Pieter Saenredam: Old Town Hall in Amsterdam (1657); Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

These past two weeks I told you something about the Town Hall of Amsterdam. Today, I want to take a small step back in time and have a look at its much smaller predecessor that had to make room for the monumental building by Van Campen. The old Town Hall was located on roughly the same spot, though it obviously occupied a much smaller area.
Years before 1650, plans were already made to replace the building by a larger, new Town Hall. First, it was thought that the old Town Hall looked to shabby to serve as a representative building of a powerful, prosperous city like Amsterdam. Second, the building burst at its seams: it was simply too small to house all of the city’s administrative and financial matters. It was to be demolished, but fire broke out in 1652, and the building burnt to the ground.
In this wonderful painting by Pieter Saenredam, the Old Town Hall was meticulously recorded. Saenredam was primarily a church painter (see my post of March 19, 2011), but he also depicted some famous public buildings. Saenredam always started out by making very precise sketches on site, which he later incorporated into a painting.
In this case the process took very long: while his drawings date back to 1641, the canvas was not finished before 1657, five years after the building burnt down. Thanks to Saenredam’s efforts, we still have a rather faithful impression of what the old Town Hall looked like.