O Interior de uma Igreja Gótica (The Interior of a Gothic Church) - Hendrick van Steenwijck e Cornelis van Poelenburch

 

O Interior de uma Igreja Gótica (The Interior of a Gothic Church) - Hendrick van Steenwijck e Cornelis van Poelenburch
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Óleo sobre painel de cobre - 30x41


The painter was the son and pupil of Hendrick van Steenwijck the Elder (c. 1550–1603), the acknowledged creator of the genre of architectural painting. Together with Pieter Neeffs the Elder (1578–1656) he was without question the pre-eminent painter of church interiors in England and the Low Countries in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. He was trained in his father’s workshop, and their works are stylistically so close that they are sometimes confused. He was probably active for some years in Antwerp, where he collaborated with painters such as Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) and Frans Francken the Younger (1581–1642). By 15 November 1617 Steenwijck had settled in London, where he painted architectural interiors in the backgrounds of portraits by Van Dyck and Daniel Mytens, such as the Portrait of King Charles I of 1625/27 by Van Dyck now in Turin. He stayed in England for at least twenty years, and his small-scale cabinet paintings, very often of interiors, were highly prized by Carolean collectors, including the King himself, who owned several examples.
Although this previously unrecorded church interior has traditionally been identified as that of the cathedral in Antwerp, it is most likely imaginary, perhaps with reminiscences of that building. Its composition relates most closely to a group of early works by Steenwijck, painted in the first decade of the seventeenth century and all heavily under the influence of his father’s work. The same architectural setting is to be found in two very similar early works, one of 1605 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and another of 1607 in the Gallinat Bank in Essen. A third such interior, formerly in the Blundell collection, though neither signed or dated, is today in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. In all of these works the staffage in the painting was painted by Steenwijck himself, but in the case of the present copper, it is the work of the well-known Utrecht painter Cornelis van Poelenburch (1594–1667). Although best known for his small-scale arcadian landscapes, Poelenburch regularly contributed figures to church interiors by other painters such as Bartholomeus van Bassen (1590–1652) and Dirck van Delen (1605–1671). This picture may therefore have been sent to Utrecht for completion or may have travelled with Steenwijck to England where he worked from 1617 until at least 1637. It is possible that the figures may even have been added by Poelenburch at this later period, for he too worked at the Stuart court between 1637 and 1641, where his cabinet pictures, like those of Steenwijck, were highly prized. Similarly, after leaving London Steenwijck worked in The Hague around 1638–42, a city with which Poelenburch had many connections. The two painters may have known of each other before this date, however, for another such collaboration, a larger panel depicting a Cathedral interior, signed by Steenwijck and dated 1621 and to which Poelenburch contributed many figures in Biblical dress, is preserved today at Petworth House in Sussex. That painting is recorded in two great early collections in London, those of the Dukes of Buckingham at York House and later the Earl of Northumberland at Suffolk House, and is recorded at Petworth by 1671 where an inventory of that year records a ‘rare Prospective done by Stenwick, the Figures by Pullenburke £100’. This latter valuation was among the highest in the collection, and provides a clear indication of the high esteem in which Steenwijck’s works were held at this date. Despite this the Petworth panel and the present copper seem to be very rare surviving examples of his working together with Poelenburch. A large canvas of 1620 showing Christ in the House of Martha and Mary today in the Louvre in Paris is one example of their collaboration, and to judge from photographs, another such may possibly be that sold London, Christie’s, 8 December 1994, lot 234. For all his fame, Steenwijck had no native followers in England and by 1638 he had settled again in the northern Netherlands, working in The Hague and Leiden, where his wife is recorded as a widow in 1649.