Object data
oil on panel
support: height 93.7 cm × width 55.2 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)
Pieter Jansz Saenredam
1636
oil on panel
support: height 93.7 cm × width 55.2 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)
The support is an oak panel consisting of two vertically grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. The panel was primed with a thin chalk ground. Paint samples revealed a lead-white layer on top of the ground. This imprimatura was applied with clearly visible brushmarks. Underdrawing is visible to the naked eye. Infrared reflectography revealed an extensive and detailed underdrawing, apparently transferred from a preliminary construction drawing by indentation. Some of the figures on the organ shutter were altered. There are also alterations in the paint layers, for instance in the position of the organ shutter. Gilding was applied in several areas. Gold leaf was used for the gold-coloured ornaments of the large organ, and silver leaf was used for the pipes. The thin paint layers were applied smoothly, and wet in wet in the columns. A limited palette was used, with the exception of the large organ, which is executed in bright colours. The figures were painted on top of the background.
Van Asperen de Boer 1971, pp. 26-30; Van Heemstra 2000, p. 85
Good. Apart from a disturbing filling in the large organ and slight abrasion in the gilded ornaments, the paint layers are in good condition.
...; ? purchased by the museum from the art dealer P.C. Huybrechts, The Hague, 20 June 1803;1 ? or, fl. 700, to the museum, with Interior of the St Bavokerk in Haarlem by Isaac van Nickelen (SK-A-360; at the time listed as Saenredam), 1806;2 on loan to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 1925-59
Object number: SK-A-359
Copyright: Public domain
Pieter Jansz Saenredam (Assendelft 1597 - Haarlem 1665)
Pieter Jansz Saenredam, son of the engraver Jan Pietersz Saenredam and Anna Pauwelsdr, was born on 9 June 1597 in Assendelft. In 1608, a year after his father’s death, he and his mother moved to Haarlem. According to Cornelis de Bie, Saenredam studied painting with Frans Pietersz de Grebber from 1612 till 1622. On 24 April 1623, he joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, in which he played an active role; between 1633 and 1642, he is mentioned as secretary, warden and dean. On 5 December 1638, he married Aefjen Gerrits in Bloemendaal near Haarlem. Their only child, a daughter named Anna, was born in 1639.
Saenredam was acquainted with the architect Jacob van Campen, who was his fellow pupil in De Grebber’s workshop, and with Constantijn Huygens, private secretary to the Dutch stadholder. A portrait of Saenredam drawn by Jacob van Campen in 1628 has led to the speculation that he was hunchbacked, but there is no evidence to support this. Saenredam lived all of his life in Haarlem, but went on sketching tours to other towns, such as ’s-Hertogenbosch (1632), Assendelft (1633, 1634, 1643 and 1654), Alkmaar (1635/38 and 1661), Utrecht (1636), Amsterdam (1641), and Rhenen (1644). On 31 December 1652 he and the Haarlem landscape painter Pieter de Molijn valued a number of paintings. He may also have acted as an art dealer. In 1658 he sold a painting of the Virgin by Jacob van Campen for 300 guilders, and in 1663 he asked 700 guilders for a painting by Pieter van Laer from the French connoisseur Balthasar de Monconys. Saenredam was a successful painter. On 30-31 July 1658 he sold his famous portrayal of the old town hall of Amsterdam for 400 guilders to the city’s burgomasters (SK-C-1409). One of his interiors of the St Bavokerk in Haarlem was included in the Dutch Gift to the English Crown in 1660. Saenredam was buried in St Bavo’s in Haarlem on 31 May 1665.
Saenredam was the first artist to specialize in faithful depictions of actual churches. His early work consists of drawings and designs for prints, some of which were made for Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem. One of those designs is a drawing of 1627 of the interior of St Bavo’s in Haarlem.3 His earliest dated painting is from 1628.4 From that year onwards, he confined himself to drawing and painting architecture, predominantly church interiors. He depicted churches in Haarlem, Utrecht and several other towns. Between 1629 and 1633 he made three landscape paintings with classical architecture after drawings by Maarten van Heemskerck. Towards the end of his career he painted several exterior views of churches and town halls. Some 60 paintings by Saenredam are known. Two of his pupils were Claes Cornelisz van Assendelft (in 1642) and Jacob van Campen’s nephew Claes Heerman (in 1651).
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Ampzing 1628, p. 372; Schrevelius 1648, p. 381; De Bie 1661, p. 246; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 174; Bredius IV, 1917, p. 1130; Swillens 1935, pp. 1-3, 53-56, 141-43; Miedema 1980, passim; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 301-17 (documents); Liedtke in Turner 1996, pp. 507-11; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 293-98
Gothic St Bavo’s in Haarlem is the church that Saenredam depicted most often, there being at least 12 views of its interior produced between 1628, the year on his earliest dated painting, and 1660.5 Like the one discussed here, six of these paintings are from the period 1635-37.
Saenredam followed his usual procedure for this picture, first making a site sketch which he then worked up into a detailed construction drawing. He blackened the back of the latter so that he could transfer the lines onto the white ground of the panel by indenting them. The sketch on blue paper for this painting dated 30 August 1635 still survives (fig. a), as has the lower half of the construction drawing of three months later (fig. b).6 According to an annotation on that sheet, the painted version was completed on 15 April 1636.
The view is towards the north ambulatory and the so-called Christmas Chapel.7 One innovation is the way in which the artist used the two large columns and a lancet arch as a framing device for the central scene.8 Prominence is given to the two organs. In the background is the small organ built in 1594 by Peter Jansz de Swart of Utrecht,9 but the main focus is on the large organ on the left, which the artist subtly draws added attention to with the gaze of the standing man with a sword at his side. Saenredam raised the crown of the arch slightly in order to provide the best possible view of the organ.10 He also applied gold and silver leaf to add lustre to the metal parts of the instrument, which was highly unusual in 17th-century Dutch painting.11
The large organ, which remained in use until the 18th century, was made in 1463 by the Utrecht organ builder Pieter Gerritsz. Its shutters were painted by Vrederick Hoon in 1465. The Rijksmuseum painting shows that the right shutter was decorated with a scene of the Resurrection.12 The instrument was completely restored and enlarged between 1630 and 1634 by Galtus and Germer van Hagerbeer of Amersfoort.13 In 1634, the year the restoration was completed, a group of 44 music-lovers submitted a petition asking the Haarlem authorities to allow the organ to be played on weekdays, not just Sundays, which was a controversial issue around this time. Saenredam embarked on a series of drawings of the church that same year. The prominence of the organ in this painting has led to the speculation that local organ enthusiasts may have commissioned Saenredam.14 The choice of the instrument as the central motif in the painting could equally well have been Saenredam’s, however, for organs play an important part in many of his church interiors.15
As is usual in Saenredam’s church interiors, the figures are painted on top of the background. It is assumed that they are by Saenredam himself.16 The most prominent ones are the woman with the children in the left foreground and the man with the sword in the middleground. A man and a woman can be seen in the gallery in the right background. Several authors have written about the bearing that the staffage might have on the interpretation of the painting,17 although without arriving at a totally convincing theory.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 258.
Swillens in Utrecht 1961, pp. 82-84, no. 38; Schwartz 1966, pp. 85-90; Keyl 1986; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 121, 124-26, 259, no. 38
1809, p. 63, no. 270; 1843, p. 53, no. 275 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 24, no. 247 (fl. 400), or no. 248 (fl. 1,500); 1858, p. 126, no. 277 (as A Gothic Church); 1876, p. 176, no. 352 (as A Gothic Church); 1880, p. 275, no. 315; 1887, p. 149, no. 1256; 1903, p. 235, no. 2096; 1960, p. 273, no. 2096; 1976, p. 491, no. A 359; 2007, no. 258
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Interior of the St Bavokerk in Haarlem, Seen from the South Ambulatory, Looking across the Choir to the North Ambulatory and the Large Organ, 1636-04-15', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5349
(accessed 10 November 2024 04:09:34).