The Interior of the Dominican Church, Antwerp, Looking East, with the Procession of the Holy Sacrament, Peeter Neeffs (I), 1636 – (Peeter The Younger Neeffs) ◄ Sebelumnya Berikutnya ►

Artis: Peeter The Younger Neeffs

tanggal: 1636

ukuran: 68 x 105 cm

Teknik: Oil On Panel

There is no reason to doubt that the architecture and furnishings in this view of the Antwerp Dominican church are by Peeter Neeffs I. The painting is on a composite oak support of four pieces of timber and is dated 1636 (two dendrochronological datings can be deduced for the earliest use as from 1631 or from 1637). The figures are by another hand as was recognized in the 1756 sale catalogue when attributed to Adriaen van Stalbempt (1580-1662), but they seem insufficiently refined for that artist. Waldorp in 1804 also recognized that they were by a different hand, ascribing them to a ‘Jan Heus’.9 A possibility is that they are by Gillis Peeters I (1612-1653) by virtue of a comparison with those in his Milkmaid Embarking on a Dinghy in Breezy Weather of 1641;10 the same hand was responsible for most of the figures in Interior of a Gothic Church at Night Looking East (SK-A-289). Gillis’s brother, Bonaventura (1614-1652), was a more frequent collaborator with Neeffs.11 The paintings and stained glass may be the work of a third artist. The church of the Dominican monastery in Antwerp, renamed the Sint-Pauluskerk in the early nineteenth-century after the dissolution of the monastery, was rebuilt in the Gothic style to designs by master builder/architect Domien de Waghemakere (c. 1460-1542) from 1520 onwards. Neeffs’s standpoint was an elevated one to the right of centre at the western end of the nave between the doors to the cloister on the left and to the street on the right, about 45 metres away from the choir screen. The width of the church, including nave and aisles, is 20 metres. The identity of the church depicted was only lost sight of during the time when Gerard Hoet II (1698-1760) owned the picture. It was correctly described in the annotated ground plan of the Nationale Kunstgalerij of 1800 after the monastery had been dissolved and the church shut. As most of Neeffs’s extant church interiors are views of the interior of Antwerp cathedral, or variants of it, or apparently capriccio’s, the Rijksmuseum picture is of considerable importance in his oeuvre. Other identifiable church interiors are rare: a drawing of the interior of the cathedral at Bonn was published by Stechow,12 and a view of the Sint-Jacobskerk is recorded in an inventory of 1666.13 Baisier has provided a full account of the view depicted here by Neeffs, which she argues is likely to be an accurate representation of the interior of the church in 1636 and thus before the replacement of the confessional stalls in the nave from 1657. What follows is based on her unpublished thesis, a copy of which she kindly made available.14 Baisier suggests that the picture may have been commissioned by the prior of the monastery, Jacob de Brouwer (1582-1637), as a present for the provincial of the order, Joannes Boucquet (d. 1640), who may have promoted the commissioning of the prominent and still in situ cycle of paintings – one of the church’s most important monuments – the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary shown on the wall of the north aisle. Another possibility is that it was executed to record the marble screen before the chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in the northern aisle, visible in the middle distance before the choir screen. It might also be suggested that the commission came from one of the leaders of the procession of the Holy Sacrament, the master or the deacon of the Brotherhood of the Sweet Name of Jesus, as a commemoration; they were identified for the year 1636, by Baisier, as Jacob Aertschen and Joannes van Asten. They are depicted just to the left of centre in the foreground holding tapers. Presumably the master is the elder of the two. On the wall of the north aisle beneath the vaulting are escutcheons, five of which are legible. One – if authentic – dates back to before the papal confirmation of the Dominican order in 1216. From the left, four bear dates: they are 1602, 1207, 1506, and 160[.]. Beneath are discernible nine of the depictions of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, the Madonna of the Rosary by Caravaggio (1571-1610) and glimpses of two others from the series. The Caravaggio, in its carved and gilded frame with a superimposed arched top, had been bought by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Hendrik van Balen I (1575-1632), Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) and others for 1800 guilders and given to the Dominicans after 19 September 1617 (the date of the will of Louis Finson, a pupil of Caravaggio and a part owner) and before 13 January 1625 (the date of Brueghel’s death). It was removed from the church on the orders of the Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790) and sent to Vienna in 1786.15 The gift of the Caravaggio may have coincided with the completion of the cycle of paintings of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, which was paid for by members of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary, of which Louis Clarisse, who donated Rubens’s fee of 150 guilders, was the most prominent. Rooses published the cost of each work and names of the d../..