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

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.

Lammertse 1987, pp. 80-84

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.

...; 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

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.³³Saenredam’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,⁴⁴Staatliche 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.⁵⁵See 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),⁶⁶For 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).⁷⁷For 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.⁸⁸For 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.⁹⁹Lammertse 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.¹⁰¹⁰Lammertse 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.¹¹¹¹Helmus 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.¹²¹²Ruurs 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.¹³¹³This 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.¹⁴¹⁴Oral 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.¹⁵¹⁵The 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,¹⁶¹⁶Swillens 1961, p. 214. has been repeated by other authors.¹⁷¹⁷Schwartz 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.¹⁸¹⁸Helmus 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.

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

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

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