Interior of the St Odulphuskerk in Assendelft, Seen from the Choir to the West

The support is a horizontally grained oak plank bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1621. The panel could have been ready for use by 1632, but a date in or after 1638 is more likely. The smooth ground layer, visible along the edges, is pinkish. Infrared reflectography revealed a detailed, linear underdrawing, transferred from a preliminary construction drawing by indentation. The design was coloured in a limited palette of grey, beige and ochre, leaving much of the underdrawn architectural lines exposed. The inscription along the lower edge of the tomb at centre right was overpainted by the artist and replaced by the inscription on the left. The paint was generally applied thickly and opaquely. Impasto was used to suggest texture and for the modelling of details. The figures, predominantly executed in black, were included during the painting process.

Van Asperen de Boer 1971, pp. 25-26

Fair. There is tenting paint throughout, particularly in the lower half of the painting. Retouchings in the tile floor and the pews are discoloured, and there is a loss in the figure by the left side of the door in the background.

...; sale, J.V.D.H. (†), Zoeterwoude, near Leiden (P. de Bruyn), 11 September 1776, no. 79 (‘P. Saenredam, 1649, 2 October. De Kerk te Assendelft van binne te zien, terwyl ’er gepredikt word voor eenige Toehoorders, benevens de Tombe of Begraavplaats vande Heeren tot Assendelft, [...] op penneel, hoog 19½, breet 29 duim’ [50 x 74.5 cm]);...; sale, Jeronimo de Bosch III (1740-1811), Amsterdam (J. Yver et al.), 6 April 1812, no. 51 (‘De Kerk te Assendelft van binnen. [...] door P.J. Saenredam. Hoog 20, breed 29 duim [51.4 x 74.5 cm.] Paneel’), fl. 131, to the dealer Jeronimo de Vries, Amsterdam;¹¹Copy RKD. from whom, fl. 600, to Adriaan van der Hoop, Amsterdam, 17 January 1848;²²Van der Hoop Lijst, p. 38, no. 235: ‘Van den Heer J:o de Vries overgenomen eene voorstelling van de kerk te Assendelft, door P. Saenredam; en is dit Schilderij geteekend door hem, met het jaartel 1649, zijnde zeer helder en fijn uitgewerkt; voor de Som van ... 600’. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam with the rest of his collection, 1854;³³Van der Hoop Taxatie 1854, p. 2, no. 235: ‘Gezigt in de kerk te Assendelft, fl. 100’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885 ⁴⁴Provenance reconstructed in Pollmer 2004, p. 172, no. 154.

ObjectNumber: SK-C-217

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

This subtly coloured painting is one of the high points in Saenredam’s oeuvre.⁷⁷See Amsterdam 2004, p. 116, for the history of its critical reception. It shows the sober interior of the late-Gothic St Odulphuskerk in Assendelft, the village in the province of North Holland where Saenredam was born.⁸⁸See Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 15-27, on Assendelft, and Vermeulen 1920, pp. 178-79, on the St Odulphuskerk. On the right is the tomb of the lords of Assendelft.⁹⁹Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 15-16, 76. In the foreground, to the right of centre, is the tombstone of the engraver Jan Saenredam (c. 1565-1607), the artist’s father. That stone is the only surviving part of the church, which was demolished in 1852.¹⁰¹⁰Assendelft, Oudheidkundige Kamer; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 95, fig. 104; see pp. 97-99 for the tombstone and other details.

Saenredam painted this church at least four times, the earliest work being dated 1634,¹¹¹¹Present whereabouts unknown. This was probably the 1634 ‘Church sermon by Saenredam’ (‘Preek in de kerk van Saenredam’) that C. Hofstede de Groot assessed for the art dealer P. de Boer in 1928, about which he noted: ‘Exactly like the much later piece in Turin’ (‘Precies zoo als ’t veel latere stuk in Turijn’); RKD, Hofstede de Groot notes. That painting was probably identical with the painting auctioned the year before at the sale of the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston et al. (section Richard Waldie-Griffith, Bart.), London (Christie’s et al.), 22 December 1927, no. 62. and the last 1655.¹²¹²Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 227, fig. 241. There is an undated work in Turin.¹³¹³Galleria Sabauda; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 93, fig. 100. The views in St Odulphus’s are the only painted church interiors by Saenredam in which a service is being held.¹⁴¹⁴A service is also taking place in a print of the interior of St Bavo’s by Jan van de Velde after a design by Saenredam; see Hollstein XXXIII, 1989, p. 137, no. 426; illustrated in Hollstein XXXIV, 1989, p. 228. See Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 98, for speculation about the preacher’s identity.

Like so many of Saenredam’s paintings, this work of 1649 went through a long gestation period. The artist used a construction drawing made six years earlier (fig. a),¹⁵¹⁵Swillens in Utrecht 1961, pp. 64-65, no. 21. which in turn was based on a preliminary study made nine years before that (fig. b).¹⁶¹⁶Swillens in Utrecht 1961, p. 64, no. 20; for the preliminary study see also Schapelhouman in coll. cat. Amsterdam 1979, pp. 112-13. The construction drawing was transferred to the ground of the panel by indentation.

Along the lower edge of the tomb there is an almost illegible inscription in which Saenredam described the subject of the painting and added his signature and the date. He himself overpainted this inscription, which is almost identical to the one on the pew on the left. He may have decided to move it in order to spread the inscriptions more evenly over the composition.

Several authors have noted that Saenredam toned down some of the Gothic details seen in the preliminary study.¹⁷¹⁷Vermeulen 1920, pp. 184-86; Liedtke 1975, p. 146, note 8; Keyl 1986, p. 55, note 6. The lancet arches in the drawing, for instance, have become round-headed in the painting. Vermeulen, who demonstrated that the St Odulphuskerk was largely rebuilt between 1642 and 1644, suggested that these modifications may have been the result of structural changes.¹⁸¹⁸Vermeulen 1920, p. 186. However, Liedtke’s hypothesis that alterations of this kind by Saenredam were prompted by his preference for classicist architecture is more plausible.¹⁹¹⁹Liedtke 1975, p. 146, note 8. See De Jongh 1973 for the way in which Gothic architecture was appreciated in the 17th century.

There is reason to believe that one of the interiors of St Odulphus’s was not intended for sale. Saenredam’s grandson Pieter Vermeulen owned two of his paintings, one of which was of the church in Assendelft, which he bequeathed to his nephew Pieter van Dielen on 17 December 1718.²⁰²⁰Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 310. The tentative suggestion made by Schwartz and Bok that this was the painting now in the Rijksmuseum is very tempting, given the prominence of the tombstone.²¹²¹See Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 99. The stone is missing in the other known versions.

The figures in the painting in Turin mentioned above are traditionally attributed to Saenredam’s fellow townsman Adriaen van Ostade, and several authors have also associated the staffage in the Rijksmuseum work with Van Ostade.²²²²Coll. cat. 1887, p. 149; coll. cat. 1960, p. 274; Swillens 1935, p. 53; Martin I, 1935, p. 281; Gudlaugsson 1954, p. 66, note 14. However, there can be no doubt that Saenredam painted them himself, as Plietzsch and Giltaij have already pointed out.²³²³Plietzsch 1960, p. 122; Giltaij in Rotterdam 1991, p. 113. The brushstrokes of the top layer of paint in the background definitely go around the outlines of the figures. This is most clearly visible in the vicinity of the standing preacher. One striking feature of Saenredam’s figures, apart from their rather sketchy nature and the dark colours, is the almost complete absence of cast shadows.²⁴²⁴See also the figures in SK-A-1189.

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. 262.

Swillens in Utrecht 1961, pp. 62-63, no. 19; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 76, 98-99, 255, no. 19; Giltaij in Rotterdam 1991, pp. 113-15, no. 16; Amsterdam 2004, p. 116; Pollmer 2004, p. 172, no. 154, with earlier literature

1885, p. 100, no. 130; 1887, p. 149, no. 1261 (figures by Adriaen van Ostade); 1903, p. 235, no. 2100; 1934, p. 254, no. 2100; 1960, p. 274, no. 2100 (figures possibly by Adriaen van Ostade); 1976, p. 492, no. C 217; 2007, no. 262

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, Interior of the St Odulphuskerk in Assendelft, Seen from the Choir to the West, 1649-10-02', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5351