The Interior of the Dominican Church, Antwerp, Looking East, with the Procession of the Holy Sacrament

Entry

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