Imaginary church interior - attributed to Hendrick van Steenwijck II (1580 - 1649)

Oil on oak panel, 17th-century Flemish school attributed to Hendrick van Steenwijck II.
In this precious cabinet painting, we are plunged into the center of the nave of a Gothic church, which is coming to life: while in the foreground a lady appears to be confessing to a processionary wearing a capirote, other figures are secluded in meditation and others are heading towards the choir, where a priest dressed in a white chasuble is preparing to give mass. But clearly, the architecture is the main subject of the composition, and the figures - priests and faithful - are relegated to the status of mere extras, pretexts for bringing the scene to life. Without being really identifiable, our Church Interior offers features that are similar to several churches in the Netherlands. Alongside architecture that can be read realistically, purely imaginary and symbolic elements combine in a subtle interplay of observed details and imagined elements, an extension of the image's symbolic conception.
The first representations of these church interiors appeared with the development of Protestantism and the rejection of idolatry. After the onslaught of iconoclasts, churches were stripped of all decorative objects. However, the need for an image to fix the mind in prayer persisted, and by the end of the 16th century, the interior view of a church had come into its own as a means of access to the sacred. After the long period of struggle between the Reformed and Spanish troops, and the birth of the United Provinces, Catholics in turn appropriated the iconography of church interiors. Under their patronage, places of worship were filled with altarpieces, crucifixes, paintings depicting the life of Christ and statues, as in our painting.
We place our composition in the corpus provided by Steenwijck the Younger, in which there are several small-format paintings similar to ours. Jacques Foucart, when evoking Steenwijck's work, praises "his pearlescent workmanship, his world of precise clarity to the point of surrealism, the nervous elegance of his architectures, he points out the fine workmanship, reinforced by the play of edges underlined by thin highlights of light, a pure and pearlescent harmony of grey and blond tones, impeccable perspective, and the sense of detail that, almost everywhere, furnishes space and limits the eye's escape". Among the painters who distinguished themselves in this genre, such as Jan Juriaensz van Baden, Bartholomeus van Bassen or the very famous Neeffs father and son, Hendrick van Steenwijck father and son are the leading figures.

We have chosen to present our precious church interior in a spectacular 17th-century blackened wood frame with guilloche.
Dimensions: 20 x 27.5 cm - 47.5 x 54.5 cm with frame

Biography: Hendrick II van Steenwyck or Steenwijck dit le Jeune (Antwerp 1580 - Leiden 1649) succeeded his father Hendrick I van Steenwyck at the head of the painting studio he ran in Frankfurt. He was a pioneer in the depiction of architectural interiors. Steenwyck was active not only in Frankfurt, but also in Antwerp between 1604 and 1615, where he collaborated with Frans I Francken, Denis van Alsloot and Jan Brueghel the Elder, who painted the figures in his church interiors. Introduced to the English court, he settled in London around 1615. Steenwyck collaborated with the crown painters and painted sets for Anton van Dyck and Daniel Mytens the Elder. During his British sojourn, he met his wife Susanna Gaspoel, also an architectural painter. The couple returned to The Hague in 1638 and settled in Leiden around 1642. Steenwyck left a large body of work, and his work undeniably influenced the painting of Peeter Neef I, whom posterity has unjustly placed at the forefront of painters specializing in this genre.

Bibliography
- Maillet, Bernard G, Intérieurs d'églises 1580 - 1720, la peinture architecturale des écoles du Nord, Pandora, 2012
- Howarth, Jeremy, The Steenwyck family as masters of perspective, Brepols, 2009
- Foucart, Jacques, Catalogue des peintures flamandes et hollandaises du musée du Louvre, Gallimard, 2009