National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Cathedral of Saint John at 's-Hertogenbosch
  • Overview
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

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 also creates a unified feeling of spaciousness and light. The town of 's–Hertogenbosch, near the Dutch–Flemish border, became part of the United Provinces, a group of northern Dutch states that were Protestant and seceded from the Catholic south 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 altar’s memorial tablets to the Catholic Habsburg rulers Philip II and Albert of Austria.

Saenredam subtly changed the proportions of columns and arches to enhance our sense of a soaring architecture. Abraham Bloemaert’s Adoration of the Shepherds, depicted on the high altar in Saenredam’s painting, was a work Saenredam had seen elsewhere and inserted in lieu of the altarpiece that had been stripped from the Saint John cathedral during the Reformation. In Saenredam's preparatory drawing of the apse one sees that a curtain actually hung over the altar at that time. Saenredam's portrayal of 1646 is thus an imaginative reconstruction of the church.

Inscription

lower left on choir stall: Ao.1646 / pieter Saenredam dit geschildert / de sintjans kerck in shartogenbosch; center on right escutcheon behind altar: AL.BERTO AVSTRIA CO / 1621 / PATRI PATRIAE / SILVA-DVCIS / DICAT CONSECRAT.; on left escutcheon behind altar: 1598

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

Possibly Pierre Daguerre, Bayonne and Amsterdam, in the early eighteenth century; possibly by inheritance to his daughter, Marie-Anne Daguerre Harader, Itxassou, near Bayonne, mid-18th century; parish church, Itxassou;[1] (D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam), by 1937.[2] J.A.G. Sandberg, Wassenaar; (Wildenstein & Co., New York); sold February 1954 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.

[1] This early provenance was provided by Robert Poupel, Cambo-les-bains, France (letter, 13 June 1970, in NGA curatorial files). He writes that during the seventeenth century Bayonne carried on a thriving sea trade with the Netherlands. Pierre Daguerre, who married Elisabeth de Papenbroeck, the daughter of one of the Dutch settlers in Bayonne, lived for a period in Amsterdam where he acted as the "King's agent in the City of Amsterdam." Poupel believes that Daguerre purchased the painting and then passed it to his daughter Marie-Anne Daguerre. In the 1720s she married Jacques de Harader, squire of Lassale-Vignolles, who owned extensive landed estates at nearby Itxassou. Although no written records exist, he believes that the Daguerre-Harader couple presented the painting to the local parish church.

[2] The painting was lent by Hoogendijk to the 1937-1938 exhibition held in Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

[3] The bill of sale (copy in NGA curatorial files) is dated 10 February 1954, and was for fourteen paintings, including Saenredam's Interior of St. John's Cathedral at Bois-le-Duc; payments by the Foundation continued to March 1957.

Exhibition History

1937
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam 1597-1665, Museum Boymans, Rotterdam; Museum Fodor, Amsterdam, 1937-1938, no. 13, repro.
1954
Dutch Painting in the Golden Age, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Toledo Museum of Art; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1954-1955, no. 74, repro.
1961
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1961, no. 94, repro.

Bibliography

1937
Catalogue schilderijen en tekeningen Pieter Jansz. Saenredam 1597-1665. Exh. cat. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum Fodor, Amsterdam. Rotterdam, 1937-1938: no. 13.
1937
Swillens, P. T. A. "Pieter Saenredam. Eenige nadere bijzonderheden over zijn leven en werken." Historia 3 (1937): 329-335.
1939
Heppner, Arnold. "Saenredam's 'Nieuw Realisme' in de XVIIe eeuw naar aanleiding der tentoonstellingen te Rotterdam en Amsterdam." Maandblad voor beeldende kunsten 16 (1939): 113-119, repro.
1953
Michel, Edouard. Catalogue Raisonné des Peintures: Peintures Flamandes due XVe et du XVIe siècle. Louvre, Paris, 1953: 13.
1954
Dutch Painting, the Golden Age. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. New York, 1954-1955: no. 74.
1956
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Colllection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 160, no. 62, repro.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 324, repro.
1960
Baird, Thomas P. Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1960 (Booklet Number Seven in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 24, color repro.
1960
Plietzsch, Eduard. Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1960: 122-123.
1961
Catalogue Raisonné of the Works by Pieter Jansz. Saenredam.... Exh. cat. Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1961: 140-143, no. 94, pl. 96.
1962
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Treasures from the National Gallery of Art, New York, 1962: 92, color repro.
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 312, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 119.
1966
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:238, color repro.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 107, repro.
1971
Liedtke, Walter A. "Saenredam's Space." Oud Holland 86 (1971): 116-141.
1975
Chiarenza, Carl. "Notes on Aesthetic Relationships Between Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting and Nineteenth-Century Photography." In One Hundred Years of Photographic History. Van Deren Coke, ed. Albuquerque, 1975: 19-34, repro.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 318, repro.
1975
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 298, no. 401, color repro.
1977
Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 142-144, fig. 128, as Choir of St. John's Cathedral, 'S Hertogenbosch.
1977
Pope-Hennessy, John. "Completing the Account." Review of Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, London 1977. Times Literary Supplement no. 3927 (17 June 1977).
1980
Bavel, H. van. "Het Bossche altaar in Heeswijk." Berne 33, no. 2 (15 April 1980): 34-43, repro.
1980
Connell, E. Jane. "The Romanization of the Gothic Arch in Some Paintings by Pieter Saenredam: Catholic and Protestant Implications." Rutgers Art Review 1 (January 1980): 16-35, repro. no. 11.
1983
Heijden, Peter-Jan van der, et al., eds. Ach Lieve Tijd. Zwolle, 1983: 162, repro.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 298, no. 395, color repro.
1984
Wheelock, Jr., Arthur K. Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1984: 20-21, repro.
1985
Baudouin, Frans. "Rubens en de altaartuinen 'van metaal' te 's-Hertogenbosch, 1616-1617." In Rubens and His World. Festschrift Roger Adolf d'Hulst. Antwerp, 1985: 165-169, repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 364, repro.
1987
Lawrence, Cynthia. "Rubens and the Ophovius monument: A new sculpture by Hans van Mildert." The Burlington Magazine 124 (September 1987): 584-588, repro.
1988
Ruurs, Rob. "Un tableau de Pieter Saenredam (1597-1665) au Louvre: Intérieur de l'église Saint-Bavon à Haarlem." La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 38 (1988): 39-42, repro.
1989
Schwartz, Gary, and Marten Jan Bok. Pieter Saenredam: De schilder in zijn tijd. Maarssen and The Hague, 1989: 86, 204-206, color repro., 268 (See also English ed., Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and His Time. Maarssen and The Hague, 1990).
1990
Gaskell, Ivan. "Pieter Jansz. Saenredam and the Great Church of 's-Hertogenbosch." Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 46 (1990): 249-261, repro.
1990
Koldeweij, A. M. In Buscoducis 1450-1629: Kunst uit de Bourgondische tijd te 's-Hertogenbosch de cultuur van late Middelaeuwen en renaissance. Exh. cat. Noordbrabants Museum, 's-Hertogenbosch. Maarssen, 1990: 13, 15, repro., 33, 44, 50.
1992
National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 128, color repro.
1995
Wheelock, Jr., Arthur K. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 353-359, color repro. 355.
2004
Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 211, no. 166, color repro.

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