Pieter Jansz Saenredam

The Transept of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the Northeast

1637

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, upper left:Pr Saenredam. Pinxit Anno 1637
  • inscription, on the reverse:Pieter [..]enredam [...]ssendelf [...] (N[...] / Harlem 166[.] (Mort) / Eleve de Frans Grebber(Pieter [..]enredam [...]ssendelf [...] (N[...] Haarlem 166[.] (Death) Pupil of Frans de Grebber)

Technical notes

The support is an oak panel consisting of two horizontally grained planks and is bevelled on the left and right. The planks are held together with a butt join aligned with a dowel, which is visible on the bevelled right side of the panel. The off-white ground is thin and smooth. A detailed underdrawing of the architecture, transferred from a preliminary construction drawing by indentation, is visible to the naked eye. Infrared reflectography revealed that originally a choir screen and an imitation tapestry were planned. Microscopic investigation showed that both the choir screen and the tapestry were already executed in paint, and in the case of the tapestry, in gold leaf and a red glaze, before they were overpainted. The paint was applied quite smoothly, and is thicker along the contour lines. The figures were painted on top of the background.

Scientific examination and reports

  • infrared reflectography: J.R.J. Van Asperen de Boer / R. Ruurs / F. Lammertse, RMA, 5 december 1983
  • technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 22 september 2004

Literature scientific examination and reports

Lammertse 1987, pp. 80-84

Condition

Fair. There is tenting paint in the column on the right. The paint layers are abraded, and retouching is visible at the right and along the panel join. The varnish has discoloured.

Conservation

  • J.A. Hesterman, 1911: loose paint in numerous areas consolidated
  • W. Hesterman, 1972: paint layers consolidated; stains retouched

Provenance

...; from Mr Calmette, Cahors, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 1136), 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885; on loan to the Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, 1992-2001

ObjectNumber: SK-A-858

The artist

Biography

Pieter Jansz Saenredam (Assendelft 1597 - Haarlem 1665)

Pieter Jansz Saenredam, son of the engraver Jan Pietersz Saenredam and Anna Pauwelsdr, was born on 9 June 1597 in Assendelft. In 1608, a year after his father’s death, he and his mother moved to Haarlem. According to Cornelis de Bie, Saenredam studied painting with Frans Pietersz de Grebber from 1612 till 1622. On 24 April 1623, he joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, in which he played an active role; between 1633 and 1642, he is mentioned as secretary, warden and dean. On 5 December 1638, he married Aefjen Gerrits in Bloemendaal near Haarlem. Their only child, a daughter named Anna, was born in 1639.

Saenredam was acquainted with the architect Jacob van Campen, who was his fellow pupil in De Grebber’s workshop, and with Constantijn Huygens, private secretary to the Dutch stadholder. A portrait of Saenredam drawn by Jacob van Campen in 1628 has led to the speculation that he was hunchbacked, but there is no evidence to support this. Saenredam lived all of his life in Haarlem, but went on sketching tours to other towns, such as ’s-Hertogenbosch (1632), Assendelft (1633, 1634, 1643 and 1654), Alkmaar (1635/38 and 1661), Utrecht (1636), Amsterdam (1641), and Rhenen (1644). On 31 December 1652 he and the Haarlem landscape painter Pieter de Molijn valued a number of paintings. He may also have acted as an art dealer. In 1658 he sold a painting of the Virgin by Jacob van Campen for 300 guilders, and in 1663 he asked 700 guilders for a painting by Pieter van Laer from the French connoisseur Balthasar de Monconys. Saenredam was a successful painter. On 30-31 July 1658 he sold his famous portrayal of the old town hall of Amsterdam for 400 guilders to the city’s burgomasters (SK-C-1409). One of his interiors of the St Bavokerk in Haarlem was included in the Dutch Gift to the English Crown in 1660. Saenredam was buried in St Bavo’s in Haarlem on 31 May 1665.

Saenredam was the first artist to specialize in faithful depictions of actual churches. His early work consists of drawings and designs for prints, some of which were made for Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem. One of those designs is a drawing of 1627 of the interior of St Bavo’s in Haarlem.1Haarlem, Gemeentearchief; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 60. His earliest dated painting is from 1628.2Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 63. From that year onwards, he confined himself to drawing and painting architecture, predominantly church interiors. He depicted churches in Haarlem, Utrecht and several other towns. Between 1629 and 1633 he made three landscape paintings with classical architecture after drawings by Maarten van Heemskerck. Towards the end of his career he painted several exterior views of churches and town halls. Some 60 paintings by Saenredam are known. Two of his pupils were Claes Cornelisz van Assendelft (in 1642) and Jacob van Campen’s nephew Claes Heerman (in 1651).

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

References
Ampzing 1628, p. 372; Schrevelius 1648, p. 381; De Bie 1661, p. 246; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 174; Bredius IV, 1917, p. 1130; Swillens 1935, pp. 1-3, 53-56, 141-43; Miedema 1980, passim; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 301-17 (documents); Liedtke in Turner 1996, pp. 507-11; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 293-98

Entry

Saenredam was in Utrecht from June to October 1636, where he made a series of drawings of seven churches: the Mariakerk, the Buurkerk, the St Jacobskerk, the St Pieterskerk, the cathedral, the St Janskerk, and finally the St Catharinakerk.3Saenredam’s Utrecht period is discussed at length in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02. He was still using those sketches in the 1660s. The earliest dated paintings of Utrecht churches are the present work and one from the same year in Kassel,4Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 139. both of them interiors of the Mariakerk. Saenredam made no fewer than twelve paintings of this church, of which the Rijksmuseum has three.5See also the entries on SK-A-851 and SK-A-1189. On the Mariakerk see Muller 1902.

The composition is based on a preliminary study on paper dated 22 July 1636 that is now in Berlin (fig. a),6For this drawing see Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 163-65, no. 25. although it also contains a few details from a drawing in Rotterdam, dated 7 July 1636 (fig. b).7For this drawing see Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 147; Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 151; De Groot in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 166. No construction drawing is known to have survived. The interior, which follows the drawing faithfully in its close attention to the flaking plaster and the damp-stains on the vaults and the walls, is considerably more austere in the painting than in the preliminary study. The most noticeable omissions are the choir screen of 1543, which was designed by Jan van Scorel, and the imitation tapestry on the central pier and on the arch of the south aisle (cf. SK-A-851). The hatchment and inscription on the right-hand pier have also been eliminated. In addition, the wooden draught screen in the south wall of the transept has been reduced to a side wall and an open door.8For this odd detail with its incorrect perspective see Lammertse 1987, p. 84.

Technical examination has revealed that it was only in a late stage that Saenredam decided to do away with most of these details.9Lammertse 1987, pp. 80-84. The choir screen is still present in the underdrawing on the panel, and the draught screen is articulated in full. Part of the choir screen was actually painted in, as were the imitation tapestries, which had already been executed in gold leaf and red before the artist overpainted them.10Lammertse 1987, p. 89, note 14; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 166. Remarkably, the same process of elimination was applied to the above-mentioned interior of the same church in Kassel, which dates from the same year.11Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 138. Ruurs suggested that the paintings were made for the open market and that the tapestries may have been overpainted at the request of a Protestant purchaser.12Ruurs 1990, p. 336.

It is not always clear whether the staffage in Saenredam’s church interiors is autograph, and here there is even some doubt about the figures in the background. Those in the foreground were quite clearly added by another hand.13This had already been noted by Swillens 1935, p. 54; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 166. Ger Luijten recognized them as being the inventions of the French etcher Jacques Callot.14Oral communication, 2005. Some of these figures do indeed prove to be literal or only slightly modified borrowings from series of costumes and beggars by Callot.15The woman to the left of centre is copied after Meaume 1860, p. 328, no. 683, the two other women after p. 327, nos. 679 and 681, and the beggar with crutches after p. 333, no. 698.

Swillens’s remark that, like the following painting, this one came from the house of Constantijn Huygens, Stadholder Frederik Hendrik’s private secretary,16Swillens 1961, p. 214. has been repeated by other authors.17Schwartz 1966, p. 79, note 21; Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 151; Liedtke in Turner 1996, p. 509. However, Helmus has shown convincingly that this hypothesis is not backed by the facts.18Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 166-68. That supposed provenance was probably due to confusion with the painting The Nave and Choir of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the West (29 January 1641) (SK-A-851).

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. 259.

Literature

Swillens in Utrecht 1961, pp. 213-14, no. 153; Lammertse 1987, pp. 80-84; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 151, 283, no. 153; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 166-68, no. 26, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1886, p. 70, no. 316*; 1887, p. 149, no. 1258; 1903, p. 235, no. 2097; 1934, p. 254, no. 2097; 1960, p. 273, no. 2097; 1976, p. 491, no. A 858; 1992, p. 82, no. A 858; 2007, no. 259

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, The Transept of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the Northeast, 1637', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5348

(accessed 29 June 2025 16:28:05).

Figures

  • fig. a Pieter Saenredam, The Transept of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the Northeast, 1636. Pen in brown, black, white and red chalk on buff paper, 402 x 306 mm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 13863. Photo: bpk/Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Jörg P. Anders

  • fig. b Pieter Saenredam (architecture) and Simon Fokke (figures), The Transept of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the Northeast, 1636. Pen in brown, black, white and red chalk, brush in grey and brown, blue watercolour, 315 x 226 mm. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. no. H 181. Photo: Studio Tromp

Footnotes

  • 1Haarlem, Gemeentearchief; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 60.
  • 2Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 63.
  • 3Saenredam’s Utrecht period is discussed at length in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02.
  • 4Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 139.
  • 5See also the entries on SK-A-851 and SK-A-1189. On the Mariakerk see Muller 1902.
  • 6For this drawing see Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 163-65, no. 25.
  • 7For this drawing see Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 147; Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 151; De Groot in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 166.
  • 8For this odd detail with its incorrect perspective see Lammertse 1987, p. 84.
  • 9Lammertse 1987, pp. 80-84.
  • 10Lammertse 1987, p. 89, note 14; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 166.
  • 11Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 138.
  • 12Ruurs 1990, p. 336.
  • 13This had already been noted by Swillens 1935, p. 54; Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, p. 166.
  • 14Oral communication, 2005.
  • 15The woman to the left of centre is copied after Meaume 1860, p. 328, no. 683, the two other women after p. 327, nos. 679 and 681, and the beggar with crutches after p. 333, no. 698.
  • 16Swillens 1961, p. 214.
  • 17Schwartz 1966, p. 79, note 21; Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 151; Liedtke in Turner 1996, p. 509.
  • 18Helmus in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000/02, pp. 166-68.