In the overcrowded art market of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, artists tended to specialize in certain genres or subjects. Among them, Pieter van Saenredam was the unmistakable specialist in the field of church interiors. In fact, Saenredam (1597-1665) was the first to develop this theme into a genre. Not that architectural paintings of churches didn’t exist, but they were either a product of imagination, or they merely served as a background.
Saenredam was mainly interested in the building itself and avoided to show too many details in his paintings. His austere approach fits in with the fact that ever since the Protestant belief had become the state religion, churches in the Netherlands were stripped of all their decorations, which were considered to be improper.
To depict the churches as accurately as possible, Saenredam made use of an almost mathematical working method. He started with drawing guidelines on paper, all leading to one vanishing point, and used this as a grid for a drawing of the whole interior in its correct perspective. He also made sketches and measurements of individual components, such as pillars or windows. After all these preparations, he minutely transferred his drawings onto the panel. Saenredam is one of the few artists of his time that strove for such an exact representation, providing the viewer with a miraculous sense of the space inside the church.
The building depicted here is the St. Odulphus in Assendelft in 1649. This painting must have had special significance for Saenredam, as Assendelft was his hometown. On one of the floor tiles in the foreground one reads the name of Iohannis Saenredam, Pieter’s father, who was buried there in 1607.
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