Interior of an Imaginary Gothic Church, Looking East

Peeter Neeffs I (Antwerp c. 1578 - Antwerp 1656-61)

Although Peeter Neeffs (Pieter Neefs or Nefs) I left a considerable body of work – as we now know it chiefly church interiors⁸ – the facts about his life are scarce. He was the third son of Aart Neefs and Margareta Verspreet; his father’s fortunes as a merchant seem to have been badly affected by the Spanish Fury of 1576. Peeter’s date of birth is not known but has been estimated as circa 1578. His mother died in 1582 and his father, after a second marriage, died impoverished in 1609 in Mechelen.

Neeffs was in his twenties when he enrolled as a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1609, but is not recorded in Antwerp as having been an apprentice and so was probably taught elsewhere. The close relationship between his early work and that of Hendrik van Steenwyck II (c. 1580-1649) has recently been clarified by Fusenig.⁹ If, as is probable, Neeffs’s means of establishing the novel, geometrically calculated perspective of his views related to that of Van Steenwyck, it would seem indeed likely that Neeffs was early active in his studio. Fusenig has rejected the Dresden Interior of a Church, which bears a date of 1605, as Neeffs’s earliest work. He charts his activity from 1615, but presumably his legitimate activity in Antwerp began when he became a master, although there are no dated works to prove it. Later Neeffs may have been assisted by his sons Lodewyck (b. 1617) and Peeter (b. 1620); neither was ever registered in the guild, and the latter’s work – at least when working independently – was inferior.

Neeffs relied on other artists to provide the staffage and probably also architectural embellishments. Among his collaborators are notably Frans Francken II (1581-1642) and Frans Francken III (1607-1667), Adriaen van Stalbemt (1580-1662), Bonaventura Peeters I (1614-1652) and possibly his brother Gillis (1612-1653; see SK-A-288), and Jan van den Hecke (1620-1684).¹⁰ He also painted in 1650 the room in which Gonzales Coques (1618-1684) portrayed members of the Antwerp patriciate while other artists contributed the paintings on display.¹¹

In the guild’s accounts of 1612/13 Neeffs was one of nine entrants listed as not having paid their dues in full. His circumstances may have improved by his marriage – in fact – in 1612 to Maria Lauterbiens (or Louterbeens; but spelt by Neeffs Lauterbeins, see the inscription on SK-A-289) whose family owned properties in Antwerp in which Neeffs lived until at least the last years of his life. In the same year Neeffs took on what was to be his only apprentice.

Neeffs was never called on to perform official duties in the guild of St Luke; but an indication of his close to middling social standing is that one of Jan Brueghel I’s daughters acted as godmother to a child born in 1623. Works by Neeffs were in such distinguished Antwerp collections as those of Cornelis van der Geest, 1628, Arnold Lundens, 1639-49, Jeremias Wildens, 1653, and Suzanna Willemssens, 1657.

The Lundens inventory shows that in this instance Neeffs’s work was valued in the lower range of market prices. In the 1650s he was in financial difficulties, as is shown in records concerning his sale of his share of the Lauterbiens’s house in the Hobokenstraat. Mortuary dues to the guild incurred by his wife’s death at this time were unpaid. Although he continued to work (e.g. SK-A-287), his circumstances are obscure and his date of death and place of burial are unknown. That he was dead by 1661 can be inferred by the past tense used by Cornelis de Bie in his brief tribute in Het gulden cabinet.

REFERENCES
F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, II, pp. 608-14; E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, IV, pp. 144, 379, Ibid. V, p. 57, Ibid. VI, p. 492, Ibid. VII, p. 351, and Ibid. IX, p. 3; T. Fusenig, ‘Neeffs und Co. Die Antwerpener Architecturmalerei im frühen 17. Jahrhundert’, in H. Borggrefe and V. Lüpkes (eds.), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Folgen: Ergebnisse des in Kooperation mit dem Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Gdanska durchgeführten internationalen Symposions am Weserrenaissance-Museum Schloss Brake, Marburg 2005 (Studien zur Kultur der Renaissance 3), pp. 143-51; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), I, pp. 454, 487, 493 and Ibid. II, p. 272