The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam

The support is an oak panel consisting of two horizontally grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1633. The panel could have been ready for use by 1644, but a date in or after 1650 is more likely. The lower plank is from the same tree as Saenredam’s undated Interior of St Janskerk in Utrecht, now in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. The panel was primed with a thin, off-white ground layer. Infrared reflectography revealed an extensive and precise underdrawing with lines that appear to have been ruled. The design was subsequently coloured in carefully in pastel colours, leaving the underdrawing visible. There is a modification in the tower, where a vertical line was not followed in the paint layer. The paint was applied thinly. Brushstrokes are visible, especially in the cobbled paving-stones and in the clouds, were they were used for modelling. Details such as the roof-tiles and the windowpanes were added with a fine brush. In the final stage, rather coarse, opaque patches were applied on the roof of the main building and on the paving-stones, covering the fine lines of the details. The two figures sitting in the building on the right, were anticipated in the underdrawing. The other figures were painted on top of the background.

Van Asperen de Boer 1971, p. 30, note 4; Giltaij 2000, pp. 39-44; Van Heemstra in Utrecht-Los Angeles 2000-02, p. 89

Fair. The panel join, along which there is some cupped paint, is slightly fragile. There is discoloured and matte retouching along the panel join, the edges, in the sky at upper left and in the pavement at lower left.

From the artist, fl. 400, to the treasurers of the City of Amsterdam, Johan Huijdecoper and Dr Nicolaes Tulp, for the burgomasters of Amsterdam, through the mediation of Karel Godin, 30 July 1658;¹¹Annotations by the artist on a drawing in Haarlem, Teylers Museum; Plomp in Haarlem 1997, p. 367. first mentioned in the Burgomasters’ Chamber of the new town hall, Amsterdam, 1663;²²Dapper 1663, p. 370. temporarily stored with three other paintings from the town hall in the house of Jan Spaan, 1808;³³Brugmans 1913, pp. 59-60 transferred to the Burgomasters’ Chamber of the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam;⁴⁴Scheltema 1879, p. 38. on loan to the museum from the City of Amsterdam since 1945

ObjectNumber: SK-C-1409

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

Saenredam painted relatively few exteriors.⁷⁷Cf. the three views of the Mariakerk in Utrecht that he made between 1659 and 1663; on which see Rotterdam 1991, pp. 145-55. In other respects, too, this portrait of the old town hall done in light tints is exceptional in his oeuvre. It is the only painting with an Amsterdam subject, and one of the few works to feature a building other than a church.⁸⁸Cf. the unsigned Town Hall of Haarlem with the Entry of Prince Maurits, private collection; illustrated in Schwartz/Bok 1990, p. 59, fig. 60. According to an inscription on a drawn copy of 1749, Saenredam painted that work in 1630.

The subject of this painting is the old town hall on Dam Square.⁹⁹See Fremantle 1959, pp. 19-24, for the history of the building, and Middelkoop 2001 for other depictions of it. The original building was probably largely or totally rebuilt after a fire in 1452. The square structure just to the left of centre is the tribunal, where justice was administered.¹⁰¹⁰Fremantle 1962, pp. 207-10. Just visible above the wooden railings under the arcade are the feet of four wooden statues of counts of Holland that crowned the fencing.¹¹¹¹Those sculptures are now in the Rijksmuseum; coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 73-74, nos. 42a-d (ill.). The three-storey building on the right housed the Exchange Bank, the Orphans’ Chamber, the Insurance Chamber, and other offices. The Burgomasters’ Chamber was on the ground floor beneath the square tower. The street on the left is Gasthuissteeg with St Elizabeth’s Hospital, which was added to the town hall complex in 1492. The latter went up in flames on 7 July 1652, when work on the new town hall (now the Royal Palace) behind the old building was in full swing.

There is no known construction drawing.¹²¹²Giltaij (in Rotterdam 1991, p. 140) says that Saenredam does not appear to have made any construction drawings for his exteriors. See also Giltaij 2000, pp. 39-44. As the artist states in the inscription on the step in the centre, the Rijksmuseum painting is based on a drawing of 1641 in pen and watercolour.¹³¹³GAA; illustrated in Rotterdam 1991, p. 141, fig. 1. That sheet is characteristic of Saenredam’s meticulousness and diligence. He worked on it for no fewer than six days, from 15 to 20 July 1641, ‘being assiduously occupied with it from morning till evening’, as he himself noted on a sketch after the drawing (fig. a).¹⁴¹⁴Plomp in coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 367: ‘(...) van smorgens tot savonts naerstich daer aen besigh weesende’. He gave the correct date on which the building burned down (7 July 1652) on both his ‘neat drawing’ and the drawn copy,¹⁵¹⁵See Levie 1966 for drawings of the burned-out town hall by Rembrandt and J.A. Beerstraten. so it is strange that someone who was otherwise so precise should give the year as 1651 on this painting.

In 1641, when Saenredam made his drawing, the medieval town hall was in a very dilapidated state. Plans for a new building were already being prepared, and since Saenredam’s friend Jacob van Campen was commissioned to design it, the Haarlem artist must have known about the building plans. It is possible that he wanted to document the old building before it lost its function as the town hall.¹⁶¹⁶See Bakker 1988 for Saenredam’s interest in history and topography. Whether he was already planning to make a painting for the new town hall, as suggested by Schwartz and Bok,¹⁷¹⁷Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 189-90; see also p. 331, note 5, where they assume that Jacob van Campen was involved in this plan. is very open to question, given the long interval between the drawing and the painting. It was not until 1657, 16 years after completion of the drawing, that Saenredam used the sheet for a painting. On 30 July 1658 he sold it to the burgomasters of Amsterdam for 400 guilders. It was agreed that it would hang in the Burgomasters’ Chamber in the new town hall.¹⁸¹⁸Details about the sale are known thanks to annotations Saenredam made on his sketch in Haarlem, Teylers Museum; Plomp in coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 367. It was later given a companion piece in the form of a 1667 view of the new town hall by Jacob van der Ulft.¹⁹¹⁹That painting was presented to the city of New York in 1945, and now hangs in Stuyvesant High School, New York City; see coll. cat. Amsterdam 1975/79, p. 324, no. 447 (it is possible that the date should be read as 1663); illustrated in Middelkoop 2001, p. 157, fig. 5.

Saenredam’s portrait of the old town hall was famed among his contemporaries, and was praised by countless writers of his day and later, among them Arnold Houbraken.²⁰²⁰See Literature. Various prints, drawings and painted copies were made after it.²¹²¹See, for instance, the copy with many figures by Jacob van der Ulft in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum; coll. cat. Amsterdam 1975/79, pp. 323-24, no. 446; illustrated in Middelkoop 2001, p. 154, fig. 2. See also p. 169, note 5. The 18th-century engraver Anthonie van den Bosch made a print after Saenredam’s painting, and 19th-century auction catalogues list drawn copies by A. de Frey, G. Hulseboom, G. Lamberts and J. Buys. The ebony frame recorded as being around Saenredam’s portrait of the old town hall in an 18th-century description, is now lost, but the painting was recently given a new profiled black frame.²²²²Wagenaar II, 1765, p. 54; see also De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 39.

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. 263.

Dapper 1663, p. 370; Rixtel 1669, p. 42; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 175; Van Dyk 1758, pp. 111-12 (as dated 1651); Wagenaar II, 1765, p. 54; Fokke 1808, pp. 82-83; De Vries 1841, p. 8 (as dated 1651); Swillens in Utrecht 1961, pp. 54-56, no. 13; Schwartz/Bok 1990, pp. 189-92, 242, 244, 254, no. 13; Giltaij in Rotterdam 1991, pp. 139-43, no. 23, with earlier literature

1960, pp. 273-74, no. 2099 A 1; 1976, p. 492, no. C 1409; 2007, no. 263

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam, 1657', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5352