Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Saenredam, 1597-1665: Peintre des églises, 31 January - 15 March 1970, no. 18; Amsterdam, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, C.I.N.O.A. exhibition, 1970, no. 50.
Literature
Saenredam, 1597-1665: Peintre des églises, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1970, p. 16, no. 17, reproduced plate 17; C.I.N.O.A. exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam 1970, reproduced p. 12, cat. no. 50; W.A. Liedtke, "The New Church in Haarlem series: Saenredam's sketching style in relation to perspective", in Simiolus, vol. 8, 1975/6, no. 3, pp. 145-166, reproduced plate 12; O.H. Dijkstra, "P.J. Saenredam, De noordwest-hoek van de Nieuwe Kerk te Haarlem", in Jaarboek Haarlem, 1972, pp. 99-101, reproduced p. 100; G. Schwartz & M.J. Bok, Pieter Saenredam. The Painter and his time, The Hague 1990, pp. 222, 226, 264, and chapter 15, note 9 (p. 332), no. 81a, reproduced in colour p. 225, fig. 238; J. Giltaij & G. Jansen, in Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th Century, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam 1991, p. 129, under no. 20.
Provenance
Possibly Adriaen Backer, Haarlem, and bought by him from the artist; Probably his son Adriaen Backer, Haarlem, married Anna Catharina van der Cammer 1698, died 1739 (see catalogue entry above); In the present family ownership since 1961.
Notes
This is the fourth and latest of four known paintings by Saenredam of the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem, and is one of the last of his church interiors left in private hands. It first came to light at the Saenredam exhibition in Paris in 1970.
The Nieuwe Kerk was the only modern building that Saenredam painted, and is thus the only church he painted built in Classical rather than Gothic or Romanesque style. The church was built to the designs of Saenredam's friend Jacob van Campen between 1646 and 1649 on the site of the demolished medieval chapel of St. Anne, retaining the tower, which had been erected by Lieven de Key in 1613. Van Campen devised a square ground plan of an austere and simple enclosed Greek cross. The groin-vaulted crossing is carried on four square Ionic piers, the barrel-vaulted arms by beams supported by the piers, by Ionic columns and Ionic pilasters, which continue around the perimeter supporting the square, flat, coffered ceilings of the four corners.
Saenredam made many drawings of the church; indeed, from 1650 onwards he drew this church exclusively, starting with a copy of Van Campen's groundplan. Saenredam's working method was to make sketches, sometimes many sketches of a subject which would result in so-called construction drawings, made in careful preparation for paintings. His drawings of the Nieuwe Kerk, culminating in a construction drawing dated 31st July 1651 yielded his first painting of the church, a prospect of the interior seen from west to east taken from just north of the centre line, dated 23rd May 1652, and now in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (see Schwartz & Bok under Literature, reproduced p. 220, fig. 221 (the construction drawing, and in colour p. 221, fig. 232). A second construction drawing dated 26th August 1651 yielded another prospect, dated 16th August 1653, showing the interior from the southwest corner of the transept looking north (Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Muzeum; idem, p. 219, colour fig. 228). Saenredam's third painting of the Nieuwe Kerk shows its interior looking west from the east side of the south aisle, and gives prominence to the pulpit designed by Van Campen. It is dated 1655 (but without indication of month or day), and is on loan from the Stichting Oudheidkamer Riessen to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede (see fig. 1) (idem, reproduced in colour p. 224, fig 237). The present work, dated 1658, is the last of the sequence (and one of only two paintings by Saenredam dating from the second half of the 1650s).
In view of Saenredam's working method, one might reasonably expect him to have made preparatory drawings on which construction drawings for each painting wouild have been based.Saenredam's construction drawings did not always survive well the process of transfer to the panel, and it is understandable that neither one appears to have survived. As Walter Liedtke has convincingly shown, both paintings show the church seen from the same vantage point, (from a height of about four feet - perhaps seated on a stool - against the base of the central pilaster on the eastern wall of the southeast corner), and both paintings share a common vanishing point, so that when placed side by side both paintings form a continuous panorama, with only small gap consisting of much of the width of the central pier between them, and are thus part of a common continuous scheme of perspective (see fig. 2) (also see under Literature, p. 150, with both pictures reproduced to demonstrate the point, pp. 148-9, figs 1 & 2, and perspective diagram, fig. 4). The heights of the figures in both paintings is the same, and the vanishing point is approximately at their head-height. The paintings are of different dates, and were certainly not conceived as pendants, but as Liedtke has argued, they were almost certainly based on the same sketch, probably done when the other sketches were made, in June 1650, and possibly traced to provide construction drawings. While it is tempting to conclude that Saenredam used both halves of the same construction drawing for each picture, their different dimensions make this unlikely: for example, the base of the same pillar in the left and right foregrounds of each is of a different height. Given the rigid symmetry of the architecture of the church, Saenredam may have used for the architectural structure of both paintings a sketch of the interior of the Nieuwe Kerk seen from the same spot but looking in exactly the opposite direction, i.e, rotated 180º, and then reversed by tracing to provide construction drawings, or an intermediate drawing upon which the construction drawings were based. That sketch may be the one dated 23rd June 1650, and now in the Rijksprentenkabinet. Amsterdam (see Lietdke, op. cit., reproduced p. 153, fig. 5), which shows indenting perhaps caused by tracing. A recent examination of the present work using infra-red reflectography revealed extensive geometric underdrawing, which is consistent with Saenredam's usual practice.
Note on the Provenance. Each of the stained glass windows in the Nieuwe Kerk bore the coat-of-arms of one of the twenty highest office-holders in Haarlem. Apart from documentary evidence for them, they are recorded in a drawing by Saenredam in the Gemeente Archief in Haarlem in which the status of each and the position in the church in 1647, the year the windows were installed. They may be seen in each of Saenredam's drawings of the church, and in his 1652 painting, now in the Frans Hals Museum. In the present painting, however, all but two are absent, together with all other armorial devices, including the shields which hung in the vaults, leaving only the arms of the Burgomasters Cornelis Backer (d. 1655) and Johan van der Camer (1585-1657) in the right hand two windows.
Schwartz & Bok have suggested that this phenomenon resulted from the elimination of the other armorials following the marriage of the grandchildren of the two Burgomasters, Adriaen Backer and Anna Catharina van der Camer in 1698, and that the present picture was then in the possession of the Backer family (op. cit., p. 226). Recent technical analysis conducted by Catherine Hassall (available on request), has shown that there were originally armorials in the other windows, that they were painted out, and that the lead-white overpaint has a mixture of natural ultramarine, which makes it most unlikely that the overpainting took place much after 1700, since ultramarine was supplanted rapidly after 1704 by Prussian Blue (Saenredam also used ultramarine for the original sky. Though favored by Vermeer, this pigment was not widely used in The Netherlands in the mid-17th Century, because of its expense). Furthermore, the inventory of Adriaen Backer's estate, taken at his death in 1739, lists two church interiors by Saenredam: one unidentified; the other depicting "a view in the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem". While it cannot be ruled out that the painting listed is one of the three other paintings of the church that survive, the theory is highly plausible. Schwartz & Bok further suggest that in the light of the close connections between Saenredam and the painter Cornelis Vroom, who whose sister was married to the Burgomaster Cornelis Backer, this picture was probably in the Backer collection from the outset. Saenredam witnessed Vroom's deathbed testament appointing Adriaen Backer guardian to his son Jacob Vroom. Adriaen was son of Cornelis, and father of the Adriaen who married Anna Catherina van der Camer, and thus the possible first owner of this picture.
