Cathedral of Saint John at 's-Hertogenbosch

1646

Pieter Jansz Saenredam

Artist, Dutch, 1597 - 1665

From floor level, we look toward a semicircular apse of a window-lined, light-filled church in this vertical painting. We are situated near the left wall, so we look along that wall into the apse, where there is a painting set in an elaborate frame over an altar. Soaring above us, the cream-white walls are divided into three zones, with arched openings at the bottom level, a narrow, shallow walkway above, and a row of tall, arched windows at the top. Vertical, rose-pink ribs between the windows in the top level converge just off the top center of the painting, in a curved, ribbed vault. Five tall windows line the semicircular apse, and two windows in the hall-like nave that we stand in extends to the right and off the edge of the composition. The sky beyond is powder blue with soft, billowing clouds. In the middle, clerestory level below the windows, two dark brown tapestries hang over two of the openings above the altar. There are square, brown pennants on long rods at each of the upper corners, and lighter brown shapes on the tapestries could be coats of arms. One tapestry is dated 1598 and the other 1621. The latter is inscribed with “ALBERTO AVSTRIA CO” and “PATRI PATRIAE SILVA DVCIS DICAT CONSECRAT.” On our level, the lowest level, more light-filled windows peek out from an outer wall that runs behind the arched openings. Stone sculptures of men and women, painted in the same creamy tones as the walls, stand on shallow platforms high on the face of the columns separating the openings. Along the floor, wooden choir stalls are tucked between the columns. The slate-gray floor has brick-red and putty-gray squares and rectangles set at irregular intervals. At the end of the apse, across from us, the stone-gray altar is covered with lace-edged cloths, four tall candlesticks, and two pots of flowers. Above it, the painting is about as tall as the windows around it. It is flanked by a pair of columns marbled with carnation pink and white to each side, and is set into brown and white architectural framework. The painting shows people and cattle gathered around an infant in a manger, with angels floating above. Near or above the choir stall to our left, a solitary, bald man wearing a voluminous white garment kneels facing away from us, looking toward the altar. The artist inscribed the painting with his name, date, and location as if written on the end of the choir stall to our left: “Ao 1646 pieter Saenredam dit geschildert de sintjans kerck in shartogenbosch.”

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Pieter Saenredam specialized in the painting of church interiors characterized by a luminous and detailed treatment of the architecture that carries the elegance of abstract design. In this portrayal of the fifteenth-century Cathedral of Saint John, an inscription on the choir stall in the lower left corner identifies the subject and dates the picture 1646. Saenredam seems to provide an accurate rendering of the spacious and light-filled interior; yet the relationship of this image to the actual site is quite complicated.

In 1629 ’s-Hertogenbosch had been recaptured by the rebel forces of the United Provinces; as a result, the cathedral became a site of Protestant worship and was stripped of all objects associated with Catholic liturgy, including the stained-glass windows. On July 1, 1632, Saenredam visited the church and made four drawings of its interior. One of these shows the whitewashed vaulted ceiling, the elaborate black-and-white baroque altar with statues of the Virgin and Child with Saint John, a curtain where the altarpiece used to be, and the memorial tablets to the Habsburg rulers Philip II and Albert of Austria above the altar. A second drawing depicts the baroque tomb of Gisbertus Masius, a former bishop of ’s-Hertogenbosch, with a life-size effigy of Masius kneeling in front of an altar.

Saenredam did not create this painting until 1646, and in it he altered the reality of the church’s appearance at the time. Not only did he slightly change the proportions of columns and arches to enhance the soaring quality of the Gothic architecture, but he also inserted Abraham Bloemaert’s 1612 painting of the Adoration of the Shepherds on the high altar, a work that actually graced a nearby convent. Priests leaving for exile in the southern Netherlands had carted away the cathedral’s original altarpiece, God with Christ and The Virgin as Intercessors, 1615, also by Bloemaert. Saenredam included the kneeling sculpture of Bishop Masius on the left hand side of the painting, which likely was created at the request of a Catholic patron. Through all of these changes Saenredam resurrected the cathedral as a place of Catholic worship at a time when it had become a Protestant church.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 47

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    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.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.33

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Cathedral of Saint John at 's-Hertogenbosch, 1646

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Artwork history & notes

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, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/459) 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.

Associated Names

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

  • Swillens, P. T. A. "Pieter Saenredam. Eenige nadere bijzonderheden over zijn leven en werken." Historia 3 (1937): 329-335.

  • Hannema, Dirk. Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, 1597-1665: schilderijen en tekeningen. Exh. cat. Museum Boymans, Rotterdam; Museum Fodor, Amsterdam. Rotterdam, 1937: no. 13.

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 du XVe et du XVIe siècle. Éditions des Museés nationaux. Paris, 1953: 13.

1954

  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dutch Painting, the Golden Age: an Exhibition of Dutch Pictures of the Seventeenth Century. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Haarlem, 1954: no. 74.

1956

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection 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

  • National Gallery of Art. Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Washington, 1959: 324, repro.

1960

  • Plietzsch, Eduard. Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1960: 122-123.

  • Baird, Thomas P. Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art 7. Washington, 1960: 24, color repro.

1961

  • Houtzager, Maria E., P. T. A. Swillens, and Iohannes Q. van Regteren Altena. 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

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 107, repro.

1971

  • Liedtke, Walter A. "Saenredam’s Space." Oud Holland 86 (1971): 139.

1975

  • Chiarenza, Carl. "Notes on Aesthetic Relationships Between Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting and Nineteenth-Century Photography." In One hundred years of photographic history: essays in honor of Beaumont Newhall. Edited by Van Deren Coke. Albuquerque, 1975: 28.

  • National Gallery of Art. European paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. Washington, 1975: 318, repro.

  • 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.

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. "Completing the Account." Review of Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, London 1977. Times Literary Supplement no. 3,927 (17 June 1977).

1980

  • Bavel, H. van. "Het Bossche altaar in Heeswijk." Berne-Heeswijk 33 (1980): 37, repro.

  • 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): 30, fig. 11.

1983

  • Heijden, Peter-Jan van der, ed. Ach Lieve Tijd: 800 jaar Den Bosch en de Bosschenaren. Translated. Zwolle, 1983: 162, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 298, no. 395, color repro.

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. 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: 167-169, fig. 2.

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. Washington, 1985: 364, repro.

1987

  • Lawrence, Cynthia. "Rubens and the Ophovius monument: a new sculpture by Hans van Mildert." _The Burlington Magazine _ 129, no. 1014 (September 1987): 586-587, fig. 19.

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, fig. 2.

  • Koldeweij, A. M. "Pieter Saenredam had al getekend wat Matthieu Brouerius de Nidek beschreef: het doxaal en de koorbanken in de Sint-Jan te ’s-Hertogenbosch." In Was getekend... tekenkunst door de eeuwen heen : liber amicorum prof. dr. E.K.J. Reznicek. Edited by J. G. C. A. Briels. Houten, 1988: 187, fig. 3.

1989

  • Schwartz, Gary, and Marten Jan Bok. Pieter Saenredam: de schilder in zijn tijd. Translated by Loekie Schwartz. Maarssen and The Hague, 1989: 86, 130, 200, 204, 205 fig. 215, 206, 268, no. 94, 322 n. 25, 323 nn. 33 and 34..

  • Schwartz, Gary, and Marten Jan Bok. Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and His Time. New York, 1989: 86, 130, 200, 204, 205 fig. 215, 206, 268, no. 94, 332 nn. 25, 33, and 34.

1990

  • Koldeweij, A. M. In Buscoducis 1450–1629: Kunst uit de Bourgondische tijd te ‘s-Hertogenbosch de cultuur van late Middeleeuwen en Renaissance. Exh. cat. Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Maarssen, 1990: 13, 15, repro., 33, 44, 50.

  • Gaskell, Ivan. "Pieter Jansz. Saenredam and the Great Church of ’s-Hertogenbosch." _Wolfenbütteler Forschungen_46 (1990): 249-261, fig. 1.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 128, color repro.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1995: 353-359, color repro. 355.

1998

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. A Collector's Cabinet. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998: 68, no. 52.

2000

  • Savedoff, Barbara E. Transforming Images: How Photography Complicates the Picture. Ithaca, 2000: 17, repro.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 211, no. 166, color repro.

2013

  • De Hond, Jan and Janssen, Paul Huys. Pieter Saenredam in den Bosch. Exh. cat., Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch. Eindhoven, 2013: 116-119, no. 118 color fig. [Not in the exhibition.]

2014

  • Wheelock, Arthur K, Jr. "The Evolution of the Dutch Painting Collection." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 50 (Spring 2014): 2-19, repro.

2016

  • Schwartz, Gary. Jheronimus: De wegen naar hemel en hel. Translated by Loekie Schwartz. Hilversum, 2016: 208, color repro.

2020

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Clouds, ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020: 24, fig. 8, 25.

Inscriptions

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

Wikidata ID

Q20177229

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