pauluskerk in the early nineteenth-century after the dissolution of the monastery, was rebuilt in the Gothic style to designs by master builder/architect Domien de Waghemakere (c. 1460-1542) from 1520 onwards. Neeffs’s standpoint was an elevated one to the right of centre at the western end of the nave between the doors to the cloister on the left and to the street on the right, about 45 metres away from the choir screen. The width of the church, including nave and aisles, is 20 metres. The identity of the church depicted was only lost sight of during the time when Gerard Hoet II (1698-1760) owned the picture. It was correctly described in the annotated ground plan of the Nationale Kunstgalerij of 1800 after the monastery had been dissolved and the church shut.
As most of Neeffs’s extant church interiors are views of the interior of Antwerp cathedral, or variants of it, or apparently capriccio’s, the Rijksmuseum picture is of considerable importance in his oeuvre. Other identifiable church interiors are rare: a drawing of the interior of the cathedral at Bonn was published by Stechow,12 and a view of the Sint-Jacobskerk is recorded in an inventory of 1666.13
Baisier has provided a full account of the view depicted here by Neeffs, which she argues is likely to be an accurate representation of the interior of the church in 1636 and thus before the replacement of the confessional stalls in the nave from 1657. What follows is based on her unpublished thesis, a copy of which she kindly made available.14
Baisier suggests that the picture may have been commissioned by the prior of the monastery, Jacob de Brouwer (1582-1637), as a present for the provincial of the order, Joannes Boucquet (d. 1640), who may have promoted the commissioning of the prominent and still in situ cycle of paintings – one of the church’s most important monuments – the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary shown on the wall of the north aisle. Another possibility is that it was executed to record the marble screen before the chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in the northern aisle, visible in the middle distance before the choir screen. It might also be suggested that the commission came from one of the leaders of the procession of the Holy Sacrament, the master or the deacon of the Brotherhood of the Sweet Name of Jesus, as a commemoration; they were identified for the year 1636, by Baisier, as Jacob Aertschen and Joannes van Asten. They are depicted just to the left of centre in the foreground holding tapers. Presumably the master is the elder of the two.
On the wall of the north aisle beneath the vaulting are escutcheons, five of which are legible. One – if authentic – dates back to before the papal confirmation of the Dominican order in 1216. From the left, four bear dates: they are 1602, 1207, 1506, and 160[.].
Beneath are discernible nine of the depictions of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, the Madonna of the Rosary by Caravaggio (1571-1610) and glimpses of two others from the series. The Caravaggio, in its carved and gilded frame with a superimposed arched top, had been bought by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Hendrik van Balen I (1575-1632), Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) and others for 1800 guilders and given to the Dominicans after 19 September 1617 (the date of the will of Louis Finson, a pupil of Caravaggio and a part owner) and before 13 January 1625 (the date of Brueghel’s death). It was removed from the church on the orders of the Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790) and sent to Vienna in 1786.15
The gift of the Caravaggio may have coincided with the completion of the cycle of paintings of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, which was paid for by members of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary, of which Louis Clarisse, who donated Rubens’s fee of 150 guilders, was the most prominent. Rooses published the cost of each work and names of the donors, which in the majority of cases are recorded.16
From the left are the set of the Five Joyful Mysteries: the Annunciation by Hendrik van Balen (1575-1632); the Visitation by Frans Francken II (1581-1642); the Nativity by Cornelis de Vos (c. 1584-1651); the Presentation in the Temple by the same artist, and Jesus among the Doctors by Matthys Voet (only known by this work). Then follow the Five Sorrowful Mysteries with Christ on the Mount of Olives by David Teniers I (1582-1649) and Christ on the Way to Calvary by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), both hidden from view by the column; the Flagellation by Rubens and the Crowning of Thorns by Artus de Bruyn (d. 1632); the Crucifixion by Jacques Jordaens I (1593-1678) is on the far side of the Caravaggio. Of the Five Glorious Mysteries which come next, only the first two can be glimpsed: the Resurrection by Arnout Vinckenborch (c. 1590-c. 1620) and the Ascension by Artus Wolffort (1581-1641).17
Beneath the paintings is a row of confessional stalls, at the near end of which three men kneel in prayer as they await their turn. On the opposite wall is a similar row. These have been dated circa 1617-18 and were probably installed at about the same time as the paintings were put on display. Between 1657 and 1659 the ensemble was sold for 200 guilders to the Sint-Pieterskerk in Turnhout; they were replaced by the famous stalls attributed to Peter Verbrugghen I (1615-1686). The stalls in the Sint-Pieterskerk were in turn replaced circa 1740.
On the south wall between the stained glass windows – depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, the Adoration of the Kings and perhaps the Pietà – are paintings of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the Crucifixion and the Last Supper. Two epitaph paintings are hung from the pillars on the south side of the nave: a Baptism of Christ, and a Last Judgment beyond. None of these paintings is traceable today. On the north side on the second pillar is the epitaph erected in 1626 by Emmanuel Sanchez in memory of Alfonso and Joannes Sanchez. The inscription in letters of gold leaf or paint is only indistinctly rendered. The next two epitaph paintings have not been identified. Above, beyond the chandelier, is a Marianum.18 On the right side of the nave is the pulpit which was dismantled in 1874, though parts are extant: the four panels of the bowl decorate a new altar in the church, and one of the caryatid angels is in the Rijksmuseum (BK-1970-99).19 It is similar to a pulpit in the Antwerp Jesuit church of 1627; these and another for the abbey church of Sint-Michiel of circa 1635 (for the last 200 years in the Sint-Jacobskerk, ’s-Hertogenbosch) were probably the work of Erasmus Quellinus I (1584-1640).
Opposite, but closer to the transept, can be made out Rubens’s Adoration of the Shepherds20 hanging high in the chapel of Our Lady. That chapel is enclosed with a screen of white marble and black freestone which Andries Colyns de Nole (1598-1638) contracted in 1635 to have completed by 22 July 1636. The screen was removed in 1650 when a new altar was installed.
Baisier dates the choir screen to circa 1618/20; its replacement of 1654/55, which incorporated it, was removed in 1833 to open up the view of the high altar. The first screen was decorated with two altarpieces: a Lamentation on the right, and, on the left – where Neeffs situated the vanishing point of the perspective – St Dominic at Soriano. This painting recorded a miracle, which took place in the monastery at Soriano on 15 September 1530, when the Madonna and Saints Mary Magdalen and Catherine appeared to a monk and presented him with a divinely made painting of Saint Dominic. The painting was incorporated into the new choir screen, and, after that screen’s dismantling, was placed in the south transept. It remains unattributed. The whereabouts of the pendant, the Lamentation, remains unknown.
Through the arch of the choir screen the high altar can be made out on which is the base of an altarpiece; visible is part of the left hand wing and central compartment. The high altarpiece at the time was Rubens’s Saints Dominic and Francis Protecting the World From the Wrath of Christ, now at Lyon.21 Also included is a left wing to the central compartment. Baisier believes that depicted on the wings could have been portrayals of Saints Dominic and Francis, of which two paintings (on panel) at Dublin could be reduced and slightly later copies.22 It has to be said that there is no other evidence in support of this suggestion other than the high level of accuracy in other respects displayed here by Neeffs, as Baisier has demonstrated.
Gregory Martin, 2022
H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, Braunschweig 1979 [ed. princ. Leipzig 1910], no. 244
1809, p. 50, no. 218; 1841, p. 37, no. 224; 1843, p. 43, no. 224; 1853, p. 20, no. 196 (fl. 1000); 1864, p. 107, no. 220 (as Notre Dame, Anvers); 1872, p. 112, no. 238 (as Notre Dame à Anvers); 1880, p. 408, no. 478 (as Kerk der Predikheeren te Antwerpen); 1903, p. 190, no. 1715; 1934, p. 205, no. 1715; 1976, p. 409, no. A 288
G. Martin, 2022, 'Peeter (I) Neeffs, The Interior of the Dominican Church, Antwerp, Looking East, with the Procession of the Holy Sacrament, 1636', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4701
(accessed 11 November 2024 00:09:27).