Interior of a Gothic Church at Night Looking East, Peeter Neeffs (I), 1636 – (Peeter The Younger Neeffs) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Peeter The Younger Neeffs

Date: 1636

Size: 50 x 80 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this signed and dated interior of a church, whose support would have been available for use from 1635. Underdrawing of ruled orthogonals beneath the paving stones, visible to the naked eye, establishes the perspective; no such underdrawing was detected in the architecture, but infrared reflectography might reveal the artist’s means of establishing perspective. The chandelier is at the centre of the horizontal axis and just off centre of the vertical axis. The figures were not reserved, and are by other hands; Härting believes they could be by Frans Francken III (1607-1667).9 But the well-dressed burgher and priest in the foreground, centre left, could rather be by his father Frans Francken II (1581-1642) – they recur in Peeter Neeffs’s Church Interior at Leipzig10 – as could the woman leading a group of three others at the far left. The other figures are by a different hand; they are not unlike those in the Rijksmuseum Interior of the Dominican Church (SK-A-288) of the same year. The same hand could have been responsible for painting the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi shown in the side-chapel on the right. However, the cripple is a typical Francken motif. The church has not been identified and could be an invention of Neeffs, which combines architectural features likely to be found in different churches in Antwerp. It is in the Gothic Perpendicular style; the blind window on the left has reticulated tracery first favoured in the fourteenth century and still popular in Antwerp in the sixteenth century. The altarpieces have tabernacle surrounds of a type then in fashion. Neeffs painted many variations of this view often as nocturnes and from a similar elevated viewpoint. The subject of the church interior at night seems to have been a theme which Neeffs took over and developed from Hendrik van Steenwyck II (c. 1580-1649).11 The figures in the left foreground are to attend the baptism of the baby held by the woman – the midwife12 – who has entered the church preceding the mother and godmothers; the motif in daytime was seemingly introduced to the church interior by collabarators working with Hendrik van Steenwyck I (c. 1550-1603).13 A Mass is being said in a side chapel off the south aisle, under an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi. There seems to be no aisle on the northern side of the church, the area was perhaps reserved for the offices; at the extreme left can be made out a twisting staircase, which is not as prominently placed as that in the Church Interior of 1618 in the British Royal Collection Trust.14 This unusual addition to a Gothic edifice may have been inspired by the print of 1604 in Hans Vredeman de Vries’s Perspective (part 1 of Book of Perspective),15 and its inclusion was perhaps encouraged by the example of Hendrik van Steenwyck II’s Church Interior of circa 1609, Wallraf Richartz Museum, Cologne.16 The stairs in the present picture may be understood (as in the Van Steenwyck) to provide access to the organ loft, set on the north side of the aisle, in which Neeffs has placed a choir. The only other extant version of this view – popular with Neeffs – to exhibit both the choir and twisting stairs is apparently that also of 1636 which was on the New York market in 2002.17 It is likely that both funerary inscriptions had personal relevance to the probably impecunious artist. The identity of Peeter van Horen, famous – as we learn from the inscription – for his charity has not been established, but maybe he had helped the artist financially. Würzbach records other inscriptions referring to Petrus van Horen in church interiors by Neeffs in the Brussels Museum and the Musée du Louvre;18 another is in the Mauritshuis.19 Antoon Lauterbeins (or Louterbeens), priest of the Freedom of Turnhout, was his brother-in-law. His date of death is not known, but Neeffs lived in two successive houses owned by his wife’s family, and inherited his brother-in-law’s share of a house in Hobokenstraat, which he sold in 1655.20 Neeffs paid a similar tribute to Lauterbiens frequently; in three or four other church interiors, the inscriptions are variously dated 1625 (as in the present painting), 1630 and 1638.21 The reasons for this inconsistency remain obscure. Neither of the two inscriptions is recorded in the nineteenth-century survey of Antwerp memorials.22 Gregory Martin, 2022