Pieter Jansz Saenredam
Pieter Jansz Saenredam (Assendelft, 1597 - Haarlem, 1665) was a
Dutch painter, a contemporary compatriot of Rembrandt, noted chiefly
for his surprisingly modern paintings of churches. Architectural
in detail, they convey the interior atmosphere through the clever
use of light and graduated shadows. Saenredam worked from perspective
drawings or "cartoons" drawn on site with meticulous accuracy,
using these as a basis for his studio paintings.
Perhaps his best known works are a pair of oil paintings both titled
Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht. One hangs in London's National
Gallery, the other in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
In their simplicity and semi-abstract formalism, they foreshadow
more modern works such as those of Mondrian and Feininger.
Saenredam often deliberately left people out of his work, thus
also focusing attention on buildings and their architectural forms.
He worked especially in Utrecht and Haarlem. Having made precise
measurements, he made during several weeks sketches and drawings
of churches. Afterwards he started to create his paintings of these
churches. The Utrecht Archives houses a large number of Saenredam's
drawings. In the season 2000-2001 the Centraal Museum at Utrecht
held a major exhibition of his drawings and paintings.
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