Lot 150: HENDRICK CORNELISZ. VAN VLIET DELFT 1611/12 - 1675

signed and dated lower right: H. van vliet/ Ao 1665

oil on canvas

80 by 64.5 cm.; 31 1/2 by 25 3/8 in.

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Apparently unrecorded, this is a particularly fine example of Van Vliet's depictions of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft in the 1660s. Another painting from a very similar viewpoint is that of 1667 now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, which is painted from a spot slightly further to the right, thus allowing more of the Tomb of Willem the Silent to be shown (canvas, 127 by 85.5 cm.; for which see W. A. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft, Doorsnpijk 1982, p. 109, no. 113, reproduced fig. 57). Other paintings from this or a similar viewpoint are in Stockholm, National Museum, Dessau, Schloß Georgium, and an Amsterdam private collection. The funerary monument to Willem I ('the Silent' ), Stadholder and Prince of Orange (1533-1584), was commissioned by the States General in 1614, and was designed and largely executed by the Amsterdam architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser the Elder before being completed by his son Pieter in 1622-3. It was erected in the choir of the Nieuwe Kerk and became a national shrine, regarded both as a national mounument to the New Republic and a symbol of liberty and independence.

By 1655, with the departure of Gerard Houckgeest for Flanders and Emmanuel de Witte for Amsterdam, Hendrick van Vliet enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the production of the increasingly popular depictions of the interiors and monuments of the two great churches of Delft. Although the combination of the demand for such views and his unrivalled position led to a distinct unevenness in much of his production after 1660, Van Vliet was more than capable - as the present painting clearly demonstrates - of producing work of considerable quality. He was the only living Delft painter cited in Dirck van Bleyswijck's Beschryvinge der Stadt Delft of 1667 (an honour denied his more famous contemporary Johannes Vermeer) wherein his best work was described as "...very well foreshortened and illusionistic, as well as coloured naturally".