Pieter Saenredam in Den Bosch

Pieter

Saenredam in Den Bosch

1. Pieter Saenredam Nave of St. Bavo’s Church, Haarlem with promenading burghers. 1628 (?)

Oils, on panel, 82,9 × 110,5 cm Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art (John G. Johnson Collection)

commissions. In the studio of his master Saenredam formed a long friendship with the Catholic painter/architect Jacob van Campen, who later made a portrait of him (cat.no. 1).

For ten years, from 1612 to 1622, Pieter Saenredam remained with De Grebber. On 24 April 1623 he was registered as an independent master in the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. Initially he followed in the footsteps of his father by specializing in printmaking. He drew maps, topographic images and portraits that were printed by others. From 1627 to 1630 he was mainly working with the Haarlem city printer Adriaen Roman, whom he supplied with twenty sketches that appeared as books, pamphlets or loose sheets. Saenredam also contributed to one of Roman’s most ambitious projects, the third edition of ­Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland (Description and homage to the town of Haarlem in Holland).

The author had already published two previous non-illustrated versions of his city history, but now wished to release a more extensive publication to be enlivened with various prints.5 Above all, the last part of the book also contained an ode written by the historian Petrus Scriverus to Haarlem’s alleged inventor of the book printing press, Laurens Jansz Coster. Six artists collaborated on the book illustrations of which Saenredam accounted for the most with fourteen designs, mostly of maps and topographical views. Again the contributors to the book were of very diverse religious backgrounds: pastor Amp­ zing was a hard-line Calvinist and a strict Counter-Remonstrant, Scriverus was a Remonstrant and the engraver Theodor Matham an outspoken Catholic.

In 1628 Saenredam decided to specialize as an architectural painter. In the words of the biographer Cornelis de Bie: And this finally fully occupied him around 1628, to painting perspectives, churches, chambers, galleries, buildings, and other things both

5. For Samuel Ampzing, see Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, vol. 1, Leiden 1911, cols. 117-119.

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2. Claes Jansz Visscher Map of the siege of Den Bosch 1 May 1629 Engraving, on paper, 740 × 770 mm Den Bosch, Het Noordbrabants Museum

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Once back in Haarlem, Saenredam must have almost immediately worked on the yield of his Bosch campaign because, probably in the same year, he completed a painting of the interior of St. Peter’s Church (cat.no. 15). The drawings of St. John’s Church apparently remained for a time in the portfolio. The large painting of the choir was created only in 1646, fourteen years after the completion of the drawings (cat.no. 16). The full-size construction drawings for both panels have not survived.

A marked city: the impact of 1629 The city Saenredam visited found itself in a turbulent transitional period. The recent history had marked Den Bosch deeply.

After a siege of many months, the city was forced to submit to stadtholder Frederik Hendrik on 14 September 1629. Den Bosch, until then part of the Spanish Netherlands, then became part of the Dutch Republic. This had major consequences, not only on political, economic and religious levels, but also for the prestige of the city. Saenredam’s drawings form a unique visual source for these eventful years in Den Bosch history.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Den Bosch was known as an impregnable fortress. The inhabitants could gladly boast that their city had never been conquered. During the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) the fortifications were further modernized and extended. Den Bosch was then surrounded by a whole system of walls, bastions, ravelins and lunettes. Beyond the city was a line of forts intended to check the advance of the enemy. However the greatest asset of the defenders was inundation: when enemies threatened, the land around the city was

artificially flooded to turn the area into an almost impenetrable swamp. In late April 1629, when Frederik Hendrik besieged the city with 28,000 troops, he was thus confronted with a formidable task. The prince was well prepared despite that. First he had built a defensive wall of more than 40 kilometres to encircle Den Bosch and designed to withstand a possible relief force.

Inside this a second ring-wall was constructed from which galleries and trenches leading to the city walls were built. The surrounding land had first to be drained before all these works could be carried out. Hence, on the advice of the famous engineer Jan Adriaensz Leeghwater, dikes with wind and treadmills were built to pump the surroundings dry (Fig. 2). After a siege of more than four and a half months the State troops succeeded in building a gallery all the way to bastion Vught. Sappers blew up the stronghold in the early hours of 11 September 1629, fatally breaching the defences: the city then lay open for the taking. The capitulation was signed three days later on 14 September.

When Saenredam visited the city in July 1632, the great siege was already more than two and a half years in the past. Yet he must have been constantly confronted with the visible results of the struggle. Den Bosch had been incessantly bombarded for months on end: 28,517 cannonballs and bombs were fired on the city, an average of 252 pieces per day.13 The city accounts show that the city council was engaged for many years in the restoration of the war damage. Workers were paid to carry out work on the city walls, water gates and wall gates, remove stones from the canals and to deepen them, repair dikes and bridges, repair the pavements and to clear churches, chapels and former monasteries and convents of debris.14 The siege of Den Bosch in 1629 had brought about a notable influx of ‘war tourists’. From all over Europe came military experts and interested laymen to admire the famous siege and

13. Glaudemans & van Tussenbroek 1999.

14. See for instance the city accounts from 1629 as given in van Zuijlen 186176, vol. 3, p. 1354 ff.

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3. Unknown artist The siege of Den Bosch with Vught Bastion blown up and the Vughterpoort Situation after 17 September 1629 Oils, on canvas, 58 Ă— 100,5 cm Den Bosch, Het Noordbrabants Museum

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4. Antonie van den Wijngaerde View of Den Bosch from the south. 1540-50 Detail of the Pickepoort or Vughterpoort Pen and watercolour, on paper, 290 × 945 mm Oxford, Ashmolean Museum

defence works. Among them were many artists who recorded the siege on paintings, prints and maps that found eager buyers far beyond the border.15 Although Saenredam had earlier supplied Ampzing with drafts for a bird’s-eye view map of Haarlem during the Spanish siege of 1572-73, he seems not to have been overly interested in the Den Bosch fortifications. They were, in any case, clearly not the main purpose of his trip. Nevertheless, the two drawings that he made of the city and its surroundings still provide interesting information about the state of the Den Bosch fortress in the years immediately after the capitulation. This is particularly the case with the overview drawing of the city seen from the southwest, which he made on 7 July (cat.no. 8). Fort Anthony stands in the centre of this drawing and behind it, the clearly recognizable St. John’s Church. Far left, but right of the mill, lie the ruins of bastion Vught. This is where the State troops finally managed to blow up the city walls (Fig. 3). There is nothing more to see of these on Saenredam’s drawing. The siege works (walls, trenches, galleries, etc.) were demolished immediately after the capitulation. The fear of a Spanish counter-attack was great and Frederik Hendrik wished to prevent enemy troops making use of the State’s siege works. This was also why they immediately began restoring the defence works. On Saenredam’s drawing, the ramparts and bastions with the repaired breaches and breaks seem to be restored to a good state. In reality, in the first years after the siege, the repairs to the walls and bastions were still very provisional in nature. Holes again spontaneously appeared in the city wall in the mid 1630s.

The Pickepoort or Vughterpoort, a ruin on Saenredam’s drawing, was a monumental medieval gate consisting of a main building with four towers and a separate gate with two towers, which was the pride of the city (Fig. 4). Precisely this gate had

15. Den Bosch, 1979.

10. Pieter Saenredam View of Assendelft. 1634 Oils, on panel, 36,2 × 49,2 cm Christie’s, London (3 July 1012, no. 14)

sons, Pieter and Johannes, under their care. Both followed in the footsteps of their father. After studying at the University of Leiden they became pastors: Pieter in Bloemendaal, Johannes initially in Uitgeest and later in Haarlem. Remarkably, some of Junius’ sermons were published posthumously: Zeven Sin ende Spreukrijcke predikatiën (Seven meaningful and sententious sermons) Haarlem 1636, which actually achieved a second edition in 1663. His sermons apparently went down better on paper than from the pulpit.

It is very likely that Pieter Saenredam went to Den Bosch to visit and stay with his second cousin. On 5 July Saenredam made a portrait of Junius (cat.no. 7). It is a sketch for a print which follows on from a series of sketches of pastor portraits that Saenredam had made a few years earlier in Haarlem.46 It is logical to suppose that the print was intended as a frontispiece for the Refutatio Praelectionum Theologicarum Fausto Socini Senensis, the weighty tome against the Socinians that Junius was completing in 1632. No portrait of Junius has been found in the few examples of this very rare work that survive in international libraries.47 The importance of the links between the families Saenredam and De Jonge (Junius) for Pieter Saenredam is also apparent from the fact that he made a journey to Assendelft, the village of his childhood, in the summer of 1634, two years after his Den Bosch campaign. He made the preparatory studies for a village view that has recently been discovered (Fig. 10).48 The panel shows the places that were important for Pieter as a child and that had been directly linked with both families. His father, Jan Saenredam, owned the house at centre with the brick chimney. It was Pieter’s birthplace where he lived until his eleventh year when he and his mother moved to Haarlem. The town hall, the house with the stepped gable to the right, was the former residence of

46. For the portrait drawing of Junius, see De Hond 1999.

47. Enquiries were made about copies of the Refutatio at the British Library in London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek in Sachsen-Anhalt Halle and the Niedersächsische Staats-und

Universitätsbibliothek in Göttingen.

Thanks to Geert-Jan Koot, librarian of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

48. See www.garyschwartzarthistorian. nl/schwartzlist/?is=168, Christie’s auction catalogue, London, 3 July 2012, no. 14.

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11. Pieter Saenredam Crossing and nave of St. Odulphus Church, Assendelft. 1649 Oils, on panel, 50 × 76 cm Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

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Saenredam’s uncle, Pieter de Jonge, sheriff of Assendelft, father of Junius and guardian of Pieter. In 1634, one of his sons, Barend Pietersz de Jonge, was also the sheriff there. In the background stands the St. Odulphus’ Church. His father, Jan Saenredam, was deacon of the Reformed church. At the time of the visit, Cornelis Pietersz de Jonge, another son of sheriff Pieter the Jonge, held the function. Until his calling to Den Bosch, Johannes Junius preached there as the permanent pastor. Saenredam made a stunning interior painting of St. Odulphus’ Church that dates to 1649 but directly stems from studies made in 1634 (Fig. 11). It shows the nave of the church with the chancel from which Junius held his sermons for a few years: perhaps it is he who is portrayed here. In the close foreground lies the tombstone under which Pieter’s father, Jan Saenredam, his uncle and guardian, Pieter de Jonge and his son, Gerard Pietersz de Jonge, are buried. Thus were both families linked even unto death.

Paintings commissioned?

After returning to Haarlem Saenredam made two paintings from the studies he had drawn in Den Bosch: one of the choir of St. Peter’s Church and one of the choir of St. John’s Church.

There is something remarkable about these paintings: they differ in some essential areas from the detailed sketches Saenredam made in situ.

To begin with ‘Choir of the St. Peter’s Church’ (cat. no. 15), Saenredam probably started on this panel immediately after returning to Haarlem because the barely legible date most probably reads as 1632. Comparing the panel with the detailed drawing (cat.no. 12) the first noticeable aspect is that Saenredam

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12. Pieter Saenredam View across the choir of St. Bavo’s Church, Haarlem, with a fictive bishop’s tomb. 1630 Oils, on panel, 41 × 37,5 cm Paris, Musée du Louvre

changed the architecture in the painting. He replaced the smaller Gothic arch in the last bay of the nave with a much larger round arch and omitted the tie rods in the interior. Presumably these adjustments stemmed from aesthetic considerations; the desire of the artist to create a simple intelligible space and an attractive composition. It is also noticeable that his painting depicts the most important Catholic inventory items, the rood loft, the stained-glass windows and the richly decorated wooden vault, but omits the pulpit and baptismal enclosure. Schwartz and Bok presume that reasons of a liturgical, religious nature played a role in his choice. According to them, Saenredam consciously maintained the Catholic elements and chose not to paint the ‘essential pieces of Protestant furniture’.49 This is indeed remarkable, but to speak of a Catholicizing of the St. Peter’s Church goes a little too far in this case. What Saenredam presents on his panel is, at the very least, a decidedly hybrid church interior. First and foremost, the omitted pulpit, as seen earlier, is not Protestant but a Catholic furnishing that had been installed in 1629. The Reformed church solely commissioned the baptismal enclosure.

In addition, although the major Catholic interior pieces are shown, they not always depicted in their original form. For example, the rood loft is clearly dismantled as in the drawing.

Both rood loft altars are cleared away and the sculpture is missing: only the empty niches are to be seen. Thus ‘Choir of the St. Peter’s Church’ has neither a distinctly Catholic, nor distinctly Protestant connotation. Hence from the picture it is difficult to deduce whether the work was made with a Catholic or a Protestant clientele in mind. For true Catholics it remained nevertheless a dismantled church, while strict Reformed church members were vexed by the clearly present Catholic interior pieces (the controversial window of bishop Masius was a particular bone of contention) and the absence of a pulpit. Unfortunately,

49. Schwartz & Bok 1989, p. 96.

there are no known sources about the first owners of this work. It is worthwhile mentioning that Saenredam didn’t need such commissions. Thanks to an inheritance, which included very lucrative shares in the East India Company, the artist was well to do. In any case, he certainly was not directly dependent on the proceeds of his work, which gave him more freedom in the choice of subject.50 The second Den Bosch panel, ‘Choir of the St. John’s Church’ (cat.no.16) was completed much later in 1646, fourteen years after his stay in the Brabant city. With this painting he clearly went a step further, for here the Catholicising of the interior is very obvious. Comparing the panel with the 1632 drawing of the choir (cat.no. 4), the changes to the altar are noticeable. The drawing shows a closed green curtain to disguise the void left by the removal of the original altarpiece, ‘The intercession of Christ and Mary before God the Father’ of 1615 by Abraham Bloemaert (see Fig. 16 at cat.no. 4), taken away by the Catholic clergy in 1629 when they had to leave the city. Only a year after Saenredam’s drawing, in 1633, was the empty space filled by the panel bearing the Ten Commandments. The painting depicts neither a curtain nor a panel with the stone tablets but, once more, a painting in the altar space. This is not the original retable but another Bloemaert, namely his ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ of 1612 that was made for the Clarissenklooster (Convent of the Poor Clares) in Den Bosch (Fig. 30 at cat.no. 16). Saenredam must have seen it there when he visited the city in 1632 because it is known that he made a copy.51 He further adorned the altar on his painting with a crucifix flanked by four large altar candlesticks and baskets of flowers; as if a Catholic Mass could begin at any moment. In conclusion, the sepulchral monument of bishop Gisbertus Masius is more prominent than that on the drawing. This is partly due to the polychromy (the figure resembles a real person) but also

50. For Saenredam’s financial situation, see Schwartz & Bok 1990, pp. 175-179.

51. See cat.no. 16. There is also a mirrorimage print of this painting; see Den Bosch 1990, p. 312; Buscoducis Bijdragen 1990, pp. 555-558.

Pieter Saenredam (1597-1665) from Haarlem is well-known for his city views and his drawings and paintings of church interiors. In the summer of 1632 he spent a month in the town of Den Bosch.

He stayed with the pastor Johannes Junius, who was his second cousin. In those weeks Saenredam made a number of drawings of churches, monuments and the city environs. Each drawing is dated to the day, providing us with a clear picture of his activities during that summer.

The drawings and paintings that resulted from Saenredam’s visit to Den Bosch have been brought together in this book. It was written by Jan de Hond, curator in the department of history at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and by Paul Huys Janssen, ­c urator of old master paintings at Het Noordbrabants Museum.

It describes fourteen drawings and two paintings. Saenredam in Den Bosch also presents a considerable amount of new art historical material on these works, created by one of most appreciated Dutch painters from the Golden Age.

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