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Pieter Jansz Saenredam (artist) Dutch, 1597 - 1665 Cathedral of Saint John at 's-Hertogenbosch, 1646 oil on panel Overall: 128.9 x 87 cm (50 3/4 x 34 1/4 in.) framed: 168.3 x 127 cm (66 1/4 x 50 in.) Samuel H. Kress Collection 1961.9.33 On View |
Saenredam's paintings are almost always church interiors in which the luminous and balanced treatment of the architecture has the elegance of an abstract design. In this painting Saenredam not only gives an apparently accurate portrayal of the details of the Cathedral of Saint John, but creates a unified feeling of spaciousness and light. The town of 's-Hertogenbosch, near the Dutch-Flemish border, became part of the United Provinces in 1629, only three years before Saenredam visited it. Thus the cathedral, unlike other Dutch churches, still retained the decorations associated with Catholic ceremony, notably the elaborate black and white baroque altar with its statues of the Virgin and Child and Saint John, and the memorial tablets to the Habsburg rulers Philip II and Albert of Austria that hang above the altar.
Saenredam subtly changed proportions of columns and arches to enhance our sense of the soaring quality of the architecture. The painting of the Adoration of the Magi on the high altar had been made for another church in Utrecht by Abraham Bloemaert. Saenredam had depicted it because the altarpiece in the cathedral had been removed before Saenredam visited Utrecht in 1632. In Saenredam's drawing of the apse one sees that a curtain hung over the altar at that time. Sacnredam's portrayal of 1646 is thus an imaginative reconstruction of the church.