The Nave and Choir of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the West

The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks. The top, bottom and left sides are bevelled, but only slightly along the left edge. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1625. The panel could have been ready for use by 1636, but a date in or after 1642 is more likely. The panel was primed with a thin, off-white, chalk ground layer. Infrared reflectography revealed that the panel was squared for transfer. It also revealed a detailed underdrawing in which several corrections were made. Paint samples show that gold leaf was used for the tapestries. The samples also revealed a lead-white paint layer under the gilding, and red, yellow and brown glazes, consisting of red lake, yellow lake and bone black, on top. The patterns in the tapestries were created by scratching into the paint with a fine point or the butt end of the brush, exposing the underlying metallic layer. The paint was applied quite smoothly, and more thickly along the contour lines, with visible brushmarks in the impasted details. The figures were painted on top of the background.

Van Asperen de Boer 1971, p. 30, note 4; Lammertse 1987, pp. 84-88; Ruurs 1987, p. 77; Van Heemstra 2000, pp. 82-84

Fair. The panel joins are slightly open along the top. The painting has a long history of flaking. There is much retouching, especially in the column on the right and along the bottom edge. The blue paint of the dresses of the women on the left has become transparent. The uneven varnish layer has discoloured, and is matte at lower right.

? Commissioned by or for Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), Plein, The Hague; ? his son, Constantijn Huygens II (1628-97), with the house on Plein, The Hague;¹¹Leerintveld 1988, p. 100. ? his son, Constantijn Huygens III (1674-1704), with the house on Plein, The Hague;²²Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. ? his mother, Susanna Rijckaert (1642-1712), with the house on Plein, The Hague;³³Leerintveld 1988, p. 101 ? her sister-in-law, Susanna Huygens (1637-1725), with the house on Plein, The Hague;⁴⁴Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. her sale, Voorhout, The Hague, sold on the premises, 6 November 1725, no. 83 (‘Noch een Perspectieff door den zelve, verbeeldende de Sta. Maria Kerk te Utrecht, van binnen te zien, drie voet tien duim en een half hoog, drie voet en een half duim breedt’), ? bought in; ? her daughter, Philippina Doublet (1672-1746), wife of Constantijn Huygens IV (1675-1739), with the house on Plein, The Hague;⁵⁵Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. ? her daughter, Susanna Louisa Huygens (1714-85), with the house on Plein, The Hague;⁶⁶Leerintveld 1988, p. 103. ? purchased by Jacob Verheije van Citters (1753-1823), with the house on Plein, 12 February 1787;⁷⁷Leerintveld 1988, p. 106. purchased by Jonkheer Johannes Goldberg (1763-1828), with the house on Plein, The Hague, 15 April 1800;⁸⁸Van der Haagen 1928, p. 37. description of his house on Plein, The Hague, 1827, as ‘het inwendige der Mariakerk te Utrecht, door P. Saanredam’;⁹⁹Transcribed in Van der Muelen 1889, p. 76. purchased by the State, with the house on Plein, The Hague, 5 January 1829;¹⁰¹⁰Van der Muelen 1889, p. 72. transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 115), 1874; transferred to the museum, February 1885; on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, February 1924-17 July 1936

ObjectNumber: SK-A-851

This large interior of the nave and choir of the Mariakerk in Utrecht is one of Saenredam’s most ambitious works. The gold brocade imitation tapestries on the piers make it more colourful than many of his church interiors, which are generally done in a more muted palette.¹³¹³Saenredam used gold leaf for the tapestries; see Van Heemstra 2000, pp. 82-88. See also the entry on SK-A-359. Two women and a man on the left draw the viewer’s eye to the relief of a bull. That relief, which is attributed to the Utrecht artist and canon Jan van Scorel, is now in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.¹⁴¹⁴Illustrated in Schwartz 1966, p. 17, fig. 2. The inscription below the relief alludes to the construction of the church, the foundations of which supposedly rest on bulls’ hides.¹⁵¹⁵On this see Schwartz 1966, pp. 69-77; Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 149.

The subject of this work is related to that of Saenredam’s equally lavishly decorated, 1638 interior of the same church in Braunschweig.¹⁶¹⁶Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; illustrated in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 113. There, too, a group of two women and a man stand in front of the relief, although they are not as prominent as in the Amsterdam painting. According to Gudlaugsson, the figures in the Amsterdam and Braunschweig paintings, as well as in a few others by Saenredam, are the work of the painter and architect Pieter Post. This suggestion has been accepted by several other authors.¹⁷¹⁷Gudlaugsson 1954, p. 68. See also Schwartz 1966, pp. 78-79, note 20; Liedtke in Turner 1996, p. 509. There is no evidence to support the view of Gudlaugsson and Schwartz that the figure group in the Braunschweig church interior was not added until the 1640s, in other words after the one in the Amsterdam painting. However, this attribution of the staffage to Post is not very convincing. Plomp, one of the few to reject Gudlaugsson’s theory, demonstrated that one of those attributions, at least, was incorrect.¹⁸¹⁸Plomp 2000, pp. 63-65, note 34.

The preliminary study for the painting in the Rijksmuseum, dated 9 July 1636, is in Edinburgh (fig. b).¹⁹¹⁹Andrews in coll. cat. Edinburgh 1975, I, pp. 73-74, no. RSA 525. See also De Groot in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 150-52. The drawing shows the interior from a slightly wider and lower angle than the painting. No construction drawing has survived. Examination with infrared reflectography in 1970 revealed a grid pattern on the ground (fig. a).²⁰²⁰Van Asperen de Boer 1971, p. 30, note 4. This shows that Saenredam departed from his usual practice of indenting his construction drawing, but instead drew the composition on a different scale.²¹²¹He used the same or a similar method for other paintings, too; see Van Heemstra 2000, pp. 75-76.

The work described here is one of the three paintings by Saenredam that in 1725 were hanging in the house occupied in the 17th century by Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), the private secretary to the stadholder in The Hague.²²²²See Provenance. This, combined with the fact that Huygens and Saenredam were in touch with each other, and that in 1649 Huygens wrote a four-line poem in which he referred to the inscription below the relief of the bull, makes it likely that he was the first owner of the painting.²³²³Muller 1902, p. 201; Martin I, 1935, p. 281. As the patron, Huygens may also have had a say in the iconography, as Schwartz has argued.²⁴²⁴See Schwartz 1966, pp. 79, 81, note 22; for a detailed description of the iconography see Schwartz 1966, pp. 78-85. Jacob van Campen, a friend of Saenredam’s and the architect of Huygens’s house, may have acted as intermediary.²⁵²⁵For Van Campen’s possible involvement see Broos in coll. cat. The Hague 2004a, p. 122.

On the pier in the right foreground are several children’s drawings of women and a walking bird, done in various colours. Similar drawings are found in a few other paintings by Saenredam: two interiors of St Bavo’s in Haarlem dated 1636,²⁶²⁶Zürich, Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle, and Paris, Fondation Custodia; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 123, fig. 135, p. 124, fig. 136. and a painting of the Buurkerk in Utrecht dated 1644.²⁷²⁷London, The National Gallery; illustrated in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 202. It is unclear how these scribbles should be interpreted, and the speculations by Alpers and others vary.²⁸²⁸Alpers 1983, pp. 176-77. For a summary of the discussion see Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 200-04; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 155-56, note 12, pp. 201-03, note 6.

In 1827 this painting was being used as an overdoor.²⁹²⁹Van der Muelen 1889, p. 76. There is no documentary evidence that it had ever been an overmantel, as asserted by Hofstede de Groot (1899b, p. 3) and other authors. This probably entailed altering its dimensions, for some time after entering the museum it was found to have been enlarged at the top and on the left. Those additions, which were already present in 1827, were removed during conservation in 1959.³⁰³⁰See Swillens 1935, fig. 133, for a reproduction of the painting before conservation. The larger size may explain the remark by Muller (1902, p. 201) that he did not understand why Huygens had chosen this ‘sombre and rather dry painting’. Since the dimensions of the work in the sale of 1725 match the present ones, the additions must have been made after that date.³¹³¹Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 153.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 260.

Swillens in Utrecht 1961, pp. 209-11, no. 149; Schwartz 1966, pp. 78-85; Lammertse 1987, pp. 84-88; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 149, 154, 190, 200, 282, no. 149; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 153-56, no. 22, with earlier literature

1887, p. 149, no. 1260; 1903, p. 235, no. 2099; 1960, p. 273, no. 2099; 1976, pp. 491-92, no. A 851; 2007, no. 260

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, The Nave and Choir of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the West, 1641-01-29', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5350