Emanuel De Witte's Sermon Paintings

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EMANUEL DE WITTE’S SERMON PAINTINGS:

SIGHT, SOUND AND SPIRITUALITY

Sara Rachel Bordeaux

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History

Spring 2014

ProQuest Number:10185113

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EMANUEL DE WITTE’S SERMON PAINTINGS:

SIGHT, SOUND AND SPIRITUALITY

Sara Rachel Bordeaux

Approved: ______Lawrence Nees, Ph.D. Chair of the Department of Art History

Approved: ______George H. Watson, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Approved: ______James G. Richards, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Signed: ______H. Perry Chapman, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation

Signed: ______David M. Stone, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

Signed: ______Lawrence Nees, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

Signed: ______Mia M. Mochizuki, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my advisor, Perry Chapman, for her guidance and support. I must also thank my patient and understanding husband, Christopher Bordeaux, without whom none of this would ever have been possible.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii ABSTRACT ...... xxi

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION: SENSING THE SPIRITUAL ...... 1

ENDNOTES ...... 17

2 SECULARIZING THE CHURCH ...... 22

The Church Interior as a Portrait of a Place ...... 23 The Church Interior as Semblance of Reality ...... 26 Pieter Saenredam as the “Master of Perspective” ...... 29 De Witte and The Delft School ...... 34

Formal Concerns ...... 35 The Church Interior as Civic Space ...... 41

Iconoclasm and the Vocabulary of Reformation Art ...... 47 Conclusion: A Point of Entry ...... 54

ENDNOTES ...... 56

3 DE WITTE AS TRUTH SEEKER ...... 67

“Every Painter Paints Himself” ...... 69 De Witte’s “levenswyze” According to Houbraken ...... 72 De Witte as Diogenes ...... 77 Truth in Fiction ...... 87 Conclusion: De Witte as Observer of Humanity ...... 96

ENDNOTES ...... 99

4 PAINTING THE WORD ...... 110

Naturalism and Calvinist Aesthetics ...... 112 Spiritual Light ...... 120

v Visualizing the Invisible ...... 121 Poeticizing Light ...... 125 Painting Sacred Light ...... 128

Sanctification of Space ...... 134 A Signature Style ...... 141

Opticality and Illusionism in Delft ...... 141 Bravura Brushwork in Amsterdam ...... 147 A Lively Brush for a Living Word ...... 155

Conclusion: An Invitation to the Service ...... 157

ENDNOTES ...... 159

5 THE ART OF PREACHING ...... 167

Speaking Likenesses and Eloquent Orators ...... 172 The Sound of Sermons ...... 186 The Pedagogy of the Preacher and the Rise of the Rhetorical Tradition ...... 197 The Performative Preacher and the Language of Gesture ...... 203 Perceptions of the Preacher ...... 213 Conclusion: “Sermons” in the Kleyne Kerck ...... 221

ENDNOTES ...... 223

6 THE COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHFUL ...... 238

Diversity and the Discriminating Ear ...... 240 The Netherlandish Tradition of Religious “Listening” ...... 248 The Permeability of the Calvinist Community ...... 257

Public Engagement and the Calvinist Church ...... 259 Liefhebbers and Liminal Space ...... 263

Conclusion: A “Sound” Faith ...... 276

ENDNOTES ...... 279

7 GOD’S INSTRUMENT ...... 289

The Organ Controversy ...... 291 The Nieuwe Kerk Organ in Text and Image ...... 299

The Organ in Text ...... 300

vi The Organ Rebuilding Project ...... 303 The Organ in Image ...... 307

The Aural Appeal of De Witte’s Painted Organs ...... 314 De Witte’s Contemporaries and the Pictorial Promotion of the Organ ...... 320

Pieter Saenredam and Haarlem’s Bavokerk ...... 321 Anthonie de Lorme and Rotterdam’s Laurenskerk ...... 331

The Organ as Sacred Instrument ...... 339 Conclusion: Closing the Curtain ...... 342

ENDNOTES ...... 344

CONCLUSION: THE IMAGE OF THE CHURCH ...... 357 FIGURES ...... 361 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 514

vii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, c. 1650. Oil on panel, 48.3 x 38.6 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art...... 361

Figure 2 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, 1651. Oil on panel, 60.5 x 44 cm. London, Wallace Collection...... 362

Figure 3 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, 1651. Oil on panel, 60.5 x 44 cm. London, Wallace Collection. Detail...... 363

Figure 4 Emanuel de Witte, A Sermon in the Oude Kerk in Delft, c. 1651. Oil on panel, 73.2 x 59.5 cm. Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada...... 364

Figure 5 Emanuel de Witte, Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent, c. 1651. Oil on panel, 107.5 x 90.5 cm. Winterthur, Museum Briner und Kern...... 365

Figure 6 Emanuel de Witte, The Courtyard of the Amsterdam Exchange, 1653. Oil on panel, 49 x 47.5 cm. Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen...... 366

Figure 7 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent, 1653. Oil on panel, 82.23 x 65.08 cm. Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art...... 367

Figure 8 Emanuel de Witte, The Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon, c. 1654. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 41.5 cm. The Hague, Mauritshuis...... 368

Figure 9 Emanuel de Witte, The Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon, c. 1654. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 41.5 cm. The Hague, Mauritshuis. Detail. 369

Figure 10 Emanuel de Witte, The Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon, c. 1654. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 41.5 cm. The Hague, Mauritshuis. Detail. 370

Figure 11 Emanuel de Witte, Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, c. 1656. Oil on canvas, 34.5 x 33.5 cm. Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen...... 371

viii Figure 12 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, 1657. Oil on canvas, 87.6 x 102.9 cm. San Diego, Timken Museum...... 372

Figure 13 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, c. 1658. Oil on canvas, 57.2 x 65.5 cm. Madrid, Thyssen- Bornemisza Collection...... 373

Figure 14 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, c. 1658. Oil on canvas, 57.2 x 65.5 cm. Madrid, Thyssen- Bornemisza Collection. Detail...... 374

Figure 15 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1659. Oil on panel, 46.04 x 56.2 cm. Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art...... 375

Figure 16 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1659. Oil on panel, 46.04 x 56.2 cm. Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Detail...... 376

Figure 17 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1659. Oil on panel, 46.04 x 56.2 cm. Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Detail...... 377

Figure 18 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Sermon, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 79.1 x 63.1 cm. London, National Gallery...... 378

Figure 19 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Sermon, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 79.1 x 63.1 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 379

Figure 20 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Sermon, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 79.1 x 63.1 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 380

Figure 21 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Sermon, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 79.1 x 63.1 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 381

Figure 22 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 51.1 x 56.2 cm. London, National Gallery...... 382

Figure 23 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 51.1 x 56.2 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 383

ix Figure 24 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 51.1 x 56.2 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 384

Figure 25 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 51.1 x 56.2 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 385

Figure 26 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 100 cm. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art. 386

Figure 27 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 100 cm. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art. Detail...... 387

Figure 28 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum...... 388

Figure 29 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 389

Figure 30 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 390

Figure 31 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 391

Figure 32 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 392

Figure 33 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 393

Figure 34 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 394

Figure 35 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1661. Oil on panel, 101.5 x 121 cm. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum. Detail. . 395

Figure 36 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, 1664. Oil on canvas, 79 x 67 cm. Salzburg, Residenz-Galerie...... 396

Figure 37 Emanuel de Witte, Interior with Woman at a Clavichord, c. 1665. Oil on canvas, 77.5 x 104.5 cm. Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen...... 397

x Figure 38 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of an Imaginary Catholic Church, 1668. Oil on canvas, 110 x 85 cm. The Hague, Mauritshuis...... 398

Figure 39 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 399

Figure 40 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 400

Figure 41 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 401

Figure 42 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 402

Figure 43 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 403

Figure 44 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 404

Figure 45 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 405

Figure 46 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 406

Figure 47 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1669. Oil on panel, 44.5 x 33.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 407

Figure 48 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Catholic Church, c. 1670. Oil on Canvas, 171.3 x 136.8 cm. New York, Otto Naumann Collection...... 408

xi Figure 49 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Catholic Church, c. 1670. Oil on Canvas, 171.3 x 136.8 cm. New York, Otto Naumann Collection. Detail...... 409

Figure 50 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Catholic Church, c. 1670. Oil on Canvas, 171.3 x 136.8 cm. New York, Otto Naumann Collection. Detail...... 410

Figure 51 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Catholic Church, c. 1670. Oil on Canvas, 171.3 x 136.8 cm. New York, Otto Naumann Collection. Detail...... 411

Figure 52 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, c. 1680. Oil on panel, 62 x 49.2 cm. Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago...... 412

Figure 53 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1677. Oil on panel, 47.5 x 37 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 413

Figure 54 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1677. Oil on panel, 47.5 x 37 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 414

Figure 55 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 1677. Oil on panel, 47.5 x 37 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 415

Figure 56 Emanuel de Witte, Portrait of a Family in an Interior, 1678. Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 86.5 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek...... 416

Figure 57 Emanuel de Witte, Portrait of a Family in an Interior, 1678. Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 86.5 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek. Detail...... 416

Figure 58 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, 1678. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 69.5 cm. Amsterdam, Kremer Collection...... 417

Figure 59 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, 1678. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 69.5 cm. Amsterdam, Kremer Collection. Detail...... 418

Figure 60 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, 1678. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 69.5 cm. Amsterdam, Kremer Collection. Detail...... 419

xii Figure 61 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, 1678. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 69.5 cm. Amsterdam, Kremer Collection. Detail...... 420

Figure 62 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, 1678. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 69.5 cm. Amsterdam, Kremer Collection. Detail...... 421

Figure 63 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service, 1678. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 69.5 cm. Amsterdam, Kremer Collection. Detail...... 422

Figure 64 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, 1680. Oil on canvas, 110 x 99 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 423

Figure 65 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, 1680. Oil on canvas, 110 x 99 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 424

Figure 66 Emanuel de Witte, The Choir of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam with the Tomb of Michiel de Ruyter, 1683. Oil on canvas, 123.5 x 105 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 425

Figure 67 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of an Amsterdam Church During a Sermon, 1686. Oil on canvas, 119.4 x 100.6 cm. Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts...... 426

Figure 68 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of an Amsterdam Church During a Sermon, 1686. Oil on canvas, 119.4 x 100.6 cm. Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts. Detail...... 427

Figure 69 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Not dated. Oil on canvas, 55.9 x 66 cm. Dallas, Robert M. Edsel Collection...... 428

Figure 70 Unknown Artist, Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, early 15th century. Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten. Detail...... 429

Figure 71 Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (Ghent Altarpiece), 1432. Oil on panel, 3.5 x 4.6 m (open). Ghent, Saint Bavo’s Cathedral. Detail...... 430

xiii Figure 72 Jan van Eyck, Madonna in a Church, c. 1438. Oil on panel, 31 x 14 cm. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum...... 431

Figure 73 Jan van Eyck, Madonna in a Church, c. 1438. Oil on panel, 31 x 14 cm. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum. Detail...... 432

Figure 74 Jan van Eyck, Madonna in a Church, c. 1438. Oil on panel, 31 x 14 cm. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum. Detail...... 433

Figure 75 Jan van Eyck, Annunciation, c. 1434-1436. Oil on canvas transferred from panel, 90.2 x 34.1 cm. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art...... 434

Figure 76 Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Holy Kinship, c. 1495. Oil on panel, 137.2 x 105.8 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 435

Figure 77 Hans Memling, Christ with Singing and Music-Making Angels, 1487- 1490. Oil on panel, 164 x 212 cm. Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten...... 436

Figure 78 Mary with Child Appearing to St. Dominic in a Vision, c. 1500-1524. Oil on panel, 87.5 x 47.5 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent. .... 437

Figure 79 Anonymous, French or German, A Preacher Teaching Grammar, 1509. Woodcut. From Matthias Ringmann, Grammatica figurata, fol. 7v. New York: New York Public Library, Special Collections...... 438

Figure 80 Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden, The Calling of St. Anthony, c. 1530. Oil on panel, 132.5 x 96.3 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 439

Figure 81 Pieter Bruegel, The Preaching of John the Baptist, 1566. Oil on panel, 95 x 160.5 cm. Budapest, Szépművészeti Museum...... 440

Figure 82 Pieter Bruegel, The Preaching of John the Baptist, 1566. Oil on panel, 95 x 160.5 cm. Budapest, Szépművészeti Museum. Detail...... 441

Figure 83 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Diogenes, 1628. Oil on canvas, 83.2 x 68.5 cm. Vienna, Hohenbuchau Collection...... 442

Figure 84 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of Saint Bavo, Haarlem, 1631. Oil on panel, 82.9 x 110.5 cm. Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art. .... 443

Figure 85 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the Church of St. Bavo in Haarlem, 1636. Oil on panel, 95.5 x 57 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 444

xiv Figure 86 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the Church of St. Bavo in Haarlem, 1636. Oil on panel, 95.5 x 57 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail. . 445

Figure 87 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the Church of St. Bavo in Haarlem, 1636. Oil on panel, 95.5 x 57 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail. . 446

Figure 88 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht, 1645. Oil on panel, 58.1 x 50.8 cm. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum...... 447

Figure 89 Pieter Saenredam, St. Anthony’s Chapel and the North Aisle of the St. Janskerk, Utrecht, 1645. Oil on panel, 42 x 34 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum...... 448

Figure 90 Pieter Saenredam, Nave and Choir of the St. Janskerk, Utrecht, c. 1650. Oil on panel, 65.5 x 83.4 cm. Rotterdam, Museum Boymans- van Beuningen...... 449

Figure 91 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the St. Bavokerk, Haarlem, 1648. Oil on panel, 172.7 x 142.2 cm. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland...... 450

Figure 92 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft, 1649. Oil on panel, 49.6 x 75 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 451

Figure 93 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft, 1649. Oil on panel, 49.6 x 75 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 452

Figure 94 Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft, 1649. Oil on panel, 49.6 x 75 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Detail...... 453

Figure 95 Pieter Saenredam, North Transept of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft, Undated. Oil on panel, 46 x 64 cm. Turin, Galleria Sabauda...... 454

Figure 96 Rembrandt, John the Baptist Preaching, c. 1634. Oil on canvas, 62.7 x 81.1 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie...... 455

Figure 97 Rembrandt, Cornelis Claesz Anslo, 1641. Etching, 18.8 x 15.8 cm. London, British Museum...... 456

Figure 98 Rembrandt, Jan Cornelis Sylvius, 1646. Etching, drypoint and burin, 27.8 x 18.9 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts...... 457

Figure 99 Rembrandt, The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1649. Etching, engraving, and drypoint, 28 x 39.3 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 458

xv Figure 100 Rembrandt, The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1649. Etching, engraving, and drypoint, 28 x 39.3 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Detail...... 459

Figure 101 Rembrandt, The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1649. Etching, engraving, and drypoint, 28 x 39.3 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Detail...... 460

Figure 102 Rembrandt, The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1649. Etching, engraving, and drypoint, 28 x 39.3 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Detail...... 461

Figure 103 Rembrandt, Christ Preaching (“La Petite Tombe”), c. 1652. Etching, engraving, and drypoint, 15.9 x 21.1 cm. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art...... 462

Figure 104 Rembrandt, Medea, or the Marriage of Jason and Creusa, 1648. Etching, 26.8 x 18.1 cm. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum...... 463

Figure 105 Rembrandt, Medea, or the Marriage of Jason and Creusa, 1648. Etching, 26.8 x 18.1 cm. Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum. Detail. ... 464

Figure 106 Rembrandt, The Woman Taken in Adultery, 1644. Oil on panel, 83.8 x 65.4 cm. London, National Gallery...... 465

Figure 107 Rembrandt, The Woman Taken in Adultery, 1644. Oil on panel, 83.8 x 65.4 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 466

Figure 108 Rembrandt, The Woman Taken in Adultery, 1644. Oil on panel, 83.8 x 65.4 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 467

Figure 109 Rembrandt, The Woman Taken in Adultery, 1644. Oil on panel, 83.8 x 65.4 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 468

Figure 110 Gijsbert Sibilla, Interior of the Grote Kerk in Weesp, 1635. Oil on canvas, 107.5 x 165 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent...... 469

Figure 111 Gijsbert Sibilla, Interior of the Grote Kerk in Weesp, 1635. Oil on canvas, 107.5 x 165 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent. Detail. 470

Figure 112 Gijsbert Sibilla, Interior of the Grote Kerk in Weesp, 1635. Oil on canvas, 107.5 x 165 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent. Detail. 471

xvi Figure 113 Michel Natalis after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, God Teaching Writing, 1640. Engraving, 10.2 x 14 cm. Washington, D.C., Folger Shakespeare Library...... 472

Figure 114 Anthonie de Lorme, Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, 1655. Oil on canvas, 136 x 114 cm. Rotterdam, Rotterdam Historical Museum. . 473

Figure 115 Anthonie de Lorme, Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, 1657. Oil on canvas, 73 x 61 cm. Amsterdam, Six Collection...... 474

Figure 116 Anthonie de Lorme, Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, 1661. Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste...... 475

Figure 117 Anthonie de Lorme, Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, 1661. Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste. Detail...... 476

Figure 118 Anthonie de Lorme, Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, 1669. Oil on canvas, 87 x 70 cm. Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts...... 477

Figure 119 Gerard Houckgeest, Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, with the Tomb of William the Silent, 1650. Oil on panel, 125.7 x 89 cm. Hamburg, Kunsthalle...... 478

Figure 120 Gerard Houckgeest, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, with a View of the Pulpit, c. 1651. Oil on panel, 49 x 41 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 479

Figure 121 Caesar van Everdingen, Diogenes Looking for an Honest Man, 1652. Oil on Canvas, 75.9 x 103.6 cm. The Hague, Mauritshuis...... 480

Figure 122 Hendrick van Vliet, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, with the Tomb of Piet Hein, c. 1652-1653. Oil on panel, 76.2 x 65.1 cm. New York, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. M. E. Zukerman...... 481

Figure 123 Carel Fabritius, A View in Delft, 1652. Oil on canvas, 15.4 x 31.6 cm. London, National Gallery...... 482

Figure 124 Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654. Oil on panel, 33.5 x 22.8 cm. The Hague, Mauritshuis...... 483

Figure 125 Louys Aernoutsz Elsevier, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, Seen through a Stone Archway, 1653. Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm. Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga...... 484

xvii Figure 126 Gerrit Dou, Violin Player, 1653. Oil on panel, 31.7 x 20.3 cm. Vaduz, Collection of the Prince of Lichtenstein...... 485

Figure 127 Pieter van den Bos, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1643. Oil on panel, 41.9 x 26.6 cm. Saint Petersburg, Fla., Museum of Fine Arts...... 486

Figure 128 Quiringh van Brekelenkam, Old Woman Combing a Child’s Hair, 1648. Oil on panel, 57 x 53.5 cm. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal...... 487

Figure 129 Chirogram, Illustrated in John Bulwer, Chirologia. London, 1644. Washington, D.C., Folger Shakespeare Library...... 488

Figure 130 Anonymous, The Nieuwe Kerk after the burning of the same, 1645. Drawing. Amsterdam, Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap...... 489

Figure 131 Hans Wolff Schonat, Jacobus van Hagerbeer, and Roelof Duyschot (pipework), Jacob van Campen (case), Artus Quellijn (sculpture), and Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst (paintings), Main Organ of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (wings closed), 1655, renovated 1673...... 490

Figure 132 Hans Wolff Schonat, Jacobus van Hagerbeer, and Roelof Duyschot (pipework), Jacob van Campen (case), Artus Quellijn (sculpture), and Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst (paintings), Main Organ of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (wings open), 1655, renovated 1673...... 491

Figure 133 Artus Quellijn, statues on Main Organ’s rugpositief: Musica (left) and Harmonia (right) flanking a celestial globe, 1655. Amsterdam, Nieuwe Kerk...... 492

Figure 134 Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst, Glorious Entry of Saul and David, interior left shutter of Main Organ’s hoofdwerk and bovenwerk, 1655. Amsterdam, Nieuwe Kerk...... 493

Figure 135 Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst, Saul’s Attack on David, interior right shutter of Main Organ’s hoofdwerk and bovenwerk, 1655. Amsterdam, Nieuwe Kerk...... 494

Figure 136 Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst, David Asks God for Counsel, interior right pedal shutter of Main Organ, 1655. Amsterdam, Nieuwe Kerk. .. 495

Figure 137 Johannes Coesermans (?), Nieuwe Zijds Chapel of Amsterdam During a Service, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent...... 496

xviii Figure 138 Johannes Coesermans (?), Nieuwe Zijds Chapel of Amsterdam During a Service, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent. Detail...... 497

Figure 139 Jan de Visscher, Petrus Proëlius, 1661. 225 x 208 mm. Amsterdam, Collectie Stadsarchief...... 498

Figure 140 Jan Steen, Easy Come, Easy Go, 1661. Oil on canvas, 79 x 104 cm. Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen...... 499

Figure 141 Jan Steen, Self-Portrait Playing the Lute, c. 1663-1665. Oil on panel, 55.3 x 43.8 cm. Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza...... 500

Figure 142 Jan Vermeer, Allegory of the Art of Painting, c. 1666-1668. Oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum...... 501

Figure 143 Title Page of Twee-en-vijftigh Predicatien, over byfondere Texten, door Mr. Joos van Laren, published 1670...... 502

Figure 144 Portrait of Joos van Laren, c. 1655. Engraving, 18 x 14 cm. Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit. Reprinted in Twee-en-vijftigh Predicatien, over byfondere Texten, door Mr. Joos van Laren, 1670. .. 503

Figure 145 Theodor Matham, Portrait of Joos van Laren, with Latin inscription by Joannes Schildius, c. 1653. Engraving, 32 x 23 cm. Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit...... 504

Figure 146 Gerrit Berckheyde, Interior of the Bavokerk, Haarlem, 1673. Oil on panel, 60.8 x 84.9 cm. London, National Gallery...... 505

Figure 147 Gerrit Berckheyde, Interior of the Bavokerk, Haarlem, 1673. Oil on panel, 60.8 x 84.9 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 506

Figure 148 Gerrit Berckheyde, Interior of the Bavokerk, Haarlem, 1673. Oil on panel, 60.8 x 84.9 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 506

Figure 149 Gerrit Berckheyde, Interior of the Bavokerk, Haarlem, 1673. Oil on panel, 60.8 x 84.9 cm. London, National Gallery. Detail...... 507

Figure 150 Gerard de Lairesse, Selene and Endymion, c. 1680. Oil on canvas, 177 x 118.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 508

Figure 151 Jonas Suyderhof after Rembrandt, Eleazar Swalmius, c. 1657-1675. Engraving, 32.8 x 25.7 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum...... 509

xix Figure 152 P. van Gunst, Portrait of David Knibbe, 1696. Engraving, 34.2 x 23.5 cm. Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit...... 510

Figure 153 Ludolf Bakhuizen, Ships Running Aground in a Storm, 1690s. Oil on canvas, 173.5 x 341 cm. Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts. ... 511

Figure 154 Anonymous, Psalm board, 1687. Haarlem, Bavokerk...... 511

Figure 155 Jan Goeree, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 1700. Drawing. Laren, G.J.G. Leonhardt...... 512

Figure 156 Cart vande Sitplaatzen inde Oude-Kerk, 1787. Amsterdam, Stichting de Oude Kerk...... 513

Figure 157 Cart vande Sitplaatzen inde Oude-Kerk, 1787. Amsterdam, Stichting de Oude Kerk. Detail...... 513

xx ABSTRACT

This dissertation proposes a revised view of Emanuel de Witte’s Calvinist church interior paintings as sites of spirituality that evoke the sensory experience of attending church. Calvin’s objection to devotional art precipitated the traditional understanding of these paintings as “perspectives,” which privileges their architectural elements and diminishes their spirituality. Because paintings by De Witte and his contemporaries represent structures recently stripped of most Catholic accoutrements, art historians have described them as spare spaces fit for a faith based solely on scripture. However, De Witte’s sermon paintings assert Calvinist presence by showing the Reformed faithful at worship. De Witte utilizes paint to evoke the experiences of looking and listening, which encourages the viewer-as-congregant to “attend” the painted service. I suggest that we may identify a distinctly Reformed image in the subject matter, style, and technique of De Witte’s paintings, which introduce a new visual and aural vocabulary to represent an aniconic faith. This dissertation fills a lacuna in the scholarship on Emanuel de Witte, whose oeuvre has not been the sole subject of study since Ilse Manke’s 1963 monograph. Whereas De Witte’s brief career in Delft has received attention in abundant literature on the Delft School, my focus on his Amsterdam paintings enhances our understanding of Calvinist identity and worship in Amsterdam’s multiconfessional environment. My exploration of the sensory appeal of De Witte’s paintings recasts Calvinism in Early Modern Europe as a profoundly

xxi experiential faith. In light of the Calvinist Church’s mutability during the seventeenth century, it is possible that De Witte’s paintings contribute to the formation of Dutch Calvinist identity by picturing the Reformed congregation practicing their faith. De Witte’s paintings may be understood as a fundamentally new kind of religious art that depicts sacred spaces activated by the communities within them. His painted “sermons” represent the Word made image.

xxii Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: SENSING THE SPIRITUAL

Of the seventeenth-century Dutch specialists in church interiors, Emanuel de Witte (c. 1617-1692) was the sole painter to exhibit sustained interest in depicting Calvinist worship; one-fourth of his approximately 200 works represent the Reformed service.1 Nearly half of these “sermon paintings” feature the burgeoning Calvinist faith communities of the Oude and Nieuwe Kerken of Amsterdam. De Witte spent forty years in Amsterdam, and cornered the market for church interior paintings in the city, where he was the genre’s only practitioner until nearly the end of his career. Although Calvinists built new churches specifically for Reformed use—in Amsterdam, for example, the Westerkerk was built in1620-1631, the Noorderkerk 1620-1623, and the Zuiderkerk 1603-1611—De Witte only depicts the formerly Catholic Oude and Nieuwe Kerken. This could reflect nostalgia for the Old Order of Catholicism, and a desire to preserve, in paint, remnants of the country’s former faith.2 On the other hand, the Oude and

Nieuwe Kerken, as reformed—not newly formed—sacred spaces, were perhaps considered emblems of the Reformation. De Witte’s renderings of the Oude and Nieuwe Kerken possibly also held spiritual meaning for new adherents to the Reformed faith as reminders of their own conversion. A distinguishing feature of the seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed confession was its status as the public—but not the official—church. For

1 Dutch citizens, church attendance was not compulsory, nor was a formal profession of the Reformed faith.3 Consequently, less than one-quarter of the population in Amsterdam had declared formal affiliation with the Calvinist church by the latter half of the seventeenth-century.4 This did not, however, mean that only the minority of Dutch citizens attended sermons or considered themselves partial to the Reformed persuasion. A significant number of congregants were liefhebbers—sympathizers who participated in Reformed worship without officially committing themselves to membership.5 De Witte’s attention to the Calvinist service, a point underappreciated in scholarship, justifies my focus on his sermon paintings, which show liefhebbers and lidmaten (members) at worship within formerly Catholic sacred spaces. Because they conjure the sensory aspects of attending the Reformed church, De Witte’s images speak to a “Calvinist aesthetic,” by which I mean paintings with religious content intended to appeal to a contemporary Calvinist audience through stylistic and thematic qualities that evoke Reformed beliefs. This dissertation is the first to treat De Witte’s paintings as a fundamentally new kind of religious art that manifests a Calvinist spirit. De Witte’s “sermon paintings”—his depictions of the

Reformed church service that feature the burgeoning Calvinist faith community worshipping within newly claimed church interiors—introduce a new visual and aural vocabulary to represent an aniconic faith. This spiritual tradition grounded in scripture, the assumed antithesis of the image, finds expression in De Witte’s paintings.

2 Comparison of De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon (fig. 18, 1660, London, National Gallery) to the pre- Reformation Mary with Child Appearing to St. Dominic in a Vision (fig. 78, c. 1500-1524, Utrecht, Catharijneconvent) reveals the profound changes made to churches in the Netherlands when they were converted to Calvinist use: the altars and altarpieces that line the nave and frame the high altar within the choir of the Utrecht painting are not in evidence in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk. As Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) abjured “papist” worship of icons, such vestiges of Catholic devotion, including the thirty-eight altarpieces in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk,6 were removed by the advent of the Alteratie (Alteration) in 1578, when Amsterdam declared its Calvinist allegiance. This dissertation seeks to modify three conventional scholarly assumptions that have shaped understanding of De Witte’s Calvinist church interior paintings, and proposes a revised view of his works as sites of spirituality that evoke the sensory experience of attending church. First, because these paintings by De Witte and his contemporaries represent structures recently stripped of most Catholic accoutrements, art historians have traditionally described them as spare, secular spaces fit for a faith based solely on scripture. However, just as De Witte’s paintings of Reformed churches emphasize Catholic absence, they assert Calvinist presence. His London Oude Kerk (fig. 18) is replete with markers of Calvinist identity such as the pulpit, pews, and box seats created specifically for Reformed worship. The painting also demonstrates the continued attachment to Catholic paraphernalia, despite the Calvinist disdain for “papist” trappings: the Oude

3 Kerk’s stained glass window of the Evangelists (1542)7 depicted in De Witte’s work (fig. 19) survived the 1566 destruction of images, or Beeldenstorm; both the window and the 1567 transept organ remained intact during the 1578 Alteratie,8 which suggests that some scholars have overstated the extent and the homogeneity of iconoclastic fury in the Netherlands.9 De Witte’s inclusion of church decoration testifies to a Calvinist material culture that is not strictly anti-art.10 More importantly, this dissertation establishes that De Witte elucidates Calvinist presence by depicting the preacher and congregants in the act of Reformed worship. Whereas the iconic representation of Mary and Child in the Utrecht painting emphasizes its symbolic nature and classifies it as a devotional image intended for worship, De Witte’s attention to the Calvinist service defines it as an image of worship. Until recently, art historians treated the seventeenth-century Dutch privatization of the image within the domestic sphere as indicative of its secularization, a view supported by the proliferation of such paintings as portraiture, still-life, and genre scenes, but one that neglected the persistent Dutch regard for religious subjects. For example, hundreds of paintings of church interiors by De Witte, his Delft compatriot Gerard Houckgeest (c.

1600-1661), and Haarlem artist Pieter Saenredam (1597-1665), among others, testify to the popularity and distinct identity of this new genre in the predominantly Protestant Dutch Republic. These images represent a variety of sacred spaces, including accurate depictions of Calvinist churches, Protestant churches that combine elements from two or more different Reformed spaces, “imaginary” Catholic and Protestant interiors that do not resemble any physical

4 churches, and Jewish synagogues. Although all of these variations on the genre are represented in De Witte’s oeuvre, the vast majority of his paintings depict the interiors of Calvinist churches, with varying degrees of correspondence to reality. Calvinist congregants displayed paintings of churches in their homes— popularly conceived as kleyne kercken (little churches)11—which suggests that De Witte’s representations of the service expressed the confessional identity and worship experience of the seventeenth-century viewer. In his 2001 case study of the inventories of two Dutch art collectors, one Calvinist and the other Catholic, Eric Jan Sluijter implies that there was, in fact, a market for Biblical subjects among the Reformed elite, although he maintains that Calvinists preferred secular paintings. Regarding the collection owned by Calvinist Franciscus de le Boe Sylvius, Sluijter concludes, “In its small proportion of religious paintings…Sylvius’s collection is an extreme instance of a tendency among Protestant elite to favor landscape and seascapes over history painting.”12 Notably, one of the four religious paintings owned by Sylvius was an image of the Preaching of Christ,13 which suggests Sylvius’ interest in sermon paintings. Using the example of De Witte’s oeuvre, I demonstrate that it is fruitful to consider church interior paintings as religious art that would have appealed to many who professed the Calvinist faith or attended the churches that De Witte depicts. The second trend in scholarly literature, which has already come under scrutiny by some scholars,14 is the notion that a contemporary Protestant (or, more specifically, Calvinist) aesthetic founded on the image did not and could

5 not exist.15 The idea is famously expressed in Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), which argues that the Reformation precipitated a “disenchantment of the world” that divested sacred art and space of religious significance.16 According to this mode of thinking, art was anathema to Calvinism;17 a Calvinist aesthetic, if it manifested at all, could only be ascertained in the pure, whitewashed, imageless walls of Reformed churches, which celebrated the austerity of a faith that perceived God sola scriptura.18 Recently, Mia Mochizuki has convincingly argued for the presence of a Calvinist aesthetic as it applies to the material culture of the Reformed church.19 I suggest that we may identify a distinctly Reformed image in the subject matter, style, and technique of De Witte’s paintings. A significant body of scholarship has investigated the question of a “Protestant image” with particular attention to the works of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669).20 A few scholars argue that his oeuvre represents a specifically Calvinist vocabulary. For example, David Smith asserts that Rembrandt’s images, and in particular his Sacrifice of Isaac (1655, London, British Museum), demonstrate that Rembrandt was a “confirmed Calvinist.”21 Michael Zell identifies a particular period of Rembrandt’s career in which he was associated with philosemitism, a Protestant movement that aimed to reconcile Christians and Jews as a means of converting Jews to Christianity. In this context, Zell provides a framework for interpreting some of Rembrandt’s art as more theologically specific than previous studies.22 However, analysis of Rembrandt’s subject matter, which reveals his preoccupation with figures popular across Protestant denominations such as the

6 Apostle Paul, as well as with quintessentially Protestant themes including God’s grace, suggests that Rembrandt may have marketed himself to a broad Protestant audience.23 Unlike Rembrandt’s subjects, which are typically ambiguous in their confessional appeal, De Witte’s Calvinist interiors— especially his sermon paintings—strongly suggest that they were intended for an audience sympathetic to the Reformed faith, just as De Witte’s Catholic interiors must have resonated with Amsterdam’s Catholic community; likewise, his interiors of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish Synagogue, or Esnoga, probably appealed to Amsterdam’s Jewish population. Whereas much of the literature on Rembrandt’s “Protestant” images has focused on subject matter,24 this dissertation looks at both content and style as De Witte’s means of communicating a Calvinist sensibility. The third assumption I propose to amend is that a Calvinist aesthetic, if it exists, is singularly exemplified in the genre of church interior paintings by Haarlem artist Pieter Saenredam (1597-1665). This supposition, still current in the literature, is paradoxically related to the denial of Calvinist religious art, for Saenredam’s paintings are often celebrated as typically Calvinist by virtue of the imageless interiors he depicts.25 Saenredam’s spare, largely unpopulated church interiors, which showcase the whitewashed walls of newly-converted Calvinist spaces and rarely depict the service, seem to accord with the austerity thought to be endemic to Reformed belief. It is even possible to detect among the burghers who stroll through Saenredam’s Interior of St. Bavo, Haarlem (fig. 84, 1631, Philadelphia Museum of Art) a self-conscious gratification in

7 the exaggeratedly unadorned nave; the soberly clad man on the right looks to his companions as he proudly gestures toward the white walls.26 I do not object to the association of Saenredam’s style and technique with Calvinist tenets; however, I suggest a revised notion of a Calvinist aesthetic not exclusively tied to Saenredam’s art. Rather, the two distinct brands of naturalism evident in the paintings of Saenredam and De Witte may be viewed as complementary in their characterization of the Calvinist church. Whereas Saenredam’s works create a visual history that validates the burgeoning Calvinist identity as a solid foundation for the indestructible Church, De Witte’s paintings emphasize an experiential sense of time that establishes the Reformed church as current, relevant and appealing to the seventeenth-century viewer-as-congregant.27 The immersive, experiential quality of De Witte’s renderings of the Calvinist service may be glimpsed in his London Oude Kerk (fig. 18), which draws attention to the communication and reception of the Word through aural and visual means. This is apparent, for example, in the preacher’s animated gesture, implicitly paired with the sound of the sermon, and in the foreground congregants who gaze at (and presumably “listen” to) the preacher, which indicates their perception of worship as an amalgam of sight and sound. The organ, partially visible behind the right background pier, enhances the sonority suggested by the preacher; both are vehicles for auditory expression of the divine. De Witte evokes the resonance of sound that emanates from preacher and organ through the careful, rhythmic arrangement of arches and windows that appear to magnify the “voices” of these instruments of God. Additionally,

8 the spiritual activity of the space is figuratively and literally illuminated by transitory light, its dynamic nature conveyed through De Witte’s characteristic loose brushwork, as it highlights the foreground figures, sweeps along the floor of the aisle, casts a vertical ribbon that dissolves the left contour of the right foreground pier, and filters through the background wall of windows. As a metaphor for spirituality, light cues the viewer-as-congregant to attend to the often inseparable sights and sounds of worship that communicate a distinctly Calvinist understanding of divine presence. De Witte and Saenredam articulate differing concepts of the Calvinist aesthetic not only through visual devices, but also through aural means. De Witte’s attention to the Calvinist service, which elucidates the interrelated activities of sounding, hearing, and listening, contributes to the vitality of the Church as a locus of communal worship. In contrast, Saenredam’s sparsely inhabited and minimally furnished church interiors suggest a reverential silence reserved for spaces of contemplation. Saenredam’s Nave and Choir of the St. Janskerk, Utrecht (fig. 90, c. 1650, Rotterdam, Boymans), for example, projects a museum-like atmosphere where the viewer may marvel at the mute architecture.28 In contrast, the walls in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk are soundboards that amplify the activity within the church. In this respect, whereas Saenredam’s paintings signify the Calvinist precepts of purity and asceticism as memorials to the enduring Word, De Witte’s works suggest the resonance of the living Word by evoking the acoustics of the faith community. Although there is no record of his acquaintance with Saenredam, it is possible that the two knew each other, considering Haarlem’s close proximity

9 to Amsterdam.29 De Witte was likely familiar with Saenredam’s oeuvre, as at least two of Saenredam’s paintings were in Amsterdam while De Witte was active: The Old Town Hall in Amsterdam (1657, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and Interior of St. Bavo’s Church, Haarlem (fig. 91, 1648, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland). Perhaps De Witte consciously adopted a manner distinct from that of Saenredam as a means of marketing his paintings and establishing a signature style. The pervasive spirituality of De Witte’s works, evident in his depictions of the Calvinist community unified by the sermon and their inhabitance of the light-filled space, has been overlooked by many scholars in favor of fascination with the formal and iconographic elements of his paintings. Art historians have traditionally interpreted church interior paintings as “perspectives,” referring to the term employed in inventories to describe architectural painting as a broad category that includes depictions of secular buildings.30 Before I turn to my investigation of Calvinist sensory experience and community in De Witte’s paintings, my second chapter considers how De Witte and his church interiors have been treated in modern scholarly literature. We may understand the secularization of De Witte’s paintings, in part, as indicative of a broad tendency during the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries to neglect consideration of art’s religious content. Arnold Houbraken’s early eighteenth-century biography of De Witte,31 which considers his art only briefly and in isolation from his colorful career and character, established a precedent for preoccupation with the formal qualities of De Witte’s works at the expense of their religiosity. However,

10 scholarship has overlooked Houbraken’s association of De Witte with the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412-323 BCE), a comparison suggesting not only that De Witte sought spiritual truth in the manner of an ancient Cynic, but also that he was self-aware in his choice of subjects and adoption of a style well-suited for expressing Calvinist spirituality. Chapter three examines Houbraken’s biography of De Witte and the intermingled and often convergent truths and fictions that Houbraken weaves, with the aim of establishing a possible correlation between De Witte’s character and his paintings. Although the relation between De Witte and his art must remain speculative, it is nevertheless informative to consider how his outlook on religion and spirituality may have shaped De Witte’s painted exploration of the faith communities he depicts. The remaining chapters of my dissertation examine De Witte’s sermon paintings as religious art, which provides a corrective to the long-prevailing view of De Witte’s paintings as secular studies in perspective. De Witte’s painterly technique and his suggestive naturalism, which affect an impression of a particular moment in time, recreate for the contemporary viewer the experiential nature of attending service by evoking the sights and sounds that enliven the church’s sacred environment. De Witte’s appeal to the senses, which draws attention to the believer’s personal relationship with the divine, signifies the expansiveness and incorporeality of a God who may be perceived and experienced through faith but not described or delimited through form. Vision is arguably the viewer’s primary mode for appreciating a work of art;32 in order to “understand” a painting, one must both see (that is,

11 perceive) and look (or actively engage). Chapter four, “Painting the Word,” introduces the visuality of De Witte’s Calvinist aesthetic, which entices the viewer to see and to look at both the visible (the faith community and the material culture of the church) and the invisible (the spirituality that sanctifies the church space). De Witte communicates the presence of God through light, depicted with broad and sweeping strokes of paint. Departing from the relatively meticulous handling of paint by church interior painters such as Saenredam and Houckgeest, and perhaps inspired by Amsterdam compatriot and fellow “rough” painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), De Witte’s creamy, textured brushwork creates light that is tangible, active and transitory. De Witte translates the vision of the sacred in Catholic devotional subjects formative to the Netherlandish tradition of naturalism, such as Madonna in a Church (fig. 75, c. 1438, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museum) by Jan van Eyck (c.1390-1441), into the perception of the sacred in depictions of Calvinist worship spaces. De Witte’s investment of his painted churches with scenes of worship draws attention to the sacred nature of the space not through the definition of the building as “Church,” but by virtue of the services enacted within them.

Chapter five, “The Art of Preaching,” addresses De Witte’s representations of the preacher as the disseminator of God’s Word, as well as the content and style of sermons in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, to establish the painted representation of sound as an important component of the Calvinist aesthetic expressed in his works. Homiletic manuals, which describe the rhetoric of preaching, clarify the artful connection between verbal and

12 visual communication: De Witte’s preachers, whose dramatic gestures draw attention despite their typically diminutive size, employ manual rhetoric to suggest the spoken Word. Gesture, in this context, signals the sight of sound. Portrait prints of dominees (Protestant preachers), by Rembrandt for example, and their accompanying inscriptions, inform my discussion of preachers as moral exemplars for the community who wield power through the well-spoken Word. As the preachers depicted in prints were leaders of the church and models of Christian living, we may surmise that those represented in De Witte’s sermon paintings were likewise learned and eloquent spreaders of scripture—and perhaps, in some instances, intended to represent specific dominees popular in their faith communities rather than an anonymous motif. The correlation between portrait prints and De Witte’s painted preachers is suggested by the similar emphasis on gesture as a form of speech, which justifies my consideration of the latter as a type of “speaking likeness.” Furthermore, because both preacher portraits and “sermon” paintings were displayed in contemporary Dutch homes, it is possible that they hung alongside each other as complementary images: whereas portrait prints represent the countenance of the preacher and describe his laudable character, sermon paintings depict him in the act of delivering a sermon. Together, these works would have helped to articulate and reinforce the popular concept of the home as a kleyne kerck, where devout families studied scripture, discussed lessons imparted in the day’s sermon, and applied these tenets to daily life.33 Chapter six, “The Community of the Faithful,” examines the art of the aural expressed through the diverse congregants in De Witte’s sermon

13 paintings who gather to witness God’s Word. As the preacher’s audience, they communicate the experience of Reformed worship by looking and listening, or sometimes emphatically not attending, which indicates that the sacred space is filled with sights and sounds intended to be seen and heard. Many of the faithful depicted in De Witte’s paintings not only “hear” the homily, but also actively “listen” to the message.34 Whether engaged with the preacher, reading, conversing, strolling, or gazing out of the picture, the congregants respond to the sound of the sermon and add to the “noise” of the service through their varied and lively activities. As potential surrogates for the viewer-as- congregant, they articulate how to “hear” paint and demonstrate the importance of reception in communicating simulated sound. Moreover, the rapt congregants in the heart of the preekkerk (preaching church), most of whom passively “listen,” may be contrasted with several seemingly contemplative inhabitants of the foreground of De Witte’s paintings, who actively “discern.” The latter mode of perception is a heightened form of listening that implies the individual’s capacity to evaluate the wisdom of the preacher’s words. This manner of truth seeking, which parses the essential from the conventional, would have resonated with the majority of

Amsterdam’s interfaith population, who often only officially joined a congregation (Calvinist or otherwise) after careful consideration. Notably, such earnest critical appraisal of religion originated with the strictly oral tradition of the ancient Cynic philosophy founded by Diogenes, whose contemporary counterpart (according to Houbraken) we find in De Witte. In this context, it is possible to understand the congregants in De Witte’s paintings as models for

14 hearing the sermon: the sincere listener does not simply receive God’s Word, but divines the truth in the preacher’s message. Chapter seven, “God’s Instrument,” explores De Witte’s distinctive treatment of the organ, a then-controversial instrument of worship that makes the service “audible” and accessible to the viewer-as-congregant. His representations of organs, their pipes activated by painted light, recall for the viewer the music played by organists on contemporary ecclesiastical pipe organs, many of which survived the Alteratie or were rebuilt during the seventeenth-century. De Witte often reorganizes the actual space of the church in order to juxtapose the active, open organ and the preacher in the pulpit (figs. 22 and 58), which suggests an aural analogy between the two motifs. His emphasis on the organ is illuminated by the contemporary debate waged in pamphlets and poems about the use of organs in the Calvinist church. Although, like Calvin, some denounced organs as instruments of sin, statesman and diplomat Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) defended them as promoting community and teaching scripture through song, and encouraged organ construction and decoration. This chapter suggests that De Witte’s paintings supported the campaign waged throughout the Dutch Republic to reinstate ecclesiastical organ music by forming a visual counterpart to the textual promotion of the organ evident, for example, in Huygens’ pamphlet. Through the lyrical quality of his brushwork and his painterly application of light, De Witte visualizes Huygens’s assertion that organs have the power to move the soul, and evokes the divine sound of the organ. I compare De Witte to his contemporaries Pieter

15 Saenredam and Anthonie de Lorme (c. 1610-1673), who also represented organs in the Calvinist church, to demonstrate that De Witte expands upon a pictorial vocabulary for the organ’s promotion by visually and aurally incorporating the organ into the Calvinist service. The immediate goal of my dissertation is to explore how De Witte’s depictions of the Calvinist service and its spaces introduce a sensory vocabulary to represent a Word-based faith. By establishing the religious content of De Witte’s church interior paintings, I counter the scholarly tradition of their secularization. The larger contribution of this project is to revise our conception of the relation between the Reformed church and seventeenth-century Dutch art by demonstrating that a Calvinist aesthetics does exist, and is expressed through, rather than refuted by, the formal-experiential qualities of De Witte’s paintings. By investigating faith communities, spirituality, and sensory experience as De Witte represents them, my dissertation modifies our understanding of the nature of religious art in the Dutch Republic and, more broadly, the role of the image in early modern religious and spiritual life.

16 ENDNOTES

1 In contrast, out of Pieter Saenredam’s approximately fifty paintings of church interiors and exteriors, he only depicted three images of the service (of these, two are extant).

2 Linda Stone-Ferrier makes a comparable argument for Rembrandt’s landscape etchings, which reveal an interest in rural motifs and ruins that (Stone-Ferrier argues) shows nostalgia for the past and rejection of modernity. “Rembrandt’s Landscape Etchings: Defying Modernity’s Encroachment,” Art History 15, no. 4 (1992): 403-433.

3 Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007), 241.

4 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 472.

5 Willem Frijhoff, “Religious Toleration in the United Provinces,” 43; Judith Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565-1641) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 8; Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (New York: Hambledon and London, 2003), 291; Benjamin Kaplan, “Confessionalism and its Limits: Religion in Utrecht, 1600-1650,” in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age, ed. Joaneath Spicer and Lynn Federle Orr (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 68. Kaplan additionally notes that Catholics maintained an analogous distinction: “devout” Catholics included klopjes (secular nuns), the hosts of so-called hidden churches (schuilkerken) where Catholics worshipped, and those who confessed and took communion monthly; “good” Catholics engaged in confession and communion at least at Easter; “nominal” Catholics visited the Church only to recognize births, marriages, and deaths. Ibid.

6 Arthur Wheelock, “Emanuel de Witte: The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam,” forthcoming online catalog entry in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2014), [n.pag.].

7 According to church archives, this window, installed in the Smiths’ Chapel by 1542, remained in situ through the eighteenth-century. The Smiths Chapel was founded between 1475 and 1491 by the Smiths and the Coopers, which until 1542 were united

into a single guild. Since the glass occurs in the church archives as “Blacksmiths and Coopers glass,” it must have been installed by 1542. Eighteenth-century neglect of the stained glass windows in the Oude Kerk led to the destruction of all but six of the thirty-two stained glass windows, most of which dated from the sixteenth century, four from the seventeenth and one from the eighteenth. B. Bijtelaar, “De geschilderde glazen van de Oude Kerk te Amsterdam,” Oud Holland LXXI (1956): 206.

8 The 1567 organ, built by Pieter Jansz de Swart, replaced the 1545 version by Henrick Niehoff and Jasper Johanson. This organ remained in situ until 1658-1659, when a larger organ, erected by Jacobus Galtusz van Hagerbeer, took its place. H. Janse, De Oude Kerk te Amsterdam. Bouwgeschiedenis en restauratie (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), 320.

9 See, for example, Angela Vanhaelen’s recent contribution to the study of church interior paintings, The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). Vanhaelen characterizes iconoclasm in the Netherlands as “a violent break with the past: the military overthrow of one religious aesthetic by another” (25). For an alternate view of iconoclasm as a relatively peaceful and respectful reorganizing of the Church, see Mia Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1566-1672 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 105-125. For the care taken to relocate altarpieces and devotional objects formerly in Haarlem’s churches to private collections or the Prinsenhof, see Celeste Brusati, “Reforming Idols and Viewing History in Saenredam’s Perspectives,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 37-38.

10 See Mochizuki, passim, for her argument that church furnishings such as pulpits, pews, and text panels are a form of art that privileges text over image in accordance with Calvin’s promotion of the Word.

11 Mariët Westermann, “‘Costly and Curious, Full off pleasure and home contentment’: Making Home in the Dutch Republic,” in Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt (Zwolle: Waanders, 2001), 54.

12 Eric Jan Sluijter, “‘All striving to adorne their houses with costly peeces’: Two Case Studies of Paintings in Wealthy Interiors,” in Art and Home, 116.

13 Ibid., 230, n. 63.

14 For example, see Joseph Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reaktion, 2004). In addition to his redefinition of the Protestant image, Koerner’s

chapter two relates the historiography on the Reformation’s “destruction” of art (27- 37).

15 The origin of this trend in the literature may be traced to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who argues in his 1826 Aesthetics, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford, 1975), vol 1, that the Reformation precipitates the end of art, rendering it “a thing of the past” (103).

16 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (1930, London, 1985), 105.

17 For a discussion of the particular vehemence of Calvin toward religious images (as opposed to Luther’s more forgiving stance), see Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); also Sergiusz Michalski, Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1993), 59-74. Perhaps the most prominent modern text to articulate some version of this concept is Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), which conceives of the Reformation as a rupture in the image tradition that separates Medieval devotional images from art valued for its status as art beginning with the Renaissance. See chapter two for further discussion of Belting.

18 See Victor Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta- Painting (Cambridge: University Press, 1997), 89-102. For the most recent contribution to this argument, see Vanhaelen, The Wake of Iconoclasm.

19 Op cit, n. 4.

20 For example, Jakob Rosenberg, Rembrandt: Life and Work (1948; rev. ed., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980); Willem Visser t’Hooft, Rembrandt and the Gospel (New York, 1960), 18-30; Margaret Carroll, “Rembrandt as a Meditational Printmaker,” Art Bulletin 63 (1981): 585-610; William Halewood, Six Subjects of Reformation Art: A Preface to Rembrandt (Toronto: 1982); Robert W. Baldwin, “‘On Earth we are Beggars, as Christ Himself was.’ The Protestant Background of Rembrandt’s Imagery of Poverty, Disability, and Begging,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 54 (1985): 122-135; David Smith, “Towards a Protestant Aesthetics: Rembrandt’s 1655 Sacrifice of Isaac,” Art History 8 (1985), 290-302; H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 105-127; William Halewood, “Rembrandt’s Low Diction,” Oud Holland 107 (1993): 287-295; Michael Zell, Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

21 Smith, “Towards a Protestant Aesthetics,” 290.

22 Zell, Reframing Rembrandt, passim.

23 See, for example, Halewood, Six Subjects. For discussion of specific subjects of Rembrandt’s art that evidence a Protestant aesthetic, see Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self Portraits, 105-127.

24 A notable exception is Margaret Carroll’s “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker,” which engages with the process of creating prints as analogous to contemplation of the divine evident in contemporary Protestant poetry. Additionally, David Smith identifies Rembrandt’s use of contrapposto, a visual form of the rhetorical device of antithesis, as reflecting the “strained polarity between heaven and earth” evident in the contrast between humanity’s “total depravity” and God’s majesty (292).

25 See Angela Vanhaelen’s discussion of Saenredam in The Wake of Iconoclasm, 22- 43.

26 My thanks to Arthur Wheelock for sharing this idea with me.

27 For a discussion of Saenredam’s paintings as “artifacts of history,” see Celeste Brusati, “Reforming Idols and Viewing History in Pieter Saenredam’s Perspectives,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), passim.

28 In “Perspectives in Flux: Viewing Dutch Pictures in Real Time,” Celeste Brusati articulates the ways in which Saenredam controls and simulates viewing experience through his manipulation of perspective. The Erotics of Looking: Early Modern Netherlandish Art, ed. Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 46-47, 53-58.

29 Wheelock, “Gerard Houckgeest and Emanuel de Witte: architectural painting in Delft around 1650,” Simiolus 8 (1975-1976), suggests that Houckgeest and De Witte may have met Saenredam at the funeral of Willem II in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, which Saenredam is known to have attended. 174. De Witte visited Saenredam’s hometown of Haarlem in 1655. Manke, 65. Wheelock proposes that De Witte looked to Saenredam’s paintings as models for renderings of perspective, particularly in De Witte’s paintings of the 1650s (175-178). Liedtke likewise suggests that De Witte derived some of his compositions from Saenredam (Architectural Painting in Delft, 85).

30 J.M. Montias, “‘Perspectives’ in 17th Century Inventories,” in Jeroen Giltaij and Guido Jansen, Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen), 19-30.

31 Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718-1721), I: 282-287.

32 Recent literature on the senses draws attention to the traditional privileging of vision, and foregrounds the other senses as important alternative means of perceiving the world. See, for example, essays in The Auditory Culture Reader, ed. Michael Bull and Les Back (Oxford: Berg, 2003); Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. David Howes (Oxford, Berg, 2005); Mark Smith, Sensing the Past. Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Christine Göttler and Wolfgang Neuber (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, ed. Wietse de Boer and Christine Göttler (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

33 For discussion of the “kleyne kerck,” see Mariët Westermann, “‘Costly and Curious, Full off pleasure and home contentment,’ Making Home in the Dutch Republic,” in Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Marlene Chambers and Mariët Westermann (Zwolle: Waanders, 2001), 54.

34 For a description of the differences between “hearing” and “listening,” see Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening (New York: Fordham, 2002) trans. Charlotte Mandell (2007), passim.

21 Chapter 2

SECULARIZING THE CHURCH

The scholarly preoccupation with church interiors as primarily architectural experiments in mathematics and opticality, which finds its roots in the nineteenth-century view of Dutch paintings as strictly imitative, has effectively secularized these sacred environments by emphasizing science at the expense of spirituality. De Witte’s sermon paintings, which prominently feature the Reformed service, are particularly ill suited to the category of “perspectives,” as this often-used label, originally found in seventeenth- century inventories, misleadingly implies that De Witte’s main concern is the structure of the church rather than its function as a place of worship. The popular view of Dutch paintings as windows onto reality reinforced the traditional dismissal of Dutch religious art in favor of portraits, still lifes, landscapes and genre scenes. The landmark 1980 exhibition Gods, Saints, and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, reinserted history painting, including religious scenes, into the canon of Dutch art.1 In his catalog essay on “Religious History Painting,” Christian Tümpel draws attention to the continued post-Reformation production of religious subjects—particularly, but not exclusively, scenes from the Old Testament—that were viewed by a Dutch Calvinist audience as analogs to the textual authority of the Bible.2 However, because seventeenth- century church interior paintings, where the church itself, rather than (for

22 example) a Biblical narrative within the church, has traditionally been considered the primary subject, do not belong to the genre of history painting, they were not represented in the Washington exhibition. This chapter examines how and why modern scholarship has dismissed the religious context and content of church interior paintings, with particular attention to De Witte’s oeuvre, and situates the current study in relation to the emerging interest in Dutch art and spirituality.

The Church Interior as a Portrait of a Place According to French artist and writer Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876), “Dutch painting…was not and could not be anything but the portrait of Holland, its external image, faithful, exact, complete, life-like, without any adornment…The object is to imitate that which is…The style, then, will have the simplicity and clarity of the principle.”3 Fromentin viewed Dutch painting from the perspective of an artist immersed in the Orientalist art in vogue in the French Academy, and emphasized the difference between the everyday preoccupations of Dutch artists and the exotic, fanciful subjects of French painting.4 For Fromentin, Dutch art was commendable only insofar as it imitated reality; Fromentin valued the formal elements of Dutch painting and neglected its subject matter entirely.5 Fromentin’s characterization of Dutch painting as a “genre school”6 that captures the unmediated realities of everyday existence through the illusionistic effects of optics and perspective exemplifies nineteenth-century beliefs about the secular, imitative nature of Dutch art that have shaped scholarly interpretation of church interior paintings until recently.

23 Following Fromentin’s assertion of the “total absence” of subject in Dutch art,7 early twentieth-century art historians viewed the subject of the church as an opportunity for artists such as Saenredam, Houckgeest, and De Witte to experiment with the art of perspective, the windows and white-washed walls of these spaces providing playgrounds for the pure light and opticality that preoccupied practitioners of the “Dutch school.”8 Hans Jantzen, whose 1910 Das niederländische Architekturbild is one of the earliest art historical texts dedicated to architectural painting, concentrates on the stylistic developments of church interior painters such as De Witte.9 Jantzen’s focus on church interiors as three-dimensional spaces exemplifies the formal approach to Dutch painting advocated by Fromentin and popular among early twentieth- century art historians.10 Accordingly, Jantzen employs church interiors as a case study in the Dutch fascination with optics and space.11 For Jantzen, Saenredam is the premier architectural painter because of his unified treatment of space, where the figures are “intent upon not being noticed.”12 Ilse Manke, who wrote the sole monograph on Emanuel de Witte in 1963, focuses on issues of dating and attribution, in part by analyzing De Witte’s perspectival techniques in contrast to those of his contemporary Gerard

Houckgeest.13 Manke promotes De Witte as the innovator of church interior painting in Delft, and casts Houckgeest as imitator.14 Additionally, she draws attention to De Witte’s preoccupation with space and light, as opposed to Houckgeest’s interest in architectural form.15 Manke asserts a lack of subject matter in De Witte’s paintings, which, according to her, is superseded by his preference for color and optics. For example, her description of De Witte’s

24 1685 Protestant Gothic Church (Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunst) states: “The action is forgotten. One hardly notices that it is still a sermon, the preacher on the pulpit in the background is hard to find. The people are not content, are not connected with each other through narrative…they stand among each other in a pure formal-optic relationship.”16 Manke’s only chapter that addresses De Witte’s interest in Calvinist church interiors, “On the Topography of the Protestant Churches,” concentrates on the extent to which De Witte’s paintings correspond with actual Dutch churches, leaving aside the question of their religious context entirely.17 General surveys of Dutch art reiterate the emphasis on the formal qualities of church interior paintings, which are typically treated as, first and foremost if not exclusively, studies of architecture. Jakob Rosenberg and Seymour Slive, for example, dismiss the figures that populate church interior paintings and argue that such works instead “emphasize the beauty and power of buildings,” adding that “It is not difficult to imagine Mondrian nodding with approval at the light and shadow patterns found in these seventeenth-century compositions,”18 a view that anticipates Svetlana Alpers’ treatment of Pieter Saenredam, discussed later in this chapter. R.H. Fuchs places church interior paintings within a chapter entitled “The Art of Landscape and Still Life” due to the “fanatical attention…paid to the tonalities of daylight” in these works, a characteristic that he relates to landscape painting.19 Of De Witte’s paintings, Fuchs asserts, “the church is a décor, a space filled with sunlight which changes the colours, and a meeting-place for people,” which in his opinion identifies De Witte’s church interiors with the civic nature of townscapes.20

25 Bob Haak similarly emphasizes space and atmosphere in his discussion of De Witte, and treats De Witte’s figures as “equally important for the architecture in his compositions…the reds and blues of their clothing providing unexpected colorful accents.”21

The Church Interior as Semblance of Reality Just as church interior paintings have been interpreted, in the tradition of Fromentin, as unmediated images of reality, so have they been considered, at the other extreme, paintings replete with hidden meanings whose significance may only be deciphered through knowledge of contemporary texts, such as emblem books. This trend in scholarship finds its origins in the so-called “disguised symbolism” identified by Erwin Panofsky in early Netherlandish art.22 In 1976, Eddy de Jongh applied Panofsky’s method to Dutch art, and discovered coded, often didactic meanings in seventeenth- century Dutch genre paintings.23 Drawing in part on De Jongh, Walter Liedtke’s 1976 article “Faith in Perspective” attempts to understand the meaning of church interior paintings for seventeenth-century viewers by analyzing their iconographic significance. Liedtke interprets Carel Fabritius’s View in Delft (fig. 123, 1652, London, National Gallery), which combines the still life element of a lute, a traditional symbol of sensuality, with a church in the background, as an example of a contrast between earthly and spiritual pursuits.24 Liedtke references De Witte’s Oude Kerk in Delft (fig. 2, 1651, London, Wallace Collection), which was originally enclosed in shutters with a still life painting on the exterior,25 to suggest that the viewer was intended to move from contemplating worldly

26 goods (in the form of the still life) to spiritual wealth (in the depiction of the sermon).26 Similarly, Liedtke argues that the meaning of the painting-within-a- painting of De Witte’s Portrait of a Family in an Interior (fig. 56, 1678, Munich, Alte Pinakothek) is evoked largely through the still-life elements in the foreground, a thesis he derives from De Jongh’s identification of picking grapes with chastity in a Christian marriage, and from the traditional identification of flowers and mirrors as vanitas elements. Hence, the “disguised” symbols surrounding the family support the didactic image in the background.27 Although Liedtke’s article draws attention to the importance of considering such paintings in their seventeenth-century context, his reliance on iconography to attribute meaning to these works suggests that depictions of sacred spaces are not inherently religious subject matter. Related to this search for “hidden” meaning is the scholarly fascination with assigning iconographic significance to the figures in church interior paintings. In his 1971 article “Two Interior Views of the Old Church in Delft,”28 Timothy Trent Blade introduces a popular interpretation of the figures in works by Houckgeest and De Witte as memento mori; according to Blade, these two artists “share a characteristically Dutch interest in an underlying moral note of this kind,” evident in contemporary still life paintings.29 Blade comments that these works “are not without their moral implications, even though outwardly they seem simple presentations of genre in one form or another.”30 Accordingly, Blade interprets the frequent juxtaposition of youth with old age (for example, in the combination of nursing mother and elderly

27 gravedigger) as a commentary on the cycle of life.31 For Blade, the oft- depicted woman nursing an infant also signifies charity.32 In a similar vein, Beverly Heisner’s 1980 article “Mortality and Faith: The Figural Motifs Within Emanuel de Witte’s Dutch Church Interiors” laboriously assigns iconographic meaning to a number of De Witte’s frequently represented figures.33 Predictably, the gravedigger is a reminder of death.34 The nursing woman, for Heisner, is both a symbol of charity and a reference to the Virgin Mary.35 The sleeping congregant signifies idleness.36 Heisner concludes, “Upon examination, De Witte’s church interiors take on a richness of symbolic intention which has not been previously recognized.”37 Her assessment, which reflects the influence of Panofsky and De Jongh, implicitly defines the figures in De Witte’s paintings as stock representations with purely emblematic significance instead of considering them as constituents of the faith community so keenly observed by De Witte. The tendency to interpret De Witte’s works primarily according to their symbolic significance, part of a broader trend in art historical scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, is still evident in current scholarship. For example, according to Arthur Wheelock in his 2013 entry intended for future publication on the National Gallery of Art’s online catalogue, De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (fig. 26, c. 1660, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art) exhibits vanitas elements, notably the prominently positioned grave in the foreground juxtaposed to the nursing mother and child, which together “symbolize life’s journey as it unfolds within the framework of the Christian tradition.”38 The gravedigger’s tool, which emerges from the dirt like a grave

28 marker, is unsurprisingly seen as a reference to “the cross on which Christ was crucified.”39 Wheelock concludes that De Witte’s “intention was not to depict an actual event, but rather to provide this scene with a broader allegorical statement about death.”40 Although I do not dispute the possible symbolism in De Witte’s works, I wish to shift emphasis from allegory to the “living” figures and sensory environment that De Witte depicted based on his observations of—and immersion within—the Calvinist faith community. To this end, it is also possible to detect in Wheelock’s entry a refreshing consideration of De Witte’s paintings of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam as images of community. Wheelock astutely observes:

The [Oude Kerk] was a center of communal life, where people of all ages, the devout and the would-be devout alike, felt free to enter and congregate, whether or not they were seeking spiritual guidance. De Witte relished in the depiction of that human presence, in all its variety…top-hatted gentlemen talking animatedly with one another; parishioners sleeping unabashedly in church pews; quiet, obedient children as well as those playing hide-and-seek in the stalls; young women nursing; and older matrons listening intently to sermons.41

De Witte’s Amsterdam Oude Kerk paintings come to life in Wheelock’s description. They are not detached studies of light and space, nor are they staid, moralizing, and pedantic reminders of the inevitability of death. Wheelock perceptively illuminates De Witte’s penchant for activating representations of the Reformed faith community through awareness and suggestion of the vicissitudes of the human condition.

Pieter Saenredam as the “Master of Perspective” Although church interior painters such as De Witte were far more prolific, most art historical literature focuses on Pieter Saenredam (1597-

29 1665),42 “the seventeenth-century Master of Perspective.”43 Saenredam was the first artist in the Dutch tradition of church interior painting to depict consistently accurate representations of actual buildings, as opposed to “imaginary” architecture.44 His rigorous adherence to mathematical principles in creating his church interior paintings has led art historians to view him as the pioneer of “perspectives,” and to consider all subsequent church interior painters in terms of what they derived from the initiator of this tradition.45 The assumption implicit in most of these studies, which we shall dismantle in the following chapters, is twofold: first, that Saenredam’s fascination with the science of perspective precludes any interest in religion; second, that all seventeenth-century Dutch church interior paintings, regardless of artist, style, or subject, are imbued with an immanent “sameness” that justifies generalizations about the genre. Numerous exhibitions and monographs have focused on Saenredam’s working methods—particularly his incorporation of measurements to determine perspective and lay out the space in his works accordingly.46 Saenredam’s process consisted of three steps. First, he made an on-site freehand drawing of his subject. He made notes of the building’s measurements, and combined these later in his studio with the observations from his preliminary drawing to create a construction drawing that was typically the same size as the finished product. He often used this second sketch to transfer the design directly onto the painting surface; finally, he executed the painting.

30 Often at the expense of scholarly attention lavished on Saenredam, church interior painters such as De Witte and his fellow Delft artists Gerard Houckgeest and Hendrick Van Vliet are marginalized in exhibitions, as in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen’s Perspectives: Saenredam and the Architectural Painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam, 1991) and the National Gallery of Scotland’s Dutch Church Painters: Saenredam’s Great Church at Haarlem in Context (Edinburgh, 1984). Additionally, multiple exhibitions have been dedicated solely to Saenredam: the Centraal Museum’s Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (Utrecht, 1961), Pieter Saenredam, The Utrecht Work: Paintings and Drawings by the 17th-Century Master of Perspective (Centraal Museum, Utrecht 2000) and an extension of the latter exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Sacred Spaces of Pieter Saenredam (Los Angeles, 2002). On the other hand, no exhibition to date has focused exclusively on De Witte. It is possible that Saenredam ultimately owes his renown as painter of “perspectiven” in part to Arnold Houbraken’s brief biography (1718), which specifically names only one work by Saenredam: his 1657 painting of the old town hall (“oude Stadhuis”) in Amsterdam, “which in itself suffices to perpetuate his art and fame through the ages.”47 Houbraken even quotes an excerpt from a poem by Pieter van Rixtel that extols this work.48 Although Houbraken mentions that Saenredam also painted “kerken,” his employment of a secular building as an example of Saenredam’s art downplays the latter’s interest in church interiors. Such a lasting impression was perhaps unintentional on Houbraken’s part; it is likely that, as Saenredam’s Old Town

31 Hall was prominently displayed in Amsterdam’s new town hall, it was both Saenredam’s most famous painting and the one most accessible to Houbraken. Saenredam’s twentieth-century popularity may also be explained by the austerity of his paintings, which must have appealed to champions of modernist aesthetics. For example, influential American art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) asserts in his essay on “Abstract Art” that painting should “confine itself to the disposition pure and simple of color and line,”49 which suggests that he may have valued the precise technique and the stark visuality evident in Saenredam’s paintings—stylistic traits not shared by De Witte. Minimalist architect John Pawson (1949- ) hails Saenredam’s Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht (fig. 88, 1645, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum) as “one of the great churches of Dutch Calvinism.”50 Saenredam’s seemingly faithful and mathematically exacting architectural renderings of church interiors lend a sense of objectivity to these spaces, enabling modern art historians in the spirit of Fromentin to treat Saenredam’s works, and by extension the church interiors of his contemporaries, as architectural “portraits”51 that imitate structures for the sake of form. The twentieth-century fascination with Saenredam’s spare, whitewashed church interiors has contributed to the scholarly notion that these unadorned, exiguous spaces define the Calvinist aesthetic. For Svetlana Alpers, Saenredam’s paintings exemplify the “art of describing,” or the Dutch preoccupation with empirically recording observable surface reality by relying on translating perception into description. According to Alpers, Saenredam’s painted churches are “laid out before our eyes on the

32 panel as an architectural panorama.”52 Alpers asserts that Saenredam “does not attempt to recreate narratively or to present allegorically,”53 which reinforces her proposed dichotomy between the interpretive nature of Italian art and the descriptive character of Dutch art. Instead, Saenredam’s goal is to “give priority to the documentation of the church seen and thus to present the picture itself as a document.”54 Alpers goes so far as to compare Saenredam’s “delicate linear patterns—arch laid on arch with doors folded over, trimmed by pillars thick and thin and bound by walls of the palest tones of wash” with the abstract works of Piet Mondrian. Alpers draws a formal similarity between the patterned, asymmetrical surface structure of a Mondrian to that of a Saenredam but does not take into consideration the sense of spirituality conveyed by these formal qualities,55 which effaces both the religious context of Saenredam’s churches and the spiritual content of Mondrian’s paintings.56 Her emphasis on his empiricism contributes to the misleading impression of Saenredam as a detached, unbiased observer of light, space, and architectural form. One notable exception to the overwhelming tendency of art historians to consider Saenredam solely in terms of secularized naturalism and perspective is the important contribution of Gary Schwartz and Marten Jan Bok, whose Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and His Time explores the context in which the artist worked.57 Schwartz and Bok’s book may be viewed as a reaction to Alpers’ assertion that Saenredam’s paintings are purely about the austere aesthetics of the Dutch church interior, evident in their statement, “We have been able to establish that purely visual interest was not an important

33 determinant in Saenredam’s choice of motifs, and that personal motives in the choice of a subject was the exception rather than the rule.”58 Although Schwartz and Bok acknowledge the religious environment in which these paintings were produced, they focus on tying Saenredam’s church interiors to the identities and interests of individual patrons and to Saenredam’s biography rather than reconstructing the spiritual experience of the viewer. For example, their discussion of Saenredam’s only two extant paintings that depict the Reformed service centers on his kinship to the Calvinist preacher Johannes Junius (1587-1635).59 My study is particularly indebted to their claim that Saenredam’s paintings promote the use of the organ in the church, and their association of statesman Constantijn Huygens with the commission of one of these works.60 I have drawn upon their situation of Saenredam within the context of the Haarlem organ debate in proposing De Witte’s involvement in the controversy in Amsterdam.

De Witte and The Delft School When De Witte turned from history paintings to church interiors around 1650, he emerged alongside two other architectural painters in Delft, Houckgeest and Hendrick Van Vliet (1611-1675), as among the foremost painters of church interiors in the Dutch Republic.61 Following the traditional tendency of art historians to group seventeenth-century Dutch artists according to “schools” of painting determined by broad characteristics associated with locales such as Haarlem and Utrecht,62 Liedtke and Wheelock, writing in the 1970s, defined the oeuvres of Emanuel de Witte, Gerard Houckgeest, and Hendrick van Vliet within the bounds of the so-called Delft School.63 Even if

34 we do not take into account the question of personal style, the problem with understanding De Witte’s paintings, in particular, according to the interests of artists in Delft is that De Witte only spent approximately two years painting church interiors in this environment, whereas he lived and worked in Amsterdam for about forty years. The current study shifts emphasis from De Witte’s Delft period to his time in Amsterdam, where De Witte emerges as a distinct artist in an autonomous working environment and makes his independent contribution to the genre. Still, it is vital to examine first the abundant scholarship on De Witte as a representative of the Delft School, since this literature has contributed to the secularization of his paintings.

Formal Concerns Works of art traditionally cited as typifying the Delft School of the mid- to late-seventeenth century include the ordered domestic scenes of Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, famous for their opticality and their attention to perspective. For example, in The Kitchen Maid (1660, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), Vermeer’s technique of applying yellow dots of paint across the surface of the still life elements on the table results in a glittering effect of light that has prompted art historians to suggest that Vermeer employed a camera obscura to capture light. De Hooch, likewise, naturalistically imitates the effects of light filtered through the windows at left and highlighting the tiles on the floor of The Bedroom (c. 1658-1660, Washington, National Gallery of Art), even backlighting the child’s hair so that light appears to shine through her golden curls. In addition, De Hooch displays his interest in perspective in

35 his characteristic inclusion of the doorsien, which shows a view through the open door into another room and out into the street. Wheelock dedicates one chapter out of seven in his 1973 dissertation (published in 1977) to a stylistic discussion of Houckgeest and De Witte in the context of the Delft School.64 Wheelock concerns himself primarily with the similarities and differences in their approach to perspective, which, he posits, ultimately stem from the influence of Saenredam.65 Although Wheelock finds commonalities between these church interior painters and the later work of Vermeer and De Hooch, including “naturalistic scenes in sunlit rooms…the relationship of figures to their environment” and “trompe l’oeil effects created by a hanging curtain,” he grants that “continuity” of Delft preoccupations existed “only in the broadest sense”—an observation that, although somewhat at odds with the conclusion of his dissertation,66 nevertheless anticipates the trend in scholarship beginning in the 1980s that largely dismantles the “schools” of Dutch art. Liedtke’s earliest book-length contribution to the study of church interiors, his 1982 Architectural Painting in Delft (based on his 1974 dissertation), seems to assume a close and isolated working environment shared by Delft painters, which contributed to the artistic exchange among the three artists, with Houckgeest as the chief disseminator of ideas to his compatriots. His characterization of Delft as a “provincial town” and his emphasis on its “local character,”67 along with his definition of the “‘Delft- type’ architectural painting” as “an oblique recession of forms perceived from a close point of view”68 suggests his subscription to the notion that

36 architectural painting could be defined within the parameters of the Delft School—an assumption that he thoughtfully reconsiders in his later publications. The conventional classification of Dutch artists into regional styles derives from scholarship on art in Renaissance Italy, where distinct local traditions in Florence, Rome, and Venice (located at great distance from each other) lend themselves readily to such divisions.69 In contrast, the relatively close proximity of Netherlandish cities, and the frequency with which artists moved from city to city, problematizes the definition of artists’ styles according to where they spent their careers.70 Although recent approaches to Dutch painting have, for the most part, moved away from the emphasis on local schools,71 some scholars—notably Liedtke—still contend that certain locales such as Delft and Utrecht produced painters with similar preoccupations and an identifiable “look” that justifies the selective maintenance of this rubric. In particular, Liedtke’s two relatively recent publications on Delft painting, the exhibition catalog Vermeer and the Delft School (2001) and A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries (2000),72 insightfully explore the question of a “Delft School.” Liedtke concludes that the answer “is neither a yes nor no, but a qualified yes,”73 with one important caveat. Delft was not a cloistered village that developed an artistic tradition isolated from the rest of the Netherlands. Not only did artists such as De Witte and De Hooch spend relatively brief careers in Delft before moving to other cities (which contributed to the spread of the styles they had developed in Delft), but artists

37 who spent their entire careers in Delft—Vermeer included—must have traveled to neighboring cities such as The Hague, and interacted with visitors to their hometown.74 Liedtke emphasizes that Delft’s ties to other artistic centers, in fact, “might lead one to modify the popular image of Delft [as] a ‘most sweet town’ with maids pouring milk, sweeping courtyards, and conversing with cavaliers.”75 Although he maintains that “the most innovative artists in Delft during the 1650s…could very broadly be said to have combined qualities that had previously distinguished painting in Delft with new trends in subject matter and style,” Liedtke concedes that “this is a drastic simplification, and what developed in Delft was part of a larger picture in the Netherlands and Northern Europe.”76 Liedtke’s recent scholarship draws attention to broad similarities among the church painters and their fellow Delft artists, and concludes that spatial illusionism, opticality, and geometry may be considered common stylistic concerns among painters of public and private spaces in Delft: “These interior scenes, with their white walls, cool colors, and measured fall of light; their illusionistic spaces seen close at hand; their geometric order; their intimation that the same sort of environment continues out of view—all this must have made these pictures of public places in Delft attractive to the same city’s painters of the private world.”77 Liedtke’s elision of the differences in subject matter between secular domestic interiors such as those created by Vermeer and De Hooch and sacred spaces painted by De Witte, Houckgeest, and Van Vliet suggests that even recent art historical scholarship has been preoccupied primarily with the formal qualities of church interior paintings.

38 For instance, in his catalog entry on De Witte’s A Sermon in the Oude Kerk, Delft (fig. 4, c. 1651, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada), Liedtke identifies the preacher, the pulpit, and the curtain rod as elements in the painting that counter spatial recession,78 a view that treats the figures as part of the architecture rather than as sentient beings who experience the space as a place of worship. This dissertation does not dispute the significance of such devices for painters of church interiors, but asserts that space, light, and form both evoke reality and convey spirituality. Although Liedtke’s interests, and thus his invaluable research, primarily concern the stylistic and technical aspects of church interior paintings, it is important to acknowledge his increased openness to thinking about the contemporary reception of these works by the Calvinist faith community, evident in his 2007 catalog entry for the Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft (fig. 1, c. 1650, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Liedtke’s intuitive analysis of De Witte’s individual style and a stylistic comparison with Houckgeest comprises the majority of the approximately three-page essay. However, Liedtke dedicates one paragraph to consideration of the spiritual content of the work. Liedtke’s adherence to the conventional interpretation of motifs such as the open grave, the juxtaposition of boys to men, and the irreverent dogs as vanitas symbols is reminiscent of his 1976 article “Faith in Perspective.” Still, two important sentences suggest the recent trend in scholarship toward consideration of these paintings in light of their spiritual content. Liedtke remarks, “The image as a whole, which was originally displayed in a

39 private home, implies belief in the local church as a way to salvation. This type of picture is, in a sense, a Protestant form of religious art.”79 This kernel of insight suggests an entirely new mode of thinking about church interior paintings as thematically spiritual—still largely unexplored territory, despite the important studies of several scholars (discussed below). Liedtke’s contribution to the scholarship on De Witte lies in his discernment of the unique visual qualities of De Witte’s painting—particularly De Witte’s depiction of space and light. For Liedtke, De Witte treats space “like a landscape, Houckgeest like a chess set;”80 De Witte’s light “melts rather than molds.”81 My study owes much to Liedtke’s connoisseurship and lyrical descriptions of De Witte’s style. It must be emphasized here that it is possible to conduct an isolated study of Delft church interior painting that attends primarily to social and religious context rather than the formal commonalities of the “Delft School.” One of the most recent studies of Dutch church interior paintings, Almut Pollmer’s 2011 dissertation entitled, “Kirchenbilder. Der Kirchenraum in der holländischen Malerei um 1650: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte,” focuses on the local Delft confessional environment in which these artists lived and worked; Pollmer justifies her microcosmic emphasis by the inward-looking, local nature of the Delft market.82 Regrettably, her undoubtedly important contribution to the dialog on seventeenth-century Dutch church interior painting has not been made available for the current study.

40 The Church Interior as Civic Space When church interior painting abruptly emerged as a preoccupation in Delft around 1650, De Witte and Houckgeest, the leading local practitioners of the genre in 1650-1651,83 demonstrated a marked fascination with depicting various views of the tomb of William the Silent (1533-1584), the first stadholder of the northern Netherlands, in Delft’s Nieuwe Kerk.84 For example, we may compare Houckgeest’s Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, with the Tomb of William the Silent (fig. 119, 1650, Hamburg, Kunsthalle) with De Witte’s Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent, (fig. 5, c. 1651, Winterthur, Museum-Stiftung) for their similar depictions of the tomb from an oblique view with two-point perspective. Scholarly treatment of the thematic content of paintings depicting William the Silent’s tomb,85 which typically equates “civic” with “secular,” both perpetuates the interpretation of church interior paintings as studies in perspective and establishes the precedent for understanding these works as markers of municipal and proto-national pride rather than sacred significance. The traditional focus on this brief period of intense study accompanies the aforementioned academic preoccupation with the so-called Delft School, and is closely associated with interest in the formal concerns of these paintings. When viewed as an isolated group, it is tempting to interpret these works as formal and technical experiments, particularly as Houckgeest and De Witte feature the tomb from different angles and at various points of the day. Additionally, because the tomb is placed in the choir at the east end of the Nieuwe Kerk, paintings of it omit overtly religious decorations and furnishings such as the pulpit, pews, and psalm boards that decorate the preekkerk (located

41 in the nave to the west, on the opposite side of the crossing). The overwhelming emphasis on these particular church interior paintings—which form a relatively small part of De Witte’s oeuvre—as secular studies of civic monuments with timely political implications has overshadowed the reality that these sculptures mark tombs and are located in sacred spaces, which inevitably invests them with religious significance. Walter Liedtke, who establishes Houckgeest as the initiator of the tradition of depicting actual church interiors in Delft, marks 1650, the date of Houckgeest’s Hamburg Nieuwe Kerk in Delft (fig. 119), as the birth year of this innovation.86 Liedtke lauds the Hamburg panel as “the most important view of a church interior ever painted in Delft and one of the greatest architectural paintings of the seventeenth-century.” He goes on to declare, “No other picture painted in Delft was as consequential as the Nieuwe Kerk view of 1650, which can be considered (like its central subject) a national monument of the Netherlands.”87 Liedtke’s assertion sets Houckgeest’s Hamburg Nieuwe Kerk as the standard by which all other church interior paintings must be judged, and foregrounds both the technique of perspective and the subject matter of William the Silent’s tomb as preoccupations of church interior painters. While this certainly applies to Houckgeest, who dedicates over half of his small oeuvre to views of De Keyser’s monument,88 it gives a misleading impression of De Witte’s works, most of which stray markedly from those of Houckgeest, both in terms of style and subject matter. Nevertheless, Liedtke cites De Witte’s and Van Vliet’s depictions of the tomb as well as their

42 representations of other national monuments as “the progeny” of Houckgeest’s Hamburg panel, and interprets this group of works as “a celebration of the birth of a nation and as a remembrance of its father figure,” which casts them as primarily political expressions of nationalist sentiments and minimizes their religious associations. Wheelock similarly promotes the civic implications of the tomb’s depiction. He attributes the sudden fascination with the tomb, and with representing actual church interiors in general, to the tumultuous events that occurred at that time, when the Dutch formally declared independence from Spain in 1648 and William II, son of William the Silent, died in 1650 at the age of twenty-three and was buried beneath the monument in 1651.89 The depictions of the tomb functioned, according to Wheelock, as symbols of both national pride and human mortality.90 While I do not deny the nationalist sentiments expressed in these tomb sculptures, I suggest that the connection between politics and religion evident in these monuments has been downplayed by scholarship. Wheelock’s focus on the declaration of the Dutch state’s sovereignty in the wake of the twelve- year truce with Spain, personified by the seated figure of the stadholder on the monument, threatens to overshadow the spirituality of the space that encapsulates it, and the religious significance of the sculpture’s function as a burial marker. Recent literature has even viewed the erection of William the Silent’s tomb, and later depictions of it, as indicative of the Calvinist break with the Catholic past, asserted through the strategic placement of a civic monument on a formerly sacred site.91

43 Ironically, De Keyser’s monument, which was commissioned by the States-General, rests on the former location of the high altar in Delft’s Nieuwe Kerk—a fact noted by its seventeenth-century audience.92 For example, Dirck van Bleyswijck remarks in his 1667 Beschryvinge der Stadt Delft (Description of the City of Delft), “in place of the many costly altars and so forth that once (we are told) so magnificently beautified the choirs, these are now decorated with various marble graves of illustrious persons.”93 Van Bleyswijck specifically identifies the site-based connection between devotional art and tomb sculpture using the example of De Keyser’s work: “just as in former centuries one could see paintings, and carved or sculpted works by the most affecting and famed artistic masters, so today one can behold the illustrious renowned monument of the princes of Orange, a widely famed and very outstanding work.”94 Significantly, Van Bleyswijck seems to suggest a similarity between the “affecting” sacred works that inhabited the space prior to the Alteratie and the “outstanding” monument by De Keyser, which implies that the replacement of icons with tomb sculptures is, in a sense, a continuation of the pre-Reformation artistic tradition. It is worth noting that Calvin objected to such tomb sculptures as invitations to idol worship; however, later Calvinists—including the notoriously conservative Utrecht preacher Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676)— stressed that these monuments were intended solely for remembrance of the deceased.95 This concept of memoria, according to Frits Scholten, took on a distinctly Protestant air after Reformers divested funerals of Catholic ceremony, discouraged prayers for the dead and instead emphasized the

44 consolation of the living.96 But despite Calvin’s condemnation of the pomp and circumstance associated with Catholic burials, his view of a funeral as a “memorial for the Resurrection”97 indicates a connection between inhumation and religion. By extension, the grave, which marks the site of the soul’s ascension, must also be sacred. In his discussion of De Keyser’s gisant sculpture of William the Silent, Scholten contradicts his assertion of a post- Reformation secularizing of sepulchers by remarking that the sculpted prince’s unbuttoned doublet may reference the contemporary belief that opening one’s clothing eased passage to the afterlife.98 In addition to the tomb’s evident association with civic pride and political prowess, it likely also functioned as a reference to the Calvinist faith. Despite scholarly claims to the contrary, it may also be argued that the sacred space of the church that houses tomb sculpture imparts sacralizing significance to the monument. According to Liedtke, largely as a consequence of the numerous national monuments erected in Reformed churches, “the interior of the church became an extension of the market square, a civic space where one might be thinking less about religion than about family, history, peace and quiet, or affairs of the heart.”99 Scholten similarly argues that the wandelkerk (walking church), where many tombs and memorials were located, “was a neutral public area, a sort of indoor city square,” and a distinctly different area from the preekkerk.100 The Tomb of William the Silent, as well as those constructed to commemorate naval heroes such as Piet Hein (in Delft’s Oude Kerk) and Michiel de Ruyter (in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk), draw attention to the public aspect of the Reformed Church, which served as a

45 site for municipal and quasi-secular gatherings such as organ recitals, and was open both to sightseers who strolled the aisles and itinerants who took refuge within its walls. However, civic and sacred spaces within the Reformed Church were not mutually exclusive. For example, the Church’s simultaneous functions as places of worship and social assembly are exemplified in the informal and often blurred divisions between preekkerk and wandelkerk. Carillons and organs, which were located in the Church and could serve ecclesiastical purposes such as calling congregants to worship or accompanying psalm-singing, were nevertheless owned and maintained by the municipality, and served civic purposes, as well. Therefore, we might consider the placement of De Keyser’s monument in the church not as indicative of a shift from sacred to secular space, but as a buttressing of political might with religious authority, particularly as Orthodox Calvinists were politically allied with the Orangist faction. The monument itself, which includes a tablet that commemorates the man who “revived and restored the true religion,” underscores the inextricable ties between church and state that precipitated the war with Spain and, eventually, the creation of the autonomous Dutch Republic in 1648. Liedtke concedes that the setting of the tomb within the Nieuwe Kerk’s “modest” choir must have recalled for contemporary viewers “the new nation’s freedom of worship”—in this context, freedom to shed the yoke of Catholicism and worship as Calvinists—made possible by the leadership of William I.101 De Witte suggests the religious underpinning of the monument in his Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft (fig. 36, 1664, Salzburg,

46 Landessammlungen-Residenzgalerie), painted over a decade after his move to Amsterdam: though the tomb remains largely in shadow, De Witte isolates and subtly highlights the square panel that includes the motto Te vindice tuta libertas (“With your protection, liberty is safe”) above an open Bible.102 Here, the message seems clear: freedom from the “tyranny of Spain,” to quote the tomb’s memorial tablet, is synonymous with freedom of religion. De Witte’s incorporation of the Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk’s organ in the background of the composition may be intended to support this connection between terrestrial and celestial harmony, as he highlights the sculptural tableau that represents the harmony of the spheres.103

Iconoclasm and the Vocabulary of Reformation Art Because Dutch church interior paintings represent spaces that were impacted, to some degree, by the Beeldenstorm, they must be viewed in light of the extensive discourse on the nature of the image after Iconoclasm. Here I examine scholarly dialog regarding the existence and nature of “Protestant art” during and after the Reformation, and position the current study within this debate. Literature that addresses the relation between art and the Reformation may be broadly divided into two camps: whereas some scholars argue that the break with the Catholic Church disrupted and destroyed the tradition of sacred art, others contend that it precipitated new kinds of religious art that may be considered distinctly Protestant. This dissertation, which expands on the important contributions of the latter group, asserts that the Reformation was fundamental for creating new modes of spiritual expression that communicate the nascent Calvinist identity of the Dutch Republic. Calvinist sensory

47 language manifests in the images of worship created by De Witte, which not only depict material culture such as hatchments, stained glass, and ornately decorated organs and pulpits, but also illustrate the Reformed community experiencing these sacred spaces. Hans Belting’s study Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art asserts that the Reformation precipitated the “death” of the religious image and the “birth” of art. Belting argues that the Reformation initiated a “crisis of the image” prompted by the removal of sacred art from its religious context, which resulted in a shift from worship of icons to reverence for art. For Belting, “The new presence of the work succeeds the former presence of the sacred in the work,”104 meaning that the new aesthetic value of art produced by and for the secular realm supersedes the former spiritual significance of icons intended for worship. According to Belting’s perceived shift from icon to art, early Netherlandish painters of invented church interiors such as Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-c.1441) belong to the artistic tradition of the devotional image because their art contains sacred subjects, whereas the church interiors of De Witte and contemporary artists were valued during the seventeenth century primarily for their aesthetic qualities due to their observed treatment of actual church interiors and their preoccupation with light and perspective. Unlike such Dutch genres as still life, portraiture, and scenes from everyday life, whose secular subjects are not directly tied to any religious significance, seventeenth-century church interior paintings occupy a liminal space in Belting’s artificially constructed shift from icon to art. For although they are not images made for

48 the church, they are images of the church. They are not revered as idols in a religious context, but they illustrate the sacred setting in which Calvinists worship God. Drawing on Belting, Victor Stoichita asserts that the Calvinist rejection of the image signifies the “zeroness of painting,” which results in the “white wall” of the Protestant church that precipitates the “era of art.” According to Stoichita, “The silent inner walls of Protestant churches were not just or simply walls. The images had been painted over, effaced, ‘un-done’: Painting was absent.”105 Stoichita represents the Protestant church interior as a barren environment that is visually and audibly void of spirituality. The whitewashed walls of the newly inaugurated Calvinist church, visible in such church interior paintings as Saenredam’s Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht (fig. 88), signify for Stoichita the austerity of the Calvinist faith and the negation of the image. Celeste Brusati also negotiates the shift from icon to art in the context of Saenredam’s paintings in her 2009 essay, “Reforming Idols and Viewing History in Pieter Saenredam’s Perspectives.”106 Brusati argues that Saenredam pointedly manipulates the viewer’s experience to preserve the “material remains in, and remains of,” the Church’s religious history, “to keep the history of…art from disappearing into oblivion.”107 Brusati, unlike Stoichita, sees painting as very much present in the facture of Saenredam’s images, which Saenredam employs to aid the viewer in negotiating the shift from devotional to historical viewing of the “artifacts” of the Church.108 Brusati treats Saenredam’s oeuvre as a “historical project,” which implies that he approached his works with the goal of documenting the past for

49 posterity.109 For example, she compares Saenredam’s drawing of the St. Anthony’s Chapel and the North Aisle of the St. Janskerk, Utrecht (1636, Rotterdam, Boymans), which includes remnants of Catholic devotional art such as an empty altar retable, with his 1645 painting based on the drawing (fig. 89, Utrecht, Centraal Museum) that creates a telescopic view to figures praying at the altar, here adorned with a crucifix. Saenredam’s distorted perspective and his addition of both kneeling figures and crucifix draw attention to the church’s former function as a devotional space.110 She asserts that Saenredam emphasizes the demarcation between the church’s past sacred function and present civic role through the inclusion of the figure visible through the arches at right, who designates the “transition from the space of devotion and memory to its boundary, and from one temporal dimension to another.”111 Brusati’s important contribution to the recent scholarly reassessment of the post-Reformation image informs the current study in its attention to the seventeenth-century viewer’s reception and experience of church interior paintings, as well as its analysis of the distinct character of Saenredam’s works as visual accounts of the past. The historicizing nature of Saenredam’s paintings both contrasts with and complements De Witte’s interest in capturing the present. However, although Brusati treats the “material remains” within Saenredam’s church interiors as “religious images” that Saenredam shifts from icon to art, it seems that she does not consider Saenredam’s own paintings to be of religious subjects. Her characterization of Saenredam’s “carefully wrought blank walls,”112 her treatment of Saenredam’s paintings as

50 “perspectives,” and her emphasis on their documentary nature recall both Alpers’ attention to their purely descriptive quality and Belting’s assertion of their secularization. Although Brusati acknowledges Saenredam’s capacity for “describing the church itself as the art of the present,”113 her otherwise insightful analysis does not consider the inherent spirituality of the subject matter that Saenredam depicts, or the ways in which his style and technique enhance the sacred spaces in his paintings. Joseph Koerner problematizes the approach initiated by Belting in his study of Reformation-era altarpieces by German artist Lucas Cranach, and asserts that the Reformation did not destroy religious art, but created a new vocabulary for it.114 As Koerner points out, the Wittenberg Altarpiece (1547, Wittenberg, Stadtkirche), which took the place of a Catholic altarpiece, is invested with Lutheran theology such as the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, and even with Luther himself, portrayed both in the Last Supper and preaching in the predella.115 Koerner also emphasizes the textual aspects of the Wittenberg altarpiece as part of Cranach’s new visual vocabulary, intended to celebrate the primacy of the Word in Protestant theology.116 Koerner’s study argues that the Reformation did not lead to the destruction of religious art, but to its redefinition. Only recently have art historians re-engaged with the Dutch church as a locus of religious identity. Xander Van Eck relates the Catholic affiliation of artists and patrons to the decorative programs of “clandestine” Catholic churches, established by members of a minority faith who were not allowed to worship in public.117 Mia Mochizuki discusses the text panels, or boards

51 decorated with Biblical verses, as well as pulpits and other material objects of real churches such as the Haarlem Bavo Kerk.118 Like Koerner, Mochizuki argues that iconoclasm precipitated a new definition of religious imagery for the Protestant church. However, whereas Koerner finds a new attitude toward the religious image in the conventional form of an altarpiece imbued with Lutheran beliefs, Mochizuki proposes that the text panels themselves are images of worship. Her study of “text paintings” such as the Last Supper/Siege of Haarlem panels, which were constructed to replace the Catholic altarpiece formerly located in the choir at the Bavokerk, leads Mochizuki to argue that the primacy of the Word in Calvinist theology leads to a new aesthetic in which the Word is made image.119 My dissertation draws from both Koerner and Mochizuki in its reframing of Reformation art to accord with Protestant theology and aesthetic. In particular, Mochizuki’s exploration of the Word made material and manifest in Calvinist churches as paintings that represent their new religion has prompted me to consider the ways in which De Witte’s church interior paintings “speak” the Word through their recreation of the service. Whereas Mochizuki studies the material culture of the Calvinist church, I explore the representations of this material culture, as well as the inhabitants of the church, as they are depicted in painting. I propose that De Witte’s sermon paintings illustrate the communal experience of the Word and reinforce Calvinist identity. Unlike Koerner and Mochizuki, who demonstrate the continued usefulness of visual vocabulary during and after the Reformation as a means of

52 expressing Protestant tenets, Angela Vanhaelen’s recent contribution to the discussion of Iconoclasm’s impact on art, The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic, argues that church interior paintings indicate a dramatic break from the Catholic tradition of revering images for their sacred significance.120 The value of Vanhaelen’s study lies in her assertion that works by De Witte and his contemporaries interrogate Dutch Calvinist identity. She evaluates these images in light of the religious climate of the Dutch Republic, and establishes the seemingly self-evident but surprisingly underappreciated idea that, as representations of church interiors, these paintings concern religion.121 Church interior paintings are, in a sense, palimpsests that employ the opacity of paint to establish a material present that denies a spiritual past in a manner analogous to the whitewashed walls of the physical churches.122 Surprisingly for a study that so intensively and insightfully investigates the interstice between the past and present faiths represented in Dutch churches and purportedly explored in church interior paintings, Vanhaelen comes to the conclusion that these paintings reveal the secularization of art in the wake of the Reformation; they demonstrate art’s “inability to show the inner spiritual realm.”123 Although Vanhaelen advances the scholarship on these works by drawing attention to their faith context, she also does them a great disservice by denying their capacity for spiritual expression. My study of De Witte’s Calvinist church interior paintings proposes that these works are repositories for a new kind of religious subject—one that celebrates spiritual life. For instance, De Witte activates the “white walls” of

53 his Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Service (fig. 58, 1678, Amsterdam, Kremer Collection) with the arches of light that gleam over the pipes of the organ and highlight the chandeliers, hatchments, memorials, and stained glass displayed in the church. The presence of the organ and the preacher giving his sermon to the large congregation reinforces the spiritual activity of the space. The sounds of sermon and organ would have reverberated off the surrounding walls, suggesting not the “silent” walls of Stoichita’s description but “audible” walls whose acoustics amplify the message of the preacher and the music of the organ. De Witte portrays the church as a living sacred space, not as a testament to the death of sacred art. His paintings visualize the Reformed emphasis on the Word by portraying the sermon and its reception within newly converted and distinctly Calvinist interiors. The pre- Reformation tradition of devotional art finds renewed and transformed spiritual expression in De Witte’s images of worship.

Conclusion: A Point of Entry One important source on De Witte has yet to be investigated in this dissertation: his earliest and only roughly contemporary vita, written by Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) and published in volume one of De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (The Great Theater of Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses) in 1718, twenty-five years after De Witte’s death. For Houbraken, De Witte’s “worthy mastery of the brush must serve as an example for imitation, but his way of life for revulsion and abomination.”124 Houbraken’s biography of De Witte, which segregates issues of spirituality and lived experience from artistic skill, anticipates modern

54 assumptions about the secular nature of De Witte’s paintings. Indeed, Houbraken’s description of De Witte and his art likely directly influenced scholarship on De Witte through the twentieth century, as the Groote schouburgh frequently determined whether and how a Dutch artist was remembered.125 Having established the scholarly treatment of De Witte and the genre of church interior paintings in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, it is now useful to examine the formative text for these sources. Houbraken’s inability to reconcile De Witte’s style and subject matter with religious context helped to precipitate centuries of interpreting De Witte according to the empirical tradition. However, it is also possible to gain from the vita insight about De Witte’s character that provides support for an empathetic reading of his works. The next chapter turns to Houbraken’s biography, and its revelations about De Witte’s nature that suggest the latter’s involvement with the faith communities that he depicted. Although it is important to navigate carefully the problematic relation between an artist’s life and his works, if we consider the possibility that De Witte was self-aware in the fashioning of his own persona—one that Houbraken (perhaps unwittingly) perpetuated—we may come to a new understanding of De Witte and his paintings. Let us now turn back the pages of De Witte’s art historical reception to the first entry. It is in Houbraken’s assessment of De Witte’s character that we may begin to understand the answer to the question of Calvinist aesthetics.

55 ENDNOTES

1Albert Blankert, Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1980).

2 Christian Tümpel, “Religious History Painting,” in Gods, Saints, and Heroes, 49-50.

3 Eugène Fromentin, The Masters of Past Time: Dutch and Flemish Painting from Van Eyck to Rembrandt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981; first English edition published by Phaidon Press, 1948; first published as Les Maîtres d’autrefois in 1876), 97, 100.

4 Jeroen Boomgaard, “Sources and Style: From the Art of Reality to the Reality of Art,” in The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective, ed. Frans Grijzenhout and Henk van Veen, trans. Andrew McCormick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 175.

5 Ibid., 174.

6 Fromentin, 100.

7 Ibid., 108.

8 Hans Jantzen, Das Nederländische Architekturbild (Leipzig: Verlag von Klinkhardt and Biermann, 1910).

9 Jantzen, for example, observes that during De Witte’s time in Amsterdam, he moves away from Houckgeest’s interest in oblique forms and becomes more interested in compositions that allow for the showcasing of windows, evidencing a new optical approach to the church interior. 118-126.

10 Boomgaard, 179.

11 Jantzen, 130.

12 Ibid., 140.

13 See Ilse Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692 (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger and Co, 1963), 20-23, for example, for her arguments regarding De Witte’s artistic innovations.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., 44.

16 Ibid., 56.

17 Ibid., 39-44.

18 Jakob Rosenberg and Seymour Slive, “Part One: Painting: 1600-1675,” in Dutch Art and Architecture 1600-1800 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 323, 330.

19 R.H. Fuchs, Dutch Painting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 124.

20 Ibid., 127.

21 Bob Haak, The Golden Age: Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth-Century (New York: Abrams, 1984), 485.

22 Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: its Origins and Character, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), passim; Panofsky’s theory about northern art is initially formulated in his essay, “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” Burlington Magazine 64 (1934): 117-127. Ultimately, however, his iconological method derives from his study of Italian Renaissance art, where he outlines three levels of meaning in a work of art: pre-iconographical description, iconography, and iconology. Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939).

23 For example, see Eddy de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1976), passim; “Grape Symbolism in paintings of the sixteenth- and seventeenth- centuries,” Simiolus VII (1974): 166-191; "Pearls of Virtue and Pearls of Vice", Simiolus 8 (1975/1976): 69-97; more recently, see “A Birds-eye view of erotica: double entendre in a series of seventeenth-century genre paintings,” in Questions of Meaning: Theme and Motif in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2000), 22-58; “On Balance,” in Vermeer Studies, ed. Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1998), 351-366;

24 Walter Liedtke, “Faith in Perspective,” The Connoisseur (October 1976): 130-131.

25 The painting is depicted in a domestic setting with shutters open in Jacob Maurer’s C. Ploos van Amstel and fellow connoisseurs in his cabinet (c. 1760, Petworth Collection).

26 Liedtke, “Faith,” 131.

27 See De Jongh, “Grape Symbolism,” passim. De Jongh cites the emblem book by Jacob Cats as the authority on this symbol.

28 Timothy Trent Blade, “Two Interior Views of the Old Church in Delft,” Museum Studies VI (1971): 34-50.

29 Ibid., 44, 47.

30 Ibid., 44.

31 Ibid., 43-44, 47.

32 Ibid., 43.

33 Beverly Heisner, “Mortality and Faith: The Figural Motifs within Emanuel de Witte’s Dutch Church Interiors,” Studies in Iconography 6 (1980): 107-121.

34 Ibid., 111.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 112.

37 Ibid., 114.

38 Arthur Wheelock, “Emanuel de Witte: The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam,” forthcoming online catalog entry in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2014), [n.pag.].

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Rob Ruurs estimates that Saenredam painted approximately forty-five church interiors. See “Saenredam’s Perspective Constructions,” in The Paintings of Pieter

Jansz. Saenredam (1597-1665): Conservation and Technique, ed. J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer and Liesbeth Helmus (Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 2000), 13.

43 Pieter Saenredam, The Utrecht Work: Paintings and Drawings by the 17th-century Master of Perspective, ed. Liesbeth Helmus (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), 6.

44 Ruurs, “Saenredam’s Perspective Constructions,” in Conservation and Technique, 26. For an excellent description of Saenredam’s working method, with particular attention to his construction drawings, see Ruurs, 11-31.

45 For example, Wheelock asserts in his 1973 dissertation that De Witte and his Delft contemporaries Gerard Houckgeest and Hendrick van Vliet follow Saenredam in manipulating views of actual church interiors by compressing space and altering perspective to achieve a heightened degree of naturalism. Perspectives, Optics, and Delft Artists Around 1650 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977; originally “The shifting relationship of perspective to optics and its manifestation in paintings by artists in Delft around 1650,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard, Cambridge, 1973), 175-6. Walter Liedtke, however, credits Houckgeest with compositional innovations particular to the Delft painters, and negates the sway of Saenredam over Houckgeest. Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1982; revised version of Ph.D. diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1974), 77; Liedtke, A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries Zwolle: Waanders, 2000), 90-91.

46P.T.A. Swillens’ monograph Pieter Janszoon Saenredam: Schilder van Haarlem 1597-1665, 2d ed (Soest: Davaco, 1970), first published in 1935, concentrates its assessment of Saenredam’s paintings and drawings on his techniques and mastery of perspective (29-48). The most recent exhibition on Saenredam, Pieter Saenredam: The Utrecht Work: Paintings and Drawings by the 17th-century Master of Perspective (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002) devotes essays to Saenredam’s draftsmanship, his painting technique, and the question of the correspondence between Saenredam’s paintings and the actual interiors of the Utrecht churches.

47 “‘t geen alleen genoeg is om zyn konstroem eeuw in eeuw uit levendig te houden.” Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (1718-1721), I: 175-176.

48 For an English translation of Van Rixtel’s poem, see Gary Schwartz and Maarten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: the Painter and his Time (New York: Abbeville, 1990), 242, who also analyze it in the political context of Haarlem’s reputation as the preeminent residence of church interior painters.

49 Clement Greenberg, “Abstract Art,” The Nation 158 (April 15, 1944), quoted in Patricia Hills, Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001), 146-147.

50 John Pawson, Minimum (New York: Phaidon, 1996), 287.

51 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 172.

52 Ibid., 172.

53 Ibid., 174.

54 Ibid., 177.

55 Ibid., 52.

56 Mondrian articulates this connection between form and spiritual content, for example, in a 1914 letter to Dutch art critic H.P. Bremer: “The interior of things shows through the surface; thus as we look at the surface the inner image is formed in our soul…To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual…We find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art.” Quoted in Carel Blotkamp, Mondrian, The Art of Destruction (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 81.

57 Op. cit. n. 48.

58 Ibid., 9.

59 Ibid., 97-99.

60 Ibid., 124-128.

61 Jeroen Giltaij and Guido Jansen, Perspectives. Saenredam and the Architectural Painters of the 17th Century (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans van Beuningen, 1991), 11-12.

62 This tendency is apparent in early- to mid-twentieth century scholarship on architectural interiors. See Jantzen, 93-100, 101-107. Jantzen identifies a “Delft-type” (“Delfter Bildtypus”) seen in the oblique recession of architectural forms favored by Houckgeest (96-97). Accompanying this emphasis on the Delft school is the dispute regarding the innovator of “perspectives” in Delft. Manke, following Jantzen, dates

two of De Witte’s works prior to 1650 based on inconsistencies in his compositional technique (Jantzen, 116; Manke, 23: no. 24, fig. 11; no. 23, fig. 5). However, Liedtke points out that De Witte’s approach to composition, which involves a selective application of linear perspective, remains awkward in many of his later paintings. A View of Delft, 92. Therefore, according to Liedtke, Houckgeest must be the originator of the Delft church interior painting. A View of Delft, 122-127.

63 Liedtke, Architectural Painting, op. cit.; Wheelock, Perspectives, op. cit. Wheelock concludes of the Delft School, “the intensity of their combined interest is unique” (327). Curiously, Liedtke addresses De Witte’s Amsterdam career in the final section of the concluding chapter of his dissertation—despite the study’s purported restriction, as the title indicates, to Architectural Painting in Delft. He justifies this inclusion by characterizing De Witte’s Amsterdam works as “the culmination of the development” of Delft architectural painting (9).

64 Wheelock, Perspectives, 221-260. He dismisses Van Vliet as “not a particularly innovative artist,” and omits him from consideration in the chapter (224). Also see Arthur Wheelock, “Gerard Houckgeest and Emanuel de Witte: Architectural Painting in Delft around 1650,” Simiolus 8 (1975-1976): 167-185, which is a modified version of his dissertation chapter.

65 Wheelock, Perspectives, 227-235.

66 See n. 63.

67 Lietdke, Architectural Painting in Delft, 12.

68 Ibid., 19.

69 On the question of “schools” in the Netherlands, see Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 7-8. See John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth-Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 179-182, for his justification of a distinct Delft school.

70 Franits, 7.

71 For criticism of the idea of a “Delft School,” see Eric Jan Sluijter, De Stad Delft, cultuur en maatschappij van 1572 tot 1667 (Delft: Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, 1981), 172; also Christopher Brown, Carel Fabritius (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 43.

72 Liedtke, A View of Delft, op. cit.; Liedtke, Vermeer and the Delft School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001).

73 Liedtke, Delft School, 18.

74 Ibid., 8, 16-18.

75 Ibid., 16.

76 Liedtke, A View of Delft, 29.

77 Liedtke, Delft School, 113.

78 Ibid., 436.

79 Liedtke, “Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft,” in Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, II (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 968.

80 Liedtke, Architectural Painting, 14.

81 Ibid., 20.

82 Almut Pollmer, “Kirchenbilder. Der Kirchenraum in der holländischen Malerei um 1650: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte,” Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, Leiden, 2011.

83 De Witte and Houckgeest were followed by Hendrick Van Vliet’s emergence as a Delft church interior painter in 1652, by which time De Witte had departed for Amsterdam.

84 Bartholomeus van Bassen, the teacher of Houckgeest and the first to specialize in church interiors in the northern Netherlands, represents the monument with a degree of artistic license in his 1620 Tomb of William the Silent in an Imaginary Church (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts), painted before Hendrick de Keyser completed the tomb sculpture in 1621. Dirck van Delen’s Tomb of William the Silent in an Imaginary Church (1645, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) likewise places the tomb in a fictional location. On the other hand, the depictions of the tomb by Houckgeest and De Witte set De Keyser’s work within its actual location in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft.

85 Other examples include Houckgeest’s Ambulatory of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, with the Tomb of William the Silent (1651, The Hague, Mauritshuis), and The Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent (1651, The Hague, Mauritshuis), and De

Witte’s Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent (1653, Los Angeles County Museum of Art). The impetus for their concentrated study of the tomb from multiple perspectives has been the subject of scholarly debate and speculation. For scholarship on the initiation of their interest, see, for example, Sergius Michalski, “Rembrandt and the Church Interiors of the Delft School,” Artibus et Historiae 23, no. 46 (2002), who suggests that Rembrandt stimulated the interest of the Delft School; Wheelock describes the preoccupation as “puzzling” (1975-6, 167-168); See also Danielle Lokin, “The Delft Church Interior, 1650-1675,” in Delft Masters: Vermeer’s Contemporaries, ed. Michiel C.C. Kersten and Daniel H.A.C. Lokin, 48; Perspectives, 169. For a more recent interpretation, see Vanhaelen, 100-126.

86 Liedtke argues in A View of Delft (91-92), Vermeer and the Delft School (105), and Architectural Painting in Delft (77-81) that—in contrast to the theories of Jantzen (113-118), Manke (23, 63), and Wheelock (1975/6, 178), which mark De Witte as innovator and Houckgeest as follower—Houckgeest was actually the initiator of the tradition in Delft. Lokin (46-49) concurs with Liedtke.

87 Liedtke, A View of Delft, 81.

88 See Liedtke, A View of Delft (107) for a list of Houckgeest’s works.

89 Wheelock 1975/6, 180, 185.

90 Ibid., 181.

91 This argument is made most recently by Angela Vanhaelen, who asserts that the tomb “proclaims nothing less than a new world: a disenchanted world severed from God, who no longer dwells in material worldly places, not even the church choir,” and declares that the erection of De Keyser’s monument precipitates a “desacralization of space” (117). Frits Scholten’s study of Dutch tomb sculpture emphasizes the disparity in tomb significance between Pre-Reformation commemoration of the dead and Post- Reformation “separation between the church and the care for the dead,” when burials, graves, and their attendant meanings “broke free of [their] ecclesiastical bedrock…abruptly and completely divested of…ecclesiastical ties.” Sumptuous Memories: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Tomb Sculpture (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), 17.

92 Vanhaelen, 103.

93 Dirck Van Bleyswijck, Beschryvinge der Stadt Delft (Delft: Arnold Bon, 1667), I:176. As quoted in and translated by Vanhaelen, 112.

94 Ibid., I:260; As quoted in and translated by Vanhaelen, 112.

95 Vanhaelen, 115.

96 Scholten, 17-18.

97 Ibid., 19.

98 Ibid., 80.

99 Liedtke, Delft School, 103.

100 Scholten, 13.

101 Liedtke, A View of Delft, 86.

102 Lokin, 64-65.

103 See chapter seven, on Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk organ.

104 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 459.

105 Victor Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta- Painting (Cambridge: University Press, 1997), 89-102.

106 Celeste Brusati, “Reforming Idols and Viewing History in Saenredam’s Perspectives,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 31-56.

107 Ibid., 34, 49.

108 Ibid., 36, 52-53.

109 Ibid., 39.

110 Ibid., 50.

111 Ibid.

112 Ibid., 52.

113 Ibid., 53.

114 Joseph Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

115 Koerner, 69-80 and passim.

116 Koerner, 282-307.

117 Xander Van Eck, Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: Waanders, 2008).

118 Mia Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Images after Iconoclasm, 1566-1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008).

119 Mochizuki, 189-202.

120 Angela Vanhaelen, The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), passim.

121 The possibility of church interior paintings as “a Protestant form of religious art” is mentioned by Liedtke in his 2007 catalog entry on the De Witte painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (968-969); like Vanhaelen, he determines that these paintings would have “brought back memories, or at least stories, of the days in which the formerly Catholic churches of Holland were whitewashed throughout and stripped of ‘Popish’ decoration,” which implies that church interior paintings only concerned religion insofar as they reminded contemporary viewers of the absence of art in these churches.

122 Vanhaelen, 10-11, 32-36.

123 Vanhaelen, 93. It is worth noting multiple instances of painting’s capacity for portraying psychological depth. For example, Rembrandt’s Bathsheba With King David’s Letter (1654, Paris, Louvre) effectively conveys the introspection and moral dilemma of Bathsheba through her downcast eyes, tilted head, and isolation from key figures (such as David) typically included to communicate the narrative. Similarly, numerous paintings by Vermeer, such as Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (c. 1663, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) suggest interiority. In this case, Vermeer draws attention to the secluded figure’s lowered eyelids by highlighting her forehead and casting the area beneath her brow in shadow; additionally, her slightly parted lips evoke contemplation. Paintings are vehicles of, not obstacles to, suggesting the inner realm.

124 “waarde penceel-konst moet ten voorbeeld van naavolging, maar zyne levenswyze tot een afkeer en verfoeizel strekken.” Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (1718-1721), I: 282-283.

125 For example, Houbraken’s notorious omission of the Delft artist Jan Vermeer resulted in scholarly neglect of his oeuvre until Theophile Thoré reinserted him into the canon in the mid-nineteenth century. See Bart Cornelis, “Arnold Houbraken’s Groote schouburgh and the canon of seventeenth-century Dutch painting,” Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 26: 3 (1998): 145-151.

66 Chapter 3

DE WITTE AS TRUTH SEEKER

The most prominent and pervasive figure in De Witte’s paintings is a caped, longhaired and colorfully clothed man who is seen from the back and often accompanied by an obedient dog (figs. 4, 8, 11, 15, 28, 52, 58). This fashionably dressed figure, conceivably a surrogate for De Witte, always stands near the foreground, somewhat apart from surrounding congregants along the periphery of the preekkerk, and surveys the scene from the vantage point of both the audience and the artist. 1 In Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (figs. 67 and 68, 1686, Detroit Institute of Art), one of the latest dated paintings in De Witte’s oeuvre, this man wears a blue cape and red stockings, occupies the central foreground of the painting, and is more brightly illuminated than any other figure in the composition. His connection with the preacher, established by the direction of his gaze and the tilt of his shoulders, is reinforced by the angle of his right foot, as well as the shafts of light surrounding him, which all point to the pulpit.

Significantly, the caped man in De Witte’s Interior of the Portuguese Jewish Synagogue (fig. 64, 1680, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), painted a few years earlier than the Detroit Oude Kerk, bears striking resemblance to the rückenfigur in the latter painting.2 In the Portuguese Jewish Synagogue, the man stands bathed in light in the foreground of the composition; his brilliant

67 blue coat with red cuffs and stockings as well as the color of his hair and even his pose appear again in the Detroit Oude Kerk. The possibility that the caped man is a stand-in for De Witte is supported by the conviction of artist and theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) that a painter can most effectively persuade the viewer if he experiences what he paints.3 The identification of the man with De Witte, whether as “portrait” or as proxy, bears additional meaning if we consider that De Witte, whose name is not listed among the lidmaten of the Reformed Church but who evidently spent a significant amount of time at both the Oude Kerk and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam and in Delft, must have numbered among the liefhebbers who attended services at these churches, as the paintings themselves attest. De Witte-as-liefhebber, observer of Amsterdam’s worship communities, perhaps conflates with rückenfigur-as-liefhebber, participant in De Witte’s painted services. In this sense, the rückenfigur suggests that De Witte-as-liefhebber may have held a sympathetic attitude toward the religious communities so carefully described in his works, in addition to his fascination with the spectrum of human behavior that composed the congregation. We shall return to the visual evidence of De Witte’s involvement with Amsterdam’s multiple faith confessions. First, it is important to establish how this interpretation is informed by Arnold Houbraken’s biography on De Witte. For although Houbraken carefully crafts De Witte’s persona as melancholic misanthrope whose purportedly antagonistic and morally bankrupt nature seems discordant with De Witte’s apparent captivation by the faith

68 communities he so convincingly represents, careful analysis of the text may reveal larger truths buried within its fictions. It is possible to discern in Houbraken’s biography a sense of De Witte as frank observer and sincere truth seeker whose acute awareness of human character shapes his paintings as well as his worldview.

“Every Painter Paints Himself” De Witte is a notable exception to Arnold Houbraken’s consistently observed correspondence between an artist’s way of life and his paintings. Houbraken almost always inextricably links moral virtue to refined painting and subject matter, and reprobate behavior to rough painting and lowlife scenes. Such topoi, frequently employed in early modern artist biographies,4 have led some scholars to dismiss these primary sources as inventions that should not be taken as truthful accounts of the artists’ lives.5 More recently, Houbraken and other biographers of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists have been reassessed as valuable contributors to our understanding of artists’ accomplishments and personalities, as these vite often reveal essential truths about the artists in their seemingly fictitious anecdotes, and in some cases even perpetuate a persona the artist self-consciously created.6 In light of this discourse, it is necessary to consider Houbraken’s biography of De Witte in the context of Houbraken’s penchant for embellishment and for employing formulaic conventions. It is useful here to cite two artists whom Houbraken treats according to the maxim, “Every painter paints himself.” Houbraken characterizes Jan Steen (1626-1679) as a pictor vulgaris7 whose “paintings are like his way of life and

69 his way of life like his paintings.”8 Houbraken’s Steen is a boozing profligate who reportedly “treated [Margriet, his future wife] so farcically that she began to swell.”9 According to Houbraken, Steen tried to earn a living as a brewer and innkeeper, but had trouble making money because, as Houbraken remarks, “He was his own best customer.”10 Houbraken’s image of Steen accords not only with Steen’s paintings, which typically feature bawdy companies and households in disarray, but also with Steen’s representations of himself in his works. For example, in Easy Come, Easy Go (fig. 140, 1661, Rotterdam, Boijmans), Steen takes on the role of the secularized Prodigal Son who carelessly squanders his wealth, surrounded by servants who attend to his whims. Steen’s Self-Portrait Playing the Lute (fig. 141, c. 1663-1665, Madrid, Thyssen) portrays him in the comic role of a laughing musician, notably accompanied by a lute, which was commonly interpreted as an instrument of love and sexuality, as well as inspiration. Perhaps as part of an intentional strategy of self-promotion,11 Steen epitomizes Houbraken’s perceived correlation between vulgar living and coarse subjects. We may even interpret Steen’s incorporation of a lute in his comedic self-portrait as a conscious subversion of the traditional association between a stringed instrument and gentility or artistic inventiveness.12 In contrast, Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) exemplifies Houbraken’s learned, virtuoso painter, the pictor doctus,13 whose classicizing history paintings, study in Rome, and books on art theory demonstrate his refinement and intellectual nature.14 Whereas Houbraken suggests that Steen drew ideas for his chaotic domestic subjects from his own unruly and oft-neglected

70 household,15 De Lairesse “took…his violin and played a piece of music, but soon switched the violin for the palette, and painted,”16 which illustrates the connection between De Lairesse’s sophisticated taste and his inspired compositions, described by Houbraken as “tremendous in invention…and artfully depicted.”17 The lute in Steen’s Self-Portrait questions the conventional relation between music and inspiration; De Lairesse’s violin, for Houbraken, reinforces it. Typical of De Lairesse’s classicizing style is his Selene and Endymion (fig. 150, 1680, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), a mythological subject that depicts the moon goddess Selene as a softly curved figure who delicately lays her hand on an improbably muscular Cupid. Cupid, in turn, points to the sleeping Endymion, whose physique recalls the heroic male nudes of antiquity. The clear gestures and smoothly outlined forms, as well as the fine brushwork and pure colors, are typical of the classicizing tendency favored by De Lairesse and Houbraken. Houbraken’s characterization of De Lairesse’s work as “tremendous in invention” likely refers to such history paintings, which were lauded during the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries for their basis in the artist’s imagination rather than imitation—as opposed to the scenes of

“everyday life” typical of Steen’s oeuvre.18 Whereas Steen worked for the open market, which indicates that his works were readily available and affordable for a large portion of the Dutch art-buying public, De Lairesse worked primarily on commission for Amsterdam’s elite, and specialized in large-scale decorations for upper-class domestic interiors, such as the ceiling painting Allegory of Peace for the home of Andries de Graeff (1672, today in

71 The Hague, Peace Palace).19 Accordingly, Houbraken associates De Lairesse with sophisticated and intellectual pursuits apropos to his classicizing style and upper class patronage.

De Witte’s “levenswyze” According to Houbraken In contrast to Houbraken’s biographies of artists such as Steen and De Lairesse, whose lives are made to correspond with their art, Houbraken creates a distinct and complex character for the enigmatic and solitary De Witte, whose “levenzwyze” (“way of life”) was “different from others,”20 just as his paintings were unlike his way of life. Houbraken’s saturnine and misanthropic De Witte, who cast aside acquaintances “when he no longer needed them,”21 may be construed as a contrast to Houbraken’s jovial and gregarious Steen; perhaps Houbraken even has De Witte in mind when he remarks at the outset of Steen’s biography, “One whose nature is inclined to farce and jesting is more capable of depicting something serious than a melancholy person is of painting comical scenes, for the latter has an aversion to that way of life and nature and never conceives of such subjects.”22 Whereas the potentially self-aware image of Steen perpetuated by Houbraken implicitly associates him with the sanguine humor,23 Houbraken’s De Witte embodies characteristics popularly associated during the period with the melancholic temperament: he is solitary, disagreeable, and despairing, despite—or perhaps due to—his artistic genius.24 Although the biographies of Steen and De Witte are among the most colorful in Houbraken’s Groote schouburgh, and have in common the outlandish exploits of each artist as their central preoccupation, Houbraken adopts a distinctly serious tone in his

72 approach to De Witte’s biography that drastically differs from the light-hearted nature of Steen’s vita. Whereas Steen’s life is framed by theatrical references, which lend it a staged, comedic element and give the impression that the seeming chaos of Steen’s life is actually self-scripted, 25 Houbraken offers De Witte as an example of one whose nature is tragically ruled by his temperament.26 Ironically, one of Houbraken’s most praiseworthy practitioners of church interior painting, “where no one was like him, both in terms of the real architecture as well as ingenious lighting and beautiful figures,”27 seems to have led a degenerate life marked by physical and verbal disputes and plagued by debt. Most often, Houbraken assumes a sardonic attitude toward De Witte’s unbridled temperament. This is evident, for example, at the beginning of the biography: “And in truth, if the artistic skills that he possessed did not require it, his way of life would not have tempted us to give him a place among artists”28—a statement that establishes the contrast between De Witte’s levenswyze and his art, and cues the reader to expect a transposal of Houbraken’s otherwise exhaustively employed trope. Occasionally, however, it is possible to detect a sympathetic undertone to Houbraken’s account of De

Witte’s despondent existence, as when he remarks, “When [De Witte] saw that Fortune had turned the neck on him, that everyone shunned him, and he was regarded in his own country as a stranger…he fell into poverty and became dejected,” notwithstanding the unfortunate reality that, as De Witte’s landlord (writes Houbraken) points out, “he himself was the cause…and that if he had wanted to listen to advice, he could indeed have prevented this.”29

73 According to Houbraken, De Witte’s irascible disposition alienated him from his acquaintances and often angered or drove away potential clientele—a fact that is supported by contemporary archival records. Houbraken recounts the commission of two paintings from the King of Denmark;30 when failure to meet the stipulated delivery date, which had long since passed, elicited complaints from the patron, De Witte responded that he would simply sell the works to someone else.31 Houbraken also reports an incident involving a commissioned depiction of the Nieuwe Kerk with the Tomb of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), De Witte’s “most important” (“voornaamste”) work, negotiated by Engel de Ruyter (1649-1683), who died before the work was completed. The preacher Bernardus Somer, husband of the Admiral’s daughter, “not caring much about paintings,” offered De Witte less than the original price for the work. De Witte insisted on the higher offer, “and called the Preacher everything that was nasty, who kept him waiting so long that in anger he took his knife (even though he did not have a nickel in his pocket) and cut the piece to threads.”32 The dispute between De Witte and the De Ruyter heir over payment for the painting is documented;33 however, the painting in question is likely the same work today owned by the Rijksmuseum (fig. 66, 1683), in which case Houbraken’s assertion that De Witte destroyed it would be an invention, or at least an exaggeration, intended to demonstrate De Witte’s intransigence and his temper.34 Still, existing records show that although De Witte painted prolifically and enjoyed distinguished patronage, he was constantly in arrears due to his profligacy as well as his personality, which supports Houbraken’s

74 assessment of De Witte’s character. In 1649, De Witte agreed to make two paintings as payment for a gambling debt.35 In 1658, De Witte admitted to owing rent to the heirs of Dirck Huijz, his former landlord. De Witte promised to pay his debt to the family within six weeks, and pledged all of his furniture, household goods, and paintings as surety.36 The following year, De Witte indentured himself to the art dealer Joris de Wijs in exchange for room, board, and 800 guilders a year;37 the notarial record, as well as subsequent dealings with De Wijs’s widow, imply that the contract pledged to De Wijs all paintings De Witte should produce while in his home.38 In 1666, De Witte attempted to raise the price on two finished paintings for Pieter van der Kolck and sell them at the value “that they are judged by intelligent people.”39 This failed negotiation suggests that De Witte priced his works according to the valore di stima (value of esteem), or the worth that the perceived quality of the work and De Witte’s reputation imparted. This practice, as opposed to the valore di fatica (value of labor), was famously employed by Rembrandt on numerous occasions. As was sometimes the case for the Rembrandt, it appears that this bit of risky business on De Witte’s part precluded the transaction with Van der Kolck, who refused the paintings.40

Houbraken also relates that De Witte was constantly involved in quarrels over Biblical material (“Bybelstof”) with his companions,41 among whom he incited “disagreements and strife…not hesitating to frustrate that manner of Arguments, and exposing the facts to doubt, saying that, by his fifteenth year, the scales had fallen from his eyes.”42 Here it is necessary to comment on De Witte’s alleged employment of a Biblical expression from

75 Acts 9:18, “And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.”43 The original context of the phrase relates to the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of Christians who is temporarily blinded by God on his way to Damascus; when he regains his sight, he is baptized. Houbraken’s De Witte, who learns the art of rhetoric from his father,44 inverts the Biblical meaning to convey that he sees the “truth” of the Bible’s “fiction.” Houbraken’s passage might easily be interpreted as evidence of De Witte’s apparently cynical attitude toward organized religion, and Christianity in particular. However, it seems unlikely that one fundamentally opposed to the institutions of religion or the Christian faith would choose church interior paintings as his specialty. Furthermore, although we may do no more than speculate about De Witte’s own beliefs, the baptism of two of his children in the Oude Kerk in Delft, his sustained interest in depicting Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, and the Amsterdam kerkeraad’s (church council’s) display of two of De Witte’s paintings in their consistory suggest at least an amicable relationship with the Reformed faith.45 As Angela Vanhaelen and Almut Pollmer have recently argued, De

Witte may have been open to Catholicism. Notably, two of his children born in Amsterdam were baptized in the Catholic Church.46 This evidence may indicate De Witte’s conversion to, or at least sympathy toward, the Catholic persuasion; alternatively, it could reflect the desires of the children’s mother(s), whether or not De Witte ever considered himself Catholic. De Witte’s depictions of Catholic church interiors—which were of necessity

76 invented scenes, as Catholics were not allowed to worship in public in the Dutch Republic—support the possibility that De Witte was, at the very least, willing to pander to a Catholic market for his paintings, and perhaps also personally inclined toward Catholicism. It is equally plausible that De Witte did not have any fixed doctrinal affiliation. Perhaps he approached all religious institutions with critical discernment that manifested as jaded skepticism or as earnest truth seeking—or as an ever-evolving understanding of the relation between faith, God, and the human condition. De Witte’s personal pursuit of truth, whatever its nature, may have informed his approach to depicting Amsterdam’s faith communities, as well as his possible inclusion of himself as active observer. Regardless of De Witte’s own beliefs, it is probable that Houbraken is not judging De Witte’s religious doubt or even suggesting that he truly did lose faith—he is illustrating De Witte’s character. Relevant to this discussion is Houbraken’s comparison of De Witte to Momus,47 the Greek personification of satire and criticism who was exiled from Mount Olympus for mocking the gods. Like Momus, Houbraken asserts, De Witte “taunted and slandered” everyone in his company.48 Houbraken utilizes the anecdote regarding De

Witte’s Biblical reference to make the point that De Witte is a contrary personality who incites arguments for the sake of making trouble, as bears out in the rest of his biography.49

De Witte as Diogenes Houbraken also calls De Witte a second Diogenes the Cynic, a reference to Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412-323 BCE), the Greek founder of Cynic

77 philosophy and investigator of truth who rejected the artifices of society and habitually put to question the teachings of his compatriots. The Greek word for “cynic,” kuon, means “dog,” an epithet appended to Diogenes by his contemporary Aristotle (384-322 BCE), presumably for his readiness to “bark” at passersby about the unnaturalness of societal conventions, and his shameless propensity for performing natural bodily functions in public.50 The lifestyle of Diogenes was marked by asceticism and renunciation of worldly goods in pursuit of a natural existence. To this end, after he was exiled from his birthplace of Sinope, Diogenes was for most of his life peripatetic, and reputedly made his temporary home in a wine-jar. He strove for self- sufficiency (although he ironically survived by begging and stealing from offerings to the gods) and gained fame for his outspoken words and sensationalist actions. 51 In remarking that De Witte, like Diogenes, “sat on feathers,”52 Houbraken references an anecdote that reveals Diogenes’ proclivity for testing his fellow philosophers. According to the story, which is related by the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius (3rd c. CE) in his Lives, Opinions, and Remarkable Sayings of the Most Famous Ancient Philosophers (c. 230 CE),53

Diogenes publicly challenged Plato’s definition of a human as a “featherless biped” by plucking a chicken and presenting it to Plato in his Academy with the pronouncement, “Here is Plato’s man.” As a consequence, Plato added the specification “having broad flat nails” to his definition.54 Despite Diogenes’ purported aspiration toward self-reliance, he was no hermetic philosopher. He

78 depended on the attention of a captive audience to transmit his message orally—a trait that he and Houbraken’s De Witte held in common. Houbraken’s comparison of De Witte to Diogenes is significant for two reasons: it reinforces the character that Houbraken creates for De Witte, and it perhaps reveals the personality that De Witte consciously fashioned for himself. In this section, I will examine the correlations between De Witte and Diogenes evident in De Witte’s biography. It is possible that a Diogenes- inspired perspective may also have informed De Witte’s paintings, and even his worldview. Here it is worth noting that Houbraken’s characterization of De Witte as a stranger in his own country may serve as an example of Houbraken’s attempt to parallel De Witte’s self-made alienation from his society with Diogenes’ life in exile. According to the Cynic philosopher Dio Chrysostom (c. 40-120 CE), Diogenes “had no house or hearth of his own as the well-to-do have, but he made the cities his house and used to live there in the public buildings and in the shrines, which are dedicated to the gods, and took for his hearth-stone the wide world, which after all is man’s common hearth and nourisher.”55 The image of Diogenes as a cosmopolitēs, or “citizen of the cosmos,”56 finds its seventeenth-century counterpart in De Witte, who for the last thirty years of his life lacked his own private home (as he indentured himself to a series of landlords and even lived with his sole pupil, Hendrick van Streeck, for a time), but whose paintings indicate his familiarity and fascination with the “public buildings” and “shrines” of contemporary Amsterdam. In this context, we may even interpret De Witte’s move from his birth town of Alkmaar to Rotterdam

79 (briefly), thence to Delft, and finally to Amsterdam as evidence of an itinerant nature that perhaps accompanied his exploration of the various religious houses in the Netherlands. Although Diogenes frequently figured in art and literature of the early modern period,57 the anecdote Houbraken relates in De Witte’s biography is less commonly referenced in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries than a far more popular story that tells of Diogenes carrying around a lamp outside in the light of day.58 When questioned about his action, Diogenes asserted that he was “looking for a human being,” a phrase that came to be interpreted as “looking for an honest man.”59 Though people surrounded Diogenes, his implication was that there was no decent human among the crowd. Diogenes with his lamp is portrayed by several Dutch artists, most notably Caesar van Everdingen (1616-1678), whose Diogenes Looking for an Honest Man (fig. 121, 1652, The Hague, Mauritshuis)—significantly—depicts Diogenes in front of a Reformed church.60 In setting the classical story within the contemporary Dutch Republic with portraits of a Calvinist family61 and placing the scene before a church, which has been variously identified as either the Bavokerk in Haarlem or the Grote Kerk in Alkmaar,62 Van Everdingen underscores the association of Diogenes with Calvinism. This popular connection stemmed from Diogenes’ ascetic lifestyle and his rejection of artifice; for his renunciation of worldly goods and customs, Amsterdam poet Hendrik Laurensz. Spiegel (1549-1612) compared Diogenes to John the Baptist, who spent much of his life in the desert.63

80 Van Everdingen reinforces the parallel between the austerity of Diogenes and that of Calvinism by referencing another popular story in the left background of the composition: the encounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great.64 According to the story, while Diogenes is basking in the sun, Alexander inquires whether there is anything he might do for the philosopher. Diogenes responds, “Stand out of my light.”65 In Van Everdingen’s painting, Alexander (the man wearing a turban at the far left) raises his hand in an inquisitive gesture; he casts a shadow over Diogenes, who is depicted just outside his barrel. Van Everdingen reminds the viewer that not only did Diogenes possess few earthly belongings, he also rejected Alexander’s wealth and his offer of assistance, which implies that Calvinists should similarly abstain from luxuries. De Witte and Van Everdingen were acquainted, as they assessed the paintings of Jan Miensz. Molenaer together in Haarlem in 1655.66 They both lived in Alkmaar and were members of the St. Luke’s Guild there until De Witte departed shortly before 1640 for Rotterdam and then Delft.67 Although far-fetched, it is tempting to speculate that Van Everdingen, who painted Diogenes in 1652 while living in Haarlem, near De Witte’s newly established hometown of Amsterdam, even intended his depiction of the cantankerous philosopher in front of a Calvinist church as a nod to Amsterdam’s temperamental church interior painter. Although 1652 is relatively early in De Witte’s career, he had already established his reputation as a Delft church interior painter by this date. At approximately thirty-five years old, he would not have resembled Van Everdingen’s elderly Diogenes in appearance, but it is

81 plausible that De Witte’s outspoken nature, itinerant lifestyle, and conversance with rhetoric may perhaps have inspired Van Everdingen.68 Houbraken references the anecdote of Diogenes and his lamp in his biography on Willem van Drielenburch (1632-1687), who purportedly takes a lantern with him on a clear day to search for an honest woman to marry.69 Houbraken’s Van Drielenburch also attempts to “play the role of a new Diogenes amongst the populace” by exposing the rampant corruption in the political offices of his hometown of Utrecht, to no avail.70 In Van Drielenburch’s biography, Houbraken employs the comparison to Diogenes to characterize Van Drielenburch (who was, likely not coincidentally, the father of Houbraken’s teacher) as an upstanding individual. In contrast, Houbraken’s reference to Diogenes in De Witte’s biography emphasizes the philosopher’s penchant for argumentative discourse with his colleagues, a characteristic shared by De Witte. For instance, De Witte engendered contempt among fellow artists. He presented Gerard de Lairesse with a chalk drawing of a canon, with which he said that De Lairesse’s nose had been shot off,71 referring to De Lairesse’s facial deformity caused by congenital syphilis.72 Although De Lairesse roundly pommeled De Witte in a fit of rage, De Witte returned to the site of the altercation the next day, purportedly stating to a friend in reference to his battered face, “See: they so badly sketched this portrait of me yesterday evening in the dark and therefore I am going back there by day to have it completed.”73 Based on this incident, Houbraken asserts, “De Witte lived according to the rule: the less peace, the better.”74 Although Houbraken does

82 not comment on the surprising manifestation of the typically refined De Lairesse’s bestial instincts, it is noteworthy that Houbraken employs De Lairesse as a foil for De Witte—and also that De Witte seemingly brings out the worst in De Lairesse. In a sense, this confrontation may be compared with the verbal sparring of Diogenes and Plato; De Witte’s quip, like that of Diogenes, shames his colleague in a public forum (although Diogenes and Plato resolve their dispute with words, whereas De Witte and De Lairesse resort to fisticuffs). Houbraken relates one more encounter between De Witte and another artist: a young man named Janssens, proud of a painting he has recently completed, seeks De Witte’s opinion regarding his work in hope of praise from “an old experienced master” (“een oud ervaren meester”).75 Upon viewing the painting, Houbraken’s ever-abrasive De Witte succinctly asserts, “I think that you are a contented man, since this trash pleases you.”76 Again, as with De Lairesse, Houbraken employs contrasting personalities—this time juxtaposing the eager and naïve Janssens with the dispassionate and cynical De Witte—to elucidate De Witte’s caustic wit and his inclination for antagonizing acquaintances, much like that of Diogenes.

It may seem curious to the modern reader that the figure of Diogenes was apparently viewed during the early modern period simultaneously as a miscreant and a model of virtue. Even within the Groote schouburgh, Houbraken employs two faces of Diogenes to describe the opposing personalities of two very different artists. The Janus-like image of Diogenes that emerged around this time suggests that he may have been considered a

83 trickster-type: a brazen boundary crosser whose open societal critique is permissible precisely because he himself is so worthy of criticism. In this sense, Diogenes is the ancient equivalent of the court jester and the so-called village idiot, all of whom “work the edge between what can and can’t be said.” They embrace shame, which exempts them from the rules of propriety.77 Late-sixteenth and seventeenth-century texts demonstrate the contemporaneous views of Diogenes as, on the one hand, a scoundrel who “did oversharply barke at mens vices” in a tactless manner,78 and on the other, an ingenuous critic of decorum and pretense. The latter characterization is evident, for example, in John Lyly’s 1584 A Most Excellent Comedie of Alexander, Campaspe, and Diogenes, wherein Diogenes condemns the artifice of Athenian society: “Ye call me dog; so I am, for I long to gnaw the bones in your skins. Ye term me an hater of men; no, I am a hater of your manners. Your lives dissolute, not fearing death, will prove your deaths desperate, not hoping for life.”79 Although these texts pre-date De Witte’s context, Houbraken’s ready employment of both the “low” and the “high” Diogenes in his Groote schouburgh indicates that the dichotomous image of Diogenes still flourished as late as the early-eighteenth century.

Houbraken’s biography closes with his account of the circumstances surrounding De Witte’s suicide. It is remarkable that, just as it is possible to view the life of De Witte according to Houbraken’s characterization of him as a second Diogenes, so may we observe a correspondence between the death of De Witte and Cynic philosophy—although Houbraken does not make this comparison explicit (and, indeed, may not have intended De Witte’s death to

84 be interpreted in this light). Ancient Cynics espoused suicide as the ultimate testament to one’s independence and freedom from societal restraints.80 Because Cynics classified fear of death as a convention, they embraced death as a natural part of life; moreover, their power to choose death, enacted by suicide, demonstrated their self-sufficiency.81 For example, according to Lucian (125-180 CE), the Cynic philosopher Demonax (70-170 CE) starved himself to death rather than succumb to the inevitable reliance on others that accompanies old age.82 The accounts of Diogenes’ death vary, but one version asserts that Diogenes eats raw octopus to reject the custom of cooking, which simultaneously demonstrates his indifference toward his own imminent death and defies convention as his final act.83 In the manner of an ancient Cynic, De Witte likewise determines his own ultimate fate. Houbraken relates the following story: after De Witte’s landlord swore “that he would no longer tolerate him under his roof,”84 De Witte ominously stated “that he had already anticipated it or invented a means that he would no longer say such things to him,” 85 and left the residence, looking “despondent” (“mistroostig”).86 De Witte was discovered in a canal with a rope around his neck eleven weeks after his disappearance, leading officials to conclude that his despair had driven him to hang himself; when the rope severed, he presumably drowned. As the water froze that night, his body was trapped under ice for nearly three months. For Houbraken, the tragic end of De Witte, whose final act was a sin against God, appropriately concluded his miserable existence.87 Houbraken takes the trouble to note that De Witte was buried in the Pesthuis (Plague

85 House) cemetery, which was located outside the city gates. This was surely significant for Houbraken’s contemporary audience, as De Witte’s manner of death would have prevented a church burial.88 Notably, De Witte’s interment at the Pesthuis also signified his exclusion, in death, from the community in which he had lived and worked—that same society from whom, according to Houbraken, De Witte had estranged himself in life. Although perhaps coincidental, De Witte’s burial outside Amsterdam’s gates accorded with the Cynic rejection of funerary customs as well as Diogenes’ purported desire to be buried without the walls of Athens with total lack of ceremony.89 The parallels between De Witte’s life and the anecdotal accounts of Diogenes, as well as the Cynic philosophy in general, suggest that Houbraken’s description of De Witte as a second Diogenes may have represented more than a flippant reference to De Witte’s antagonistic personality. We may go so far as to speculate that De Witte consciously emulated Diogenes, or at least was cognizant of Cynicism and perhaps inspired by this philosophy in his approach to the human condition—both his own (manifested in his outspoken nature, his derelict existence, and perhaps even his death and burial) and that of his society (evidenced not only in his interactions with his fellow men, but also, as we shall see, in his paintings). It is certainly possible that De Witte had access to the chreiai, or anecdotes and sayings, regarding Diogenes and his fellow Cynics; Houbraken notes that De Witte’s father was a rhetorician, and chreiai were widely incorporated into rhetorical handbooks in the seventeenth-century.90 Therefore, De Witte may have been exposed to Cynic philosophy during his early years. It was perhaps a

86 Cynical outlook on religion—which encouraged contemplation, freethinking, nonconformity, and reliance on the senses—that encouraged De Witte’s exploration of the different confessional environments in Amsterdam.

Truth in Fiction Despite his criticism of De Witte’s character, Houbraken omits an event in De Witte’s life, documented in contemporary sources, which supports Houbraken’s negative assessment of De Witte’s levenswyze. In 1658, De Witte’s second wife Lysbeth and his daughter Jacomijntje were arrested for repeatedly stealing from their neighbor.91 The premeditated arrangement involved an elaborate plan concocted by Lysbeth, who sent Jacomijntje over the fence, into the neighbor’s courtyard, and through the back of their house; after thieving money and property, Jacomijntje returned home by crossing from her neighbor’s roof to her own, where she was readmitted by her stepmother. When they were caught, Lysbeth, who was at the time eight months pregnant, denied any wrongdoing; nevertheless, she was condemned to stand in the pillory and subsequently exiled from Amsterdam for six years. Jacomijntje was forced to spend one year in Amsterdam’s Spinhuis (the women’s correctional facility). Although De Witte supposedly knew nothing about his family’s antics, the story does lend some degree of credibility to Houbraken’s evaluation of De Witte’s desperate financial situation, as well as his questionable moral character (insofar as it can be judged by the actions of his wife and daughter). Possibly, Houbraken intentionally excludes the incident; although it does support certain aspects of Houbraken’s biography, mention of De Witte’s

87 family would contradict Houbraken’s picture of De Witte’s dissociative personality, as well as his characterization of De Witte as a second Diogenes, who proudly lacked both home and family. Here, again, De Witte’s biography in Houbraken’s Groote schouburgh may be usefully contrasted with that of Steen, whose family plays a large role in formulating the latter’s character. Alternatively, perhaps Houbraken did not include the incident in De Witte’s biography because he was simply unaware of its occurrence. This accords with Houbraken’s seeming lack of familiarity with the details of De Witte’s time in Delft and his early years in Amsterdam; on the other hand, he is relatively well-informed regarding incidents that transpire during the final decade or two of De Witte’s life. De Witte’s encounter with De Lairesse, if it actually happened,92 must have taken place some time after De Lairesse arrived in Amsterdam in 1667. De Witte’s entanglement with the De Ruiter family transpired in 1683. Houbraken devotes an entire page to the 1692 death of De Witte. Scholars do not universally accept Houbraken’s detailed description of De Witte’s demise as fact. Walter Liedtke, for example, deduces from Houbraken’s tale, which specifies that De Witte was buried in 1692, that he must have died sometime during the winter of 1691-1692 (as his body was purportedly frozen underwater for three months before its discovery). Liedtke cites a painting signed and dated by De Witte in 1692, as well as Houbraken’s likely reception of the story via hearsay, as evidence that Houbraken’s story should not be uncritically accepted.93 He asserts that the art historical fascination with De Witte’s death, which is recounted in various versions

88 following Houbraken in twentieth-century literature, “tells us more about the history of art than about De Witte’s place in it.”94 Still, this does not justify discounting Houbraken’s story. Even if Houbraken’s account of De Witte’s suicide is not unerring in its details, it may still be essentially honest. Despite Houbraken’s religious tolerance, evident his statement, “I am not aware that it is anyone’s right to rule over another man’s conscience, let alone denounce him for holding different views,”95 as well as his more general lenience toward the lifestyle of artists such as Steen, Houbraken roundly condemns suicide.96 As Houbraken asserts in De Witte’s biography, “no one has been granted the option or right to put an end to this life…this depends on the pleasure of the Creator; [De Witte] appears to have sinned in respect to this.”97 It seems unlikely that Houbraken would invent the manner of De Witte’s death, particularly because suicide represents a rare occasion in which Houbraken passes judgment on artists in his Groote schouburgh.98 However, as the facts regarding De Witte’s demise are shrouded in mystery and the evidence of his suicide circumstantial, this does leave Houbraken room to interpret the story in a fashion that best suits his biography of De Witte’s life. Even if De Witte did not live the way he painted, he died the way he lived. Yet Houbraken is unable to reconcile the immorality of De Witte’s lifestyle with the spirituality of his paintings. De Witte’s sermon paintings, which display all manner of behavior from congregants dutifully studying their kerkboeken (church books) or attentively listening to the sermon to those who doze in their pews or engage in conversations with their neighbors, evidence

89 De Witte’s intimate familiarity with the activities of these sacred spaces at odds with his degenerate existence and his proclaimed disavowal of Biblical truth. Even if De Witte truly did question some aspects of the Reformed faith or feel himself disenchanted with the Church, he nevertheless clearly engaged with the Calvinist faith community, and likely regularly experienced the Reformed service at least from a marginal position on the outskirts of the preekkerk, which would have allowed him to observe the preacher and the congregants. Houbraken marvels at De Witte’s portrayals of Reformed churches in Amsterdam, in particular, and notes the inclusion of “pulpit, organ, masters’ chairs and prayer benches, tombstones, and other decorations so that they can be recognized.”99 Houbraken notices, “In some, he has represented the preach- service (predik-dienst), in others there the people come to the Church, each in his usual costume.”100 Houbraken seems to value the degree to which De Witte’s paintings of church interiors correspond with reality and recognizably represent a local landmark—he even indicates that De Witte created his works “from life.”101 He mentions no aspect of De Witte’s paintings that correlates with the lifestyle Houbraken fashions for him.

Houbraken’s assessment of De Witte’s personality overshadows his appreciation of De Witte’s art. Houbraken dedicates the vast majority of his nearly six pages on De Witte to the latter’s lifestyle, devotes merely one paragraph to a description of his paintings, and mentions only a single specific work by De Witte, his Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk with the Tomb of Admiral De Ruiter, in this case simply to make a point about De Witte’s contrary

90 temperament. Although Houbraken clearly states that he values De Witte’s skill—in fact, that his artistic merit garners him a place in the Groote schouburgh despite his levenswyze—he ironically dwells on De Witte’s character at the expense of his artworks. Perhaps Houbraken’s neglect of De Witte’s paintings, despite his admiration of them, may be due to his inability to correlate De Witte’s life with his art. Because he cannot employ the paintings as, in effect, supporting evidence for his treatment of De Witte, he must segregate his discussion of De Witte’s oeuvre or dispense with it altogether. As a result, even though Houbraken’s limited appraisal of De Witte’s paintings emphasizes their correspondence with existing churches that he is confident the viewer will recognize, which implies that De Witte must have spent an inordinate amount of time in these spaces, it is easy to take away from Houbraken’s biography the impression of De Witte’s isolation—from community, acquaintances, and religion—that may extend to an interpretation of his paintings. Houbraken develops a perception of De Witte as one detached from the world around him, which is a view that accords with the subsequent scholarly emphasis on De Witte’s style and the neglect of his subject matter. Houbraken does not explicitly state that De Witte paints what is familiar to him because such engagement with De Witte’s own society would contradict Houbraken’s otherwise consistent image of De Witte as a “stranger” in his community. Consequently, art historians have typically understood De Witte as one who paints from an impartial distance; he “feels content to witness the scene without becoming involved in it,” to quote Arthur Wheelock’s assessment of the viewer’s relationship with De Witte’s

91 paintings.102 Art history’s De Witte must have lurked in the doorways of churches to observe the play of light over furnishings and figures, the interplay of shapes, colors, and light creating what Liedtke calls “a complex screen of visual incidents.”103 Or perhaps he stole into Amsterdam’s Oude and Nieuwe Kerken in between sermons to record the structure and space of each building while encountering as few people as possible. The alternative possibility—that De Witte attended Reformed services and engaged with the worship community that he depicts, whether or not he considered himself confessionally aligned with their faith—seems to refute the biographical image established by Houbraken, even as it supports the visual evidence of the paintings themselves and establishes the need to view these works according to their religious subject matter. We must contend, however speculatively, with the question of the intersection of De Witte’s life with his art, and the related issue of “truth” in Houbraken’s biography of De Witte. Houbraken’s contrast between De Witte’s levenswyze and his paintings, which Houbraken establishes in his introductory remarks, should be viewed as a conceit for interpreting De Witte. This does not mean that Houbraken’s account is not fundamentally truthful; it is my impression that the biography conveys a convincing picture of De Witte’s nature, or at least the character that De Witte projected. But it does suggest that Houbraken carefully constructs an image of De Witte by (likely) embellishing some stories and (perhaps intentionally) omitting others. On this point, it is important to emphasize that Houbraken did not live in Amsterdam during De Witte’s lifetime; the anecdotes about De Witte must have been relayed to

92 Houbraken by primary and secondary sources. Naturally, these sources would have been more inclined to remember and relate tales of impropriety that bolstered De Witte’s infamy than those that accorded with society’s mores. That De Witte married twice, fathered children, and, for a number of years, had a family under his roof is evidence that he was capable of (presumably, at least at times, harmonious) interaction with fellow humans. Likewise, as noted earlier, the baptisms of his children in Delft’s Oude Kerk and at Catholic churches in Amsterdam suggest De Witte’s attendance at church, whatever confession and however sporadic. In this respect, Houbraken perhaps does not convey an accurate image of De Witte’s familiarity with the faith community in which De Witte must inevitably have immersed himself to portray them convincingly; similarly, Houbraken’s segregation of De Witte’s life and art and his insistence on De Witte’s anti-social behavior misleadingly suggest that De Witte’s artistic process must have involved isolation from the very society with which he likely interacted. However, just as it is possible to parse truth from fiction and discern a sense of De Witte’s nature from Houbraken’s narrative, we may also weigh the veracity and significance of what Houbraken implies based on what he explicitly states. In this context, it is useful to return to the idea of De Witte as a second Diogenes. We have seen how De Witte’s lifestyle paralleled that of the ancient philosopher. It is also conceivable that the ever-present man with his back to the viewer, who signals to the spectator the importance of attending to the preacher and absorbing the sermon, is a Diogenes-type, a “citizen of the cosmos.” Particularly significant in this regard is the appearance of the figure

93 not only in De Witte’s paintings of the Reformed service, but also in De Witte’s three depictions of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue (see, for example, fig. 65, 1680, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum),104 his Courtyard of the Exchange in Amsterdam (fig. 6, 1653, Rotterdam, Boijmans), and even possibly in his Interior of an Imaginary Catholic Church (fig. 38, 1668, Mauritshuis, The Hague). We may take this analogy a step further and propose that this figure represents De Witte as Diogenes—or, at least, that Houbraken perhaps interpreted De Witte’s rückenfigur in this light. Possibly it is no coincidence that another popularly depicted figure in De Witte’s paintings is the sometimes well behaved (for example, figs. 4, 9, 16, and 62), but oft-disreputable (figs. 7, 25, 26, and 48) dog. Art historians have made much of this canine congregant. Several scholars suggest that the presence of dogs within the church interiors of De Witte and his contemporaries lends a didactic function to the paintings; it was the responsibility of owners to teach their dogs obedience, just as it was the duty of the Church to teach its members Christian morals.105 Liedtke proposes that the motif of the urinating dog draws the viewer’s attention to the inconsequential trappings of the material world, as opposed to the promise of salvation through faith in Christ.106 In a literal sense, dogs were a common sight in Dutch churches, so their depictions in church interior paintings by De Witte and others perhaps came as no surprise to the contemporary audience.107 Still, some may have been amused or offended at De Witte’s unusually candid portrayal of a dog’s unsavory habits. The range of behavior displayed by the

94 painted dogs, like that of the congregants, indicates that De Witte does not idealize his images of worship. There is perhaps an added layer of meaning suggested by the inclusion of dogs in De Witte’s paintings. The reader will recall that beginning with Aristotle, ancient Greeks commonly referred to Diogenes as “the dog,” an epithet that gave rise to the term “Cynic” to describe his philosophy. This association between Diogenes and dogs was understood and perpetuated by seventeenth-century culture, evident, for example, in Van Everdingen’s inclusion of two canine companions for his painted Diogenes (fig. 121). Another important example is Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Diogenes (fig. 83, 1628, Vienna, private collection), which isolates the laughing philosopher with an affectionate dog who licks his master on the chin. Most significant for interpreting the dog’s presence in De Witte’s paintings is a description by artist, theorist, and Rembrandt pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) of Rembrandt’s John the Baptist Preaching (fig. ). In his Introduction to the Academy of Painting (Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst), Van Hoogstraten notes, “one saw in it a dog, who mounted a bitch in unedifying fashion. You may say that this happens and is natural, I say that it is a reprehensible indecency in this story...one would sooner say, that this piece showed the Preaching of the Cynic Diogenes, than of Saint John.”108 Based on the presence of ill-mannered dogs, which act according to their nature, Van Hoogstraten conflates the identities of Diogenes and John, and associates Diogenes with the act of preaching.

95 If we understand the man with his back to the viewer in De Witte’s paintings, who is frequently accompanied by a dog, as a Diogenes-type and, by extension, an image of De Witte, it is possible to see the repeated depictions of dogs in his paintings—whether or not they are combined with the caped man— as a reminder to the informed viewer to approach the content of the painting with the discerning view promoted by the founder of the Cynic philosophy. Beginning in 1651 and repeatedly throughout his career, De Witte depicts the rückenfigur, with a dog, observing the Reformed service (figs. 4, 8, 11, 15, 28, 52, 58), which supports the interpretation of the figure as a modern Diogenes. We may even consider the unruly dog within the Calvinist Church, which makes perhaps its first and certainly most frequent appearance in De Witte’s paintings, as a signature of sorts—De Witte’s irreverent means of “making his mark,” so to speak, in the genre of church interior painting.109

Conclusion: De Witte as Observer of Humanity A modern Diogenes frequently accompanied by his dog, De Witte-as- rückenfigur dwells “in the public buildings and in the shrines” of Amsterdam, where he appears to observe the human condition. The figure’s portrayal in the various religious houses of Amsterdam (albeit, in the case of the Catholic church, an imagined one) suggests that he represents the pursuit of truth in the manner of an ancient Cynic like Diogenes, “who going to the church doore, as the people went out, thrust into the midst of them,…saying, it was the part of such as he was…to follow the fewer sort, and not the common crue.”110 The pervasive presence of the rückenfigur suggests that this figure was important to De Witte, or perhaps to De Witte’s clients, who may have

96 recognized the figure, like the dog, as the maker’s mark. It is even possible to consider the rückenfigur and his dog as evidence of De Witte’s conscious development of a signature style, and one that was recognized by his contemporaries. A longhaired man in a purple cape appears in profile, dog at his side, in De Witte’s Interior of a Catholic Church, where he is ushered into the space by monks (figs. 48 and 49). Although there are no known portraits of De Witte, is tempting to speculate that this figure, whose facial features such as the bags under his eyes convey a sense of individuality, represents De Witte as an interested observer of the monumental space where a lone priest conducts mass in the distant background. Perhaps De Witte is accommodating a patron’s request to see the face of the mysterious caped figure. We may usefully relate the interpretation of the caped man as both a modern Diogenes and a stand-in for De Witte to Houbraken’s remark that De Witte frequently engaged his contemporaries in debates about religion. Maybe this skepticism, which De Witte, like Diogenes, purportedly expressed without reservation in polite company, precipitated his exploration of Amsterdam’s multiple faith communities. De Witte’s possible projection of his own inquisitive nature in paint via the rückenfigur indicates that, in this sense, De

Witte does “paint himself.” In the caped man’s “investigation” of the many crowded public spaces of Amsterdam, this Diogenes-type, a truth seeker who plausibly represents De Witte and his worldview, searches for an honest man, his path illuminated not by a literal lamp, but by the activating light in De Witte’s paintings.

97 De Witte’s rückenfigur appears again in Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (figs. 15 and 16, 1659, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), where he stands within the path of light that sweeps across the foreground space. The figure’s point of view just outside of the preekkerk facilitates his observation of the community at worship. However, although this man is isolated from his fellow congregants, he is still inhabits the painted space of the church, and therefore cannot function as an all-seeing spectator. The fixation of his gaze on the preacher means, for example, that he is only peripherally “aware” of the latecomers to the service who approach the preekkerk from the left entrance under the organ, the dog dashing enthusiastically in front of the family. Additionally, he does not “see” the open grave or gravedigger’s tools in the foreground. In this respect, the viewer, whose perspective enables observation of the observer, holds a position of visual privilege.

98 ENDNOTES

1 Comparison of the figure’s long hair in the Kremer Oude Kerk (fig. 58), Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (fig. 28), London Oude Kerk (fig. 22), and Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (figs. 67 and 68, 1686, Detroit Institute of Art), along with his similar attire in each painting, suggests that this may represent the same man.

2 On the rückenfigur, the term that Joseph Koerner uses to describe the man with his back to the viewer employed by artists such as Caspar David Friedrich “as figure of self” to focus the viewer’s gaze, see Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 194 and passim.

3 Thijs Weststeijn, The Visible World: Samuel Van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 146.

4 For a discussion of recurring themes employed by early biographers, such as that of the childhood prodigy whose innate talent is discovered by chance at a young age, see the seminal study by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: a Historical Experiment (Vienna: 1934. Reprinted in New Haven: Yale, 1979).

5 Among Dutch artists, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Steen, both represented in Houbraken’s Groote Schouburgh, have been the focus of mythological debunking. On Steen, see, for example, Lyckle de Vries, “Achttiende- en negentiende-eeuwse auteurs over Jan Steen,” in Oud Holland LXXXVII (1973): 227-238; on Rembrandt, see J.A. Emmens, Rembrandt en de regels van de kunst (Utrecht: 1968). For a similar treatment of seventeenth-century Italian artist biographies, see Carl Goldstein, Visual Fact Over Verbal Fiction: A Study of the Carracci and the Criticism, Theory, and Practice of Art in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge: University Press, 1988).

6 For instance, H. Perry Chapman has demonstrated that Houbraken’s biography of Jan Steen perhaps responds to Steen’s conscious manipulation of his own image. As Chapman argues, Houbraken’s conception of Steen as a comic actor accords with the concept of his book as a “Great Theater,” and is framed by allusions to the theater: at the beginning of the biography, Steen enters the stage; at its conclusion, a curtain is

drawn over his tombstone. Chapman, “Persona and Myth in Houbraken’s Life of Jan Steen,” The Art Bulletin 75 (March 1993): 135-150; and “Jan Steen, Player in His Own Paintings,” in Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller (Washington: National Gallery, 1996), 11-24. Also see Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth- Century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 128-137, for her argument that Rembrandt was the maker of his own myth. Scholars have similarly revisited the biographies of southern artists, notably Caravaggio, who is reviled by biographers Baglione and Bellori for the excessive naturalism of his paintings; both connect Caravaggio’s dark and often violent subjects with his brutish way of life. For reassessments of Caravaggio’s vite, see Philip Sohm, “Caravaggio’s Deaths,” Art Bulletin 84, no. 3 (2002): 449-468; and David Stone, “Self and Myth in Caravaggio’s David and Goliath,” in Realism, Reception, Rebellion, ed. Genevieve Warwick (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 36-46. Sohm recognizes that historical truth can coexist with historical fiction, and cites the propensity of Caravaggio’s biographers for employing metaphor and irony in their accounts of his death; Stone suggests that Caravaggio is actually in control of his discourse, evident in his David with the Head of Goliath, where he is emulating and outdoing Michelangelo’s self- portrait as the decapitated Holofernes in the Sistine Chapel and displaying his capacity for artistic innovation.

7 On the pictor vulgaris, see H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits, 97. On the contrast between Rembrandt as pictor vulgaris and Poussin as pictor doctus, see David Packwood, “From Pictor Philosophus to Homo Oeconomicus: Renogotiating Social Space in Poussin’s Self-Portrait of 1649-1650,” in Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, ed. David Warren Sabean and Malina Stefanovska (Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 54 and 61.

8 “zyn schilderyen zyn als zyn levenswyze, en zyn levenswyze als zyne schilderyen.”Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (1718-1721), III: 13.

9 “die hy zoo klugtig behandelt had, dat zy langs hoe meer begon te zwellen.” Houbraken III: 13.

10 “hy de beste klant aan zich zelven had.” Houbraken III: 16.

11 As argued by Chapman in “Persona and Myth,” passim.

12 Chapman, “Self-Portrait as a Lutenist,” in Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 182.

13 See n. 6.

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14 Houbraken III: 107, 112-118, 129. For Gerard de Lairesse’s theories on art, see his Grondlegginge der teekenkunst, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Willem de Coup, 1701) and Het groot schilderboek, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Willem de Coup, 1707- 1707).

15 Houbraken III: 20.

16 “nam…zyn Fiool en speelde een muzykstukje, maar verwisselde straks de fiool voor ‘t palet, en schilderde…” Houbraken III: 110-111.

17 “groots van gedachten…en konstig geteekent.” Houbraken III: 107.

18 For a discussion of classicism and the classicizing tradition in Dutch art, see Melinda K. Vander Ploeg Fallon, “Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) and the Audience for the Antyk,” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, Newark, 2001, 7-10 and passim.

19 Vander Ploeg Fallon, 184-224. For her discussion of the De Graeff commission, see 184, 187-191.

20 “levenswyze van alle andere verschilde.” Houbraken I: 285-286.

21 “hy dezelve niet meer noodig had.” Houbraken I: 284.

22 Houbraken I: 13. As quoted in and translated by Michael Hoyle, “Jan Steen: from Arnold Houbraken’s De groote schouburgh…1721,” in Painter and Storyteller, 93.

23 Chapman, “Self-Portrait,” in Painter and Storyteller, 182. As Chapman notes, Steen’s self-portrait as lutenist closely corresponds with the personification of the sanguine temperament in the 1644 Dutch edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia.

24 For a discussion of melancholic artists, said to be “born under Saturn,” see Margot and Rudolf Wittkower, Born Under Saturn. The Character and Conduct of Artists. A Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution (New York: New York Review of Books, 1963), esp. 98-123, and 144-145 for discussion of De Witte.

25 See Chapman, “Jan Steen, Player in his Own Paintings,” in Painter and Storyteller for an analysis of his biography’s relation to the theater, and the significance of this in terms of Houbraken’s approach to the theater of Dutch painting.

26 Houbraken characterizes De Witte as an outstanding example of one whose “gemoedsdriften …de volle toom word gegeven.” Houbraken I: 282.

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27 “waar in niemant hem gelyk was, zoo ten opzigt van de geregelde Bouwkonst, geestige verkiezinge van lichten, als welgemaakte beeldjes.” Houbraken I: 283.

28 “En ten waar de brave Konst die hy bezeten heeft zulks niet vorderde, zyne levenswyze had ons niet bekoort, om hem een plaats onder de Konstenaars in te schikken.” Houbraken I: 282.

29 “Als hy…zag dat de Fortuin hem den nek gekeerd had; dat elk schuw van hem was, dat hy als een vremdeling in zyn eigen land…wierd aangezien, en tot armoede verviel, wierd hy mistroostig…hy zelf oorzaak van zyn ongeval was, en dat hy, als hy naar raad had willen luisteren, zulks wel had konnen voorkomen.” Houbraken I: 285.

30 At least one of these is mentioned in a 1658 notarial record in the context of the dispute between De Witte and the heirs of his former landlord Dirck Huijz; among the paintings De Witte promises to the family as surety is one he is currently making for the King of Denmark. Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare; urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1915-1922), V, 1832. See also my discussion of De Witte’s debts later in this chapter.

31 Houbraken I: 285.

32 “…en schold den Predikant voor al wat leelyk was, die hem daar voor zoo lang liet naloopen, dat hy van kwaadheid een mes nam, (niettegenstaande hy geen een stuiver in zyn zak had) en sneed het stuk aan riemen.” Houbraken I: 283.

33 Bredius V, 1845-1846.

34 The painting in the Rijksmuseum was acquired in 1896 from the descendants of the De Ruyters; it is signed and dated 1683, which is the same date as the dispute between De Witte and Somer. R. van Luttervelt suggests that De Witte merely threatened to destroy the painting, whereupon an agreement must have been reached before the painting was damaged, as the work was later in the possession of Somer’s descendants. R. van Luttervelt, “Herinneringen aan Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter in het Rijksmuseum,” in Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 5de Jaarg., Nr. 2, De Ruyter- nummer (1957), 66.

35 As cited in Ilse Manke, Emanuel de Witte. 1617-1692 (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger & Co, 1963), 64.

36 Bredius, V: 1832.

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37 This was likely the occasion for the first inventory of De Witte’s meager possessions, taken on 20 April 1659. The inventory is included in Bredius V: 1830.

38 See Bredius V: 1837-1838 for a witness testimony as to the arrangement between De Wijs and De Witte. See also John Michael Montias, “Estimates of the number of Dutch master-painters, their earnings and their output in 1650,” Leidschrift historisch tijdschrift 6 (1990): 65-66. For a comparison of De Witte’s circumstances to the financial problems of Rembrandt, see Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 85. For the ongoing dispute between De Witte and Adriana van Heusden, the former wife of Joris de Wijs, see Bredius V: 1834, 1837-1842.

39 “sooveel als luyden hen des verstaende sullen oordeelen te behooren.” As quoted in Bredius V: 1835.

40 De Witte also participated in the assessment of other artists’ paintings: on 26 April 1655, De Witte, along with Petrus Soutman and Cesar and Allart van Everdingen, assessed a painting by Jan Miensz. Molenaer in Haarlem (See Manke, 65). For a discussion of valore di stima vs. valore di fatica in the seventeenth-century Dutch art market, see Eric Jan Sluijter, “Determining Value on the Art Market in the Golden Age: An Introduction,” in Art Market and Connoisseurship: A Closer Look at Paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and their Contemporaries, ed. Anna Tummers and Koenraad Jonckheere (Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 7-28, and esp. 13-16.

41 De Witte caused arguments “inzonderheid wanneer ‘er van een Bybelstof gesproken wierd.” Houbraken I: 282.

42 “zig niet ontziende die wyze van Redenvoeringen te dwarsboomen, en het zakelyke in twyffel te trekken, zeggende: dat men zyn vyftiende jaar, hem de schellen al van d’oogen gelift waren.” Houbraken I: 282.

43 New Revised Standard Version.

44 Houbraken I: 282.

45 Documented in the Taufregister der Oude Kerk, Delft, as cited in Bredius VII: 294- 295. See also Gary Schwartz, “With Emanuel de Witte in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam,” in Geest in gratie: Essays Presented to Ildikó Ember on Her Seventieth Birthday (Budapest: Szépművészeti Múzeum, 2012), 84-91, for De Witte’s interest in the Oude Kerk.

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46 Angela Vanhaelen, The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 44-66; Almut Pollmer, “Kirchenbilder. Der Kirchenraum in der holländischen Malerei um 1650: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte,” Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, Leiden, 2011, 58-63. On Pollmer’s findings, see Schwartz, “With Emanuel de Witte,” 91, n. 1. De Witte’s daughter Anna was baptized in the Kerk ‘t Boompje in 1659; her mother is listed as Lijsebeth Lodewijcks, who was evicted from Amsterdam that same year for theft. Another daughter, Aagje, was baptized in 1670 in the Kerk Brouwersgracht; her mother is unlisted.

47 Houbraken I: 282.

48 “en als Momus elks doen beschimpte, en lasterde.” Ibid.

49 Hendrik Horn suggests that Houbraken may even have identified with De Witte’s purportedly cynical outlook on religion. The Golden Age Revisited: Arnold Houbraken’s Great Theatre of Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses, (Doornspijk: Davaco, 2000), I: 400. For Houbraken’s attitude toward religion, see Peter Hecht, “Browsing in Houbraken: Developing a Fancy for an Underestimated Author,” Simiolus vol. 24 no. 2/3 (1996): 265 and 266, n. 15.

50 William Desmond, Cynics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 20; David Mazella, The Making of Modern Cynicism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 25.

51 Anecdotes regarding Diogenes’s life and the Cynic philosophy were transmitted orally and recorded by followers, in some cases centuries after his death. There are no extant writings by Diogenes. Mazella, 49-52.

52 “elk in de veeren zat.” Houbraken I: 282.

53 This is the most comprehensive extant ancient text on Diogenes the Cynic. For a discussion of Laertius’s biography of Diogenes, see Mazella, 24-28.

54 Mazella, 40. Also see Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Opinions, and Remarkable Sayings of the Most Famous Ancient Philosophers, tr. William Baxter, 6.40 (London, 1688).

55 Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 4.13, as quoted in Desmond, 200.

56 Laertius 6.63. Referenced in Desmond, 200.

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57 For depictions of Diogenes in Netherlandish art, see Stefan Schmitt, Diogenes: Studien zu seiner Ikonographie in der niederländischen Emblematik und Malerei des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1993).

58 Laertius 6.41. Referenced in Mazella, 31. This scene, though less popular, was occasionally depicted during the seventeenth-century, as well. See, for example, the print Homo platonicus in Joost van den Vondel’s Den Gulden Winckel, XXXIV (Schmitt fig. 38); also see Hendrik Bloemaert’s Homo platonicus (Schmitt fig. 59, undated, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen).

59 Desmond, 21.

60 See also, for example, Jacob van Campen, Diogenes Searches for a Man (Schmitt fig. 37, 1628, Utrecht, Centraal Museum) and Jan Victors, Diogenes Searches for a Man (Schmitt fig. 47, location unknown; Schmitt fig. 48, Leningrad, Hermitage). Both of Victors’ works depict Diogenes surrounded by people with contemporary costumes with a building that resembles a church in the background. The subject is also represented in literature: a print of Diogenes Searches for a Man accompanies a poem on the subject by Joost van den Vondel in Den Gulden Winckel der Kunst-Lievende Nederlanders, Nr. XXXVIII (Schmitt, fig. 34); it appears as an emblem in Jacob Cats’ Alle de Wercken (Amsterdam 1712, S. 652; see Schmitt, fig. 35).

61 The family portrayed has been identified as either the Schellingers or the Steyns, both of whom were Haarlem families as well as Calvinists. Albert Blankert, Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1980), 215.

62 See Ben Broos, “‘Perfection in Figures and Histories,’” in Intimacies and Intrigues: History Painting in the Mauritshuis (The Hague: Mauritshuis, 1993), 24; Albert Blankert, “Diogenes zoekt een mens,” in Hollands Classicisme in de zeventiende- eeuwse schilderkunst (Rotterdam: Boijmans, 1995), 180-183; Blankert (Gods, Saints and Heroes, 214) asserts that it does not closely resemble either church, and concludes that it is supposed to represent “the” Church.

63 H.L. Spiegel, Hertspiegel (Amsterdam 1614), I: 36. Referenced in Albert Blankert, Hollands Classicisme in de zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst (Rotterdam: Boijmans, 1999), 181.

64 For contemporary depictions of Alexander and Diogenes, see Schmitt, figs. 11-31.

65 Laertius 6.38.

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66 Manke, 65.

67 Both artists were born in Alkmaar. Caesar van Everdingen registered with the guild in 1632 and stayed in Alkmaar until 1648, when he moved to Haarlem. De Witte joined the guild in 1636; it is known that he spent a brief amount of time in Rotterdam before moving to Delft in 1640.

68 On De Witte’s knowledge of rhetoric, which he purportedly learned from his father, see Houbraken I: 282.

69 Houbraken II: 152. As quoted in Horn, 281.

70 Houbraken II: 150-152. As quoted in Horn, 280-281.

71 Houbraken I: 284. The drawing is no longer extant.

72 Vander Ploeg Fallon suggests that De Witte’s drawing of a canon is a double entendre; the phallic imagery, she asserts, indicates that De Witte is hinting at De Lairesse’s purported illness (29). This, she convincingly argues, is why Houbraken takes the opportunity in his following paragraph to refute the rumor that De Lairesse was victim of “de Venusziekte;” Houbraken reasons that De Lairesse’s features are a congenital deformity, as (according to Houbraken) De Lairesse possessed the same misshapen nose in a portrait at age seventeen. Houbraken I: 285.

73 “‘Zie: dit pourtret hebben zy my gister avond dus mismaakt in den donker gedoodverft, en daar gae ik weer na toe, om het by den dach te laten opmaken.’” Houbraken I: 285.

74 “‘T schynt of de Witt, naar de verkeerde zinspreuk, De minste vrede best, leefde.” Houbraken I: 285.

75 Houbraken I: 286.

76 “Ik denk dat gy een vergenoegt mensch zyt; om dat deeze prullen u behagen.” Houbraken I: 286.

77 On mythical and modern manifestations of the trickster, see Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes this World: Mischief, Myth and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), esp. 165 and chapter seven, “Speechless Shame and Shameless Speech,” 153- 172.

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78 According to the definition of “Cynike” given in Bullokar’s An English Expositor: Teaching the Interpretation of the hardest words used in our Language (1616), quoted in Mazella, 51.

79 Quoted in Mazella, 65.

80 Desmond, 131.

81 Ibid.

82 Lucian, Demonax, 4. Referenced in Desmond, 162. For a list of other Cynic suicides, see Desmond, 130.

83 Ibid, 131.

84 “Dat hy hem niet langer onder zyn dak wilde hebben.” Houbraken I: 286.

85 “Dat hy daar al in voorzien of een middel bedagt had dat hy hem zulks niet meer zoude zeggen.” Houbraken I: 286.

86 Houbraken I: 286.

87 Houbraken I: 286-287.

88 Houbraken I: 287.

89 Mazella, 149-150.

90 Mazella, 48.

91 Manke, 65-66.

92 Given Houbraken’s move to Amsterdam in 1709, before De Lairesse’s death there in 1711, the two may have been personally acquainted, which would have provided Houbraken with a primary source for information regarding the incident.

93 Walter Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 964, n. 5. For the painting in question, see Peter Sutton, Dutch and Flemish Paintings: The Collection of Willem Baron van Dedem (London: Medieval Industries, 2002), no. 60.

94 Liedtke cites the accounts of Jantzen and Manke, who write that De Witte hanged himself, and Swillens, who notes that De Witte drowned himself. Liedtke,

107

Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1982), 76.

95 Houbraken I: 269. Quoted in and translated by Hecht, 266, n. 15.

96 Hecht, 265; Horn, 328-331.

97 Houbraken I: 286. Quoted in and translated by Horn, 331.

98 Horn, 331; Hecht, 265. See also, for example, Houbraken’s account of Pieter van Laer’s “shameful death” (Houbraken II: 73-75), Jacob de Wolf’s “sinful decision” (Houbraken III: 313), and the biography of Ernst Stuven, who “finally put an end to his despicable career” by suicide (Houbraken III: 378; quoted in and translated by Horn, 215).

99 “Predikstoel, Orgel, Heere- en gemeene gestoelten, Graffteden en andere vercierselen, zoo dat dezelve te kennen zyn.” Houbraken I: 283.

100 “In sommige heeft hy den Predikdienst, in andere daar het volk te Kerk komt, vertoond, elk in zyn gewoone dragten.” Ibid.

101 “naar ‘t leven.” Houbraken I: 283.

102 Wheelock, Perspectives, Optics, and Delft Artists Around 1650 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977), 226-227.

103 Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft, 94.

104 See Manke, figs. 99 and 100, for two additional versions.

105 Beverly Heisner, “Mortality and Faith: The Figural Motifs within Emanuel de Witte’s Dutch Church Interiors,” Studies in Iconography 6 (1980): 112. In a number of paintings, their juxtaposition with children suggests a parallel between the instruction of children in decorum and worship practice and the training of a dog in obedience. Gary Schwartz and Maarten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: the Painter and his Time (New York: Abbeville, 1990), 200; Pieter Saenredam, The Utrecht Work. Paintings and Drawings by the 17th-century Master of Perspective, ed. Liesbeth Helmus (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), 203 n. 6.

106 Liedtke, Vermeer and the Delft School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 434.

108

107 For numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century depictions of dogs in churches and other buildings, both real and imagined, see Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1991).

108 “men zach'er...een hondt, die op een onstichtlijke wijze een teef besprong. Zeg vry, dat dit gebeurlijk en natuerlijk is, ik zegge dat het een verfoeilijke onvoeglijkheyt tot deze Historie is...men...eer zou zeggen, dat dit stukje een Predicatie van den Hondschen Diogenes, als van den Heyligen Johannes vertoonde.” Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst; anders de zichtbaere werelt (Rotterdam, 1678), 116.

109 De Witte depicts the urinating dog as early as 1650, the same year that he begins painting church interiors. It is visible, for example, in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft (c. 1650, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art); his Oude Kerk in Delft During a Sermon (1651, London, Wallace Collection) appears to include a dog defecating. The Delft artist Hendrick van Vliet, who painted his first church interior in 1652, after De Witte’s departure to Amsterdam, seems to have taken up this theme in imitation of his predecessor. See, for example, his Pieterskerk in Leiden, from the northern transept to the southwest (1652, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich- Museum).

110 This early modern interpretation of Diogenes comes from Stefano Guazzo’s The Civile Conversations (1581/6). Quoted in Mazella, 56.

109 Chapter 4

PAINTING THE WORD

De Witte employs visuality as a “doorway” into his paintings. In the Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 15), for example, the rückenfigur’s attentive looking encourages the viewer to investigate the painted space (fig. 16). De Witte creates a space that is immersive, as it suggests the viewer is present at this particular time of day to witness the transient events enacted within the church: soon, the tardy congregants will be seated, the preacher who raises his arm in a rhetorical gesture will conclude his sermon, the occupants of the preekkerk will return to their homes, the light cast over the aisle will fade, the open grave will be sealed, and the surrounding debris will be swept aside. De Witte’s ability to capture his perceptions and translate them in paint so convincingly that he persuades the viewer to “attend” the service through appeal to the sense of sight is a distinguishing feature of his works and the focus of this chapter, which examines De Witte’s painted impressions of the visible and his materialization of the invisible. De Witte’s painterly description of the perceptible encourages the viewer to utilize dual modes of seeing: sight (that is, ocular recognition) and insight (intuitive awareness). Through analysis of De Witte’s evocation of light and space, we may determine the silhouette of a Calvinist aesthetic that will inform our investigation of painted sound in subsequent chapters.

110 De Witte’s individual type of naturalism is fundamental to his formation of lifelike spaces that appeal to the viewer through their evocation of real places of worship. Light rendered with visible brushwork signifies God’s presence, imbues De Witte’s interiors with spiritual life, and conjures the sight experience of the Calvinist service. De Witte’s treatment of light reinterprets— if indirectly—a distinctively Netherlandish tradition of utilizing light imagery and the luster of oil painting to signify the divine, as for example in the paintings of Jan van Eyck. De Witte also likely interacted with contemporary artists in Delft and Amsterdam whose work perhaps helped him to formulate his own style and technique. For example, whereas De Witte and Delft church interior painter Gerard Houckgeest initially shared, and perhaps developed in tandem, an interest in opticality typical of the “Delft School,” De Witte turned away from Houckgeest’s abiding interest in linear perspective in favor of light as the formulating element for creating and enlivening space. In contrast to fellow practitioners such as Saenredam, who creates a rational sense of space primarily through the scientific means of linear perspective, De Witte’s space seems based on observation, which enhances the immersive quality of his paintings. In Amsterdam, De Witte was inspired by Rembrandt van Rijn to evoke the intangibility of the sacred through loose brushwork, which suggests the invisible through summary rendition of the visible. Examining the styles of these artists in comparison with that of De Witte helps to elucidate De Witte’s distinct contributions both to the genre of church interior painting and to post- Reformation religious art in the Dutch Republic.

111 Naturalism and Calvinist Aesthetics De Witte’s intuitive understanding and elicitation of sacred space, which relies on the expressionistic and rhythmic interplay of light and form, characterizes his distinct brand of naturalism. For instance, De Witte inundates his Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 15) with light. The wall of windows visible in the background along the north aisle and framed by the nave arcade opens the church to a hazy, pink-hued view of the town beyond. On the left side of the composition, the west wall of the church is pierced by another window and by a pointed arch over the tomb chapel of the De Graeff family, members of Amsterdam’s powerful regent class (fig. 17). The verticality of the openings, along with the swath of light filtered through the entrance to the De Graeff chapel, enhances the impression of the church as an open, airy, and light-filled place of worship. The light shed along the aisle is painted thinly, with darker paint visible among patches of white and yellow paint giving the impression of filtered light (fig. 16). In contrast, that which illuminates the engaged column to the right of the chapel’s entrance is thickly applied, suggesting strong, direct light (fig. 17). At close range, the entrance dissolves into a series of shapes defined by strokes of paint, white alternating with dark. The contours of the architecture dissipate in the presence of the light: some of the white paint used to indicate the windows infiltrates the darker sections, as though the light cannot be contained. De Witte’s light, which surrounds, penetrates, and essentially defines the space in the composition, assumes an active character—it takes on a life of its own. His understanding of light as the dynamic and animating force in his

112 painting demonstrates an intuitive sense of naturalism, based on observation, which appeals to the viewer’s sense of sight. De Witte exploits the viscosity of oil paint to materialize the intangible. He suggests the unknown and invisible essence of spirituality by luring the viewer to the threshold of the known and the visible in the painting—for example, the entrance to the chapel, the edge of the grave, the periphery of the preekkerk—and in this way communicates the fundamental component of Christian belief: faith. Although the Los Angeles Oude Kerk is replete with avenues for light to penetrate the interior, the door and windows of the funerary chapel, and the monumental arch above it, mark the most intense entrance of light into the church. The adjacent window, which is comparable in size to the chapel’s arched opening, does not appear to cast much light into the nave of the church, aside from the highlighted portion of the box seat at the center of the composition. The discrepancy between the heightened light that streams from the chapel and the muted light largely confined to its neighboring window suggests that De Witte subtly tempers naturalism in favor of dramatic effect: the brilliant glow of light emanating from the chapel guides the viewer’s attention toward the open, light-filled entrance and invites the spectator to step inside. However, the De Graeff chapel is situated at an oblique angle so that its contents are not discernible to the viewer. Although De Witte incites interest through his emphasis on the light-suffused space beyond the chapel door that illuminates a sliver of the groin vault above, he does not satisfy curiosity by revealing the rest of the chapel’s contents, which remain tantalizingly out of

113 reach for the spectator. This fourth wall reveals the paradox of De Witte’s illusionistic paintings: they simultaneously tempt the viewer to experience the space and remind the beholder of their facture, a point reinforced by their relatively small scale. The boundary between congregant and viewer-as- congregant is visually penetrable, but never completely dissolves, which leaves the spectator aware that the scene does not present, but represents the service. Similarly, the congregants in the painting, as well as the actual worshipers who attend services at the physical Oude Kerk, may experience the Word of God transmitted by the preacher and perceive God’s presence, but they are not afforded tangible access to the divine. Before examining further the visual attraction of De Witte’s paintings, established through intuitive expression of light and space using loose and visible brushwork, it is pertinent to articulate the character of De Witte’s naturalism in contrast to that of his contemporary Saenredam. It is possible to understand these divergent modes of naturalism as synergetic, not mutually exclusive, in their definition of the Calvinist religious image. De Witte’s naturalism conveys the active spiritual environment of a Church with a living community that engages the viewer through its emphasis on the present;

Saenredam’s naturalism communicates that the Church is an established institution. Despite the convincing impressions of reality that Saenredam and De Witte convey, both artists frequently painted these spaces with a degree of artistic license. For example, Saenredam often removes furnishings and wall ornaments, effectively streamlining and generalizing the church interiors he

114 depicts. This is evident in his Philadelphia Interior of Saint Bavo, Haarlem (fig. 84), where he has removed the pulpit, pews, hatchments and one of the organs that adorned the space, and simplified the rib vaulting and decoration, visible in Gerrit Berckheyde’s Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem (fig. 146, 1673, London, National Gallery). By omitting temporal accoutrements of worship, Saenredam enhances the sense of permanence evoked by the church’s edifice.1 Furthermore, Saenredam manipulates the perspective of the Philadelphia painting by widening the foreground arches and accelerating the spatial recession, evident in the distorted nave vaulting, which expands the visible space of the church and monumentalizes the architecture.2 The building presents itself as the subject, and legitimizes its austere aesthetic as a sight worth seeing. Although De Witte faithfully depicts many Calvinist worship spaces (for instance, figs. 15, 22 and 28), he freely modifies the perspective, architectural details, and interior landscapes of identifiable churches (evident in fig. 58), and in some cases inventively combines motifs from a number of different churches (figs. 44 and 53). The question of correspondence to reality in De Witte’s paintings has been extensively discussed in the literature,3 and manifests in the pedantic titles appended to works like Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 44, 1669, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). Although it is important to note the borrowed and invented elements of De Witte’s paintings, the extent to which his Calvinist interiors correspond to physical churches is not my primary concern. Rather, I am interested in their accessibility to the contemporary

115 viewer as Calvinist images of worship. It is significant in this regard that Houbraken emphasizes the recognizability of De Witte’s paintings, going so far as to say that he painted them naar ‘t leven (“from life”).4 Houbraken must have felt a sense of familiarity in looking at De Witte’s works, which convincingly create an impression, rather than an imitation, of reality. Whereas Saenredam’s paintings represent the tangible elements that constitute “church,” De Witte’s paintings convey the intangible “spirit” of Calvinism that defined its faith community. For De Witte, it is the essence of the scene that constitutes naturalism, not, as for Saenredam, its explication. When compared to the visceral sense of light and space in De Witte’s Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 15), Saenredam’s Interior of the Janskerk, Utrecht (fig. 90, c. 1650, Rotterdam, Boymans) seems analytical in its precise, crisply delineated, and emphatically geometric piers, as well as its calculated and consistent one-point perspective.5 Saenredam’s detailed, often accurately rendered drawings, which typically correspond closely to the paintings based on them that are created years later, indicate his preoccupation with documenting the permanence of the Calvinist church. Whereas Saenredam defines space according to a meticulous, mathematical rendering of perspective, De Witte creates a sense of space primarily through his application of light and shadow; for example, De Witte establishes spatial recession in the foreground of the Los Angeles Oude Kerk through alternating swaths of light and dark paint that extend back to the preekkerk. Furthermore, a sliver of light to the left of the middle window along the back wall, the dashes of paint on the floor in the background, and the shaft

116 of light above the preacher’s head all subtly force the spectator to acknowledge the space in the far background of the composition. Saenredam employs light to establish and emphasize the materiality of the architecture (as, for instance, in the subtle contrast between the shadow on the front of the foreground pier and the even light that strikes its right side), and to create the impression of a solid and immoveable edifice that contains the light within its unchanging atmosphere, evident in the even tonality of the Janskerk (fig. 90). De Witte, on the other hand, allows light to penetrate the windows of the exterior walls, move through the interior, activate the figures and forms within the space, and transcend the physical obstacles of the architecture. In effect, De Witte starts with light as a tangible mass around which the material structure of the building must be molded, whereas Saenredam begins with the architecture and employs light primarily to define the physical forms within the painting. De Witte’s freedom with his brush, his instinctive sense and expression of space, and his dynamic and ephemeral light combine to establish a type of naturalism that relies on suggestion rather than definition, on impression instead of precision. Whereas Saenredam’s paintings are scientific in their mathematical exactness, De Witte’s works are poetic in their appeal to the senses. Saenredam’s paintings appear to record reality. De Witte’s evoke the feeling of reality. Saenredam’s naturalism is empirical. De Witte’s naturalism is lyrical. De Witte establishes the Church that is, whereas Saenredam defines the Church that was and ever will be.

117 De Witte’s mode of naturalism is apropos for expressing the Calvinist faith, suggested by comparison between his oeuvre of Calvinist church interiors (both real and imagined) with his relatively small group of invented Catholic spaces. For example, we may discern a much finer technique in his Interior of a Catholic Church (figs. 48-51, c. 1670, New York, Otto Naumann) than the painterly manner employed in his roughly contemporary Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (figs. 44-47, 1669, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). In the former, De Witte articulates the facial features of the church’s inhabitants, evident in the trio in the left foreground, whose physiognomies are modeled in light and shadow using a meticulous technique reminiscent of Saenredam. In contrast, the figures and forms in De Witte’s Protestant Gothic Church are rendered as swaths and patches of paint; the details of the preacher’s face are not discernable, and the window behind him is composed of visible paint applied through horizontal, vertical, and diagonal brushwork. The light, as well, takes on a staid, geometric character in the Catholic interior, where it casts a series of rectangular shapes across the floor and defines the circle of the oculus. In the Rijksmuseum Protestant Gothic Church, on the other hand, light plays an active role in enlivening the service, as it dances across the foreground floor in loosely defined triangles, delicately touches the adjacent pew, illuminates the monumental piers, and suggests the bright light that enters the windows in the background through thickly applied yellow paint.

118 The cavernous space of the Catholic interior, enhanced by the painting’s uncharacteristically large size,6 detracts from any sense that this building houses an interactive faith community. The monumental space dwarfs the lone priest who celebrates mass at the altar in the background of the painting, as well as the dispersed figures who kneel in prayer or wander through the space in twos and threes, and suggests the relatively isolated nature of Catholic worship. The accurately wrought linear perspective, with orthogonals that lead to a single vanishing point at the high altar, recalls the exacting technique of Saenredam and lends a descriptive, documentary quality to the painting. In contrast, De Witte’s Rijksmuseum painting depicts a view of the service from an obtuse angle, which creates a much shallower spatial recession and suggests the intimacy of community through a room full of closely packed people. It also emphasizes the increased participation of lay worshipers typical of the Reformed faith. The shifting perspective, evident for example in the rightmost pier of the foreground arch, which does not align in an orthogonal with the adjacent pier, defies rationalization and exemplifies the malleable space of his Calvinist church interiors. Although the Rijksmuseum Protestant church does not closely depict any actual church, it is noteworthy that De Witte incorporated elements from extant, observable churches in Amsterdam, which may help to explain the lifelikeness of his Calvinist church interior, whereas his Catholic interior is purely invented. Additionally, De Witte elucidates a fundamental difference between Calvinist and Catholic worship of the period: whereas the Calvinist faith

119 community gathered to worship in public churches, Catholic devotion was confined by law to private homes. More importantly, the carefully articulated figures and forms of the Catholic interior, its crisply delineated light and shadow, and its precise perspective convey a sense of immortality and stability that drastically differs from the temporal, active, and lively quality of his Calvinist church interior paintings. The formal characteristics of De Witte’s Catholic Church are enhanced by the foreground inclusion of a tomb, as well as the stained and crumbling wall at the right: this Church of a bygone era, with its rituals and idols, is laid to rest. The new light of the Word and its attendant faith community, represented by a revitalized visual vocabulary, now fill the formerly Catholic sacred spaces that De Witte depicts in his Calvinist church interior paintings.

Spiritual Light In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), Calvin employs the term “spirituality” as a means of describing the nature of God, which, as he concludes in his chapter on God’s “Divine Essence,” is ultimately indescribable.7 The spiritual suggests that which for the seventeenth-century Calvinist must have been the simultaneously real yet elusive presence of God, which is perceivable through one’s inner spirit and evident in the direct relationship between God and the individual believer that is emphasized in the Reformed tradition.8 Similarly, I apply the word “spirituality” to De Witte’s materialization of this immaterial and unknowable “essence” in paint, manifest in his rendering of light.

120 Visualizing the Invisible The light that occupies De Witte’s Los Angeles Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 15) and spills into the church interior is both visually accessible and mysterious. Like the man and his dog at the right (fig. 16), who stand within the light and are bathed in its presence, the viewer experiences the light without grasping, defining, or limiting it. De Witte’s brushwork draws attention to the materiality of paint, which makes the light manifest for the viewer, but whereas light may assume an active role in playing upon the figures and forms in the painting, it cannot in turn be captured, contained, or controlled by those who observe it or stand within it. In suggesting through paint that which cannot be defined, De Witte’s light assumes a spiritual quality—that is, it elucidates God’s presence by drawing attention to its unbounded and ultimately intangible nature. The light in De Witte’s painting demonstrates that God is mysterious and resists definition—a point that is reinforced by the gesticulating preacher in the right background, silhouetted by a splash of light, who ardently attempts to render God’s existence effable. Such an understanding of, to quote Calvin, “the immensity and the spirituality of the essence of God”9 accords with Calvin’s conception of God’s presence, which, like light, activates but is not acted upon. In asserting, “At the very moment when God said, ‘Let there be Light,’ the energy of the Word was immediately exerted,”10 Calvin demonstrates the galvanizing force of light, which both literally and symbolically translates God’s Word (and, by extension, His Being) from the celestial to the earthly realm. De Witte’s light, which is simultaneously enticing and elusive, palpable and incorporeal, illuminating and cryptic, emphasizes the experiential nature of the spiritual in

121 the Reformed tradition and at the same time draws attention to the limits of human perception. It manifests the sublime experience of the sacred that Rudolf Otto describes as the mysterium tremendum.11 Just as the light-filled entrance to the chapel in De Witte’s Los Angeles Oude Kerk beckons to the viewer while visually denying access, so does Calvinism invite believers into the fold while acknowledging that God’s Majesty exceeds human comprehension. The “living” sermon evoked by the handling of light in De Witte’s Los Angeles Oude Kerk contrasts starkly with the darkness and somber character evident in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (fig. 26, 1660, Washington, D.C., National Gallery). In the latter, patches of light illuminate the few figures that inhabit the middle-ground of the work, but the grave and the funeral procession are shrouded in shadow. De Witte equates light with life, and the light that fills his depictions of the service, as in his Los Angeles Oude Kerk, seems to indicate the active spiritual life of the congregants who attend the sermon. De Witte employs the same device of placing a horizontal band of light next to a partially dug grave in foreground shadow in both his Washington and

Los Angeles depictions of the Oude Kerk (figs. 15 and 26). A third rendition of the Interior of the Oude Kerk (fig. 69, n.d., Dallas, Edsel Collection) similarly places a newly opened grave awaiting its eternal inhabitant in a dark foreground immediately in front of a brilliant light, here illuminating figures in the wandelkerk who have gathered to hear the preacher’s sermon. The juxtaposition in all three paintings of the rolled back slab with the light bathing

122 the ground evokes Christ’s resurrection, which reinforces the living environment of the church, not simply the vanitas meditation on death. It reminds the viewer that through faith in Christ, corporeal death leads to eternal spiritual existence. Although the mortal remains will be enclosed beneath the floor of the church, the soul will transcend the physical confines of the tomb in imitation of Christ’s Resurrection. Similarly, light in De Witte’s paintings, which is not restricted by architectural forms, signifies spiritual life. De Witte’s equation of light and spirituality is suggested both thematically and stylistically by pendant paintings that contrast life and worship with death and burial (figs. 39 and 44, 1669, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).12 One of the paintings, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 39), shows a sermon attended by congregants seated in the preekkerk and both standing and seated in portable folding chairs in the wandelkerk. Its pendant, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 44), shows a view into the preekkerk with an open grave attended by a burgher and occupied by a gravedigger instead of a nave filled with worshippers. In both paintings, light filters in from seen and unseen aisle and clerestory windows, plays upon the architectural forms, and illuminates a group of figures standing in each foreground. In the sermon painting, light falls on a family standing outside of the preekkerk in the right foreground, their backs to the viewer as they pay attention to the sermon (fig. 40). Light spreads across the unoccupied floor in the central foreground and caresses the empty pew at left, as though inviting

123 the viewer-as-congregant to the service by emphasizing the vacant seat. The column adjacent to the preacher is also illuminated (fig. 43); the emphatic dash of paint nearest to the extended arm of the preacher could be interpreted as emanating symbolically from the preacher himself: God is made manifest by the light and/as the Word. In the pendant depicting a grave, light enters from the left foreground, whereas in the sermon painting it occupies that of the right. Here, the highlighted group is composed of an itinerant mother and child (identified by the bag the woman carries, her attire, and the walking stick the child holds),13 who face the viewer and converse with a burgher accompanied by his dog. The woman gestures to herself and inclines her head toward the gentleman; considering the difference in social status suggested by their clothing, it is likely that she is asking for alms. Significantly, whereas De Witte often places graves in shadow, this one is not only occupied by a living being, but it is bathed in light. That the gravedigger will eventually emerge from the grave, physically imitating the spiritual emergence of Christ and Christian believers, is reinforced by the light that activates the space, as well as the similarity in gesture between the gravedigger and the preacher (figs. 43 and 46), who both have their arms outstretched. One possible interpretation of the paintings as a pair is that the work that depicts a grave and perhaps an act of charity is intended to remind viewers of the importance of heeding the Word conveyed by the preacher during the service: those who attend to God’s law will be rewarded with eternal life. The light that filters in from the unseen clerestory

124 windows at the upper right of the grave painting (fig. 47), its spiritual quality suggested both by its descent from above and its formation of naturalistic “rays” of light that reach across the wall, implies the presence of God in this space. De Witte creates a sense of spirituality in his works by dissolving the material and giving presence to the intangible through his attention to light. There is an ironic reversal of material and immaterial in De Witte’s paintings. Where light is most prominent in De Witte’s paintings—for example, at the entrance to the chapel in the Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 17) and on the left side of the pier to the right of the preacher in the Rijksmuseum Protestant Church (fig. 43)—the architectural elements dissipate. De Witte employs light as a means of elucidating God’s presence in the church. The palpable, animated, and transitory quality of his light evokes spirituality through the materiality of paint and creates a form of visual scripture that calls to mind the verbal scripture fundamental to Calvinist worship.

Poeticizing Light Seemingly at odds with the apparent naturalism of De Witte’s light is its lyrical quality, which reveals careful optical manipulation. For example, De Witte frequently employs light to establish a pictorial pattern. In his Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, During a Service (fig. 58, 1678, Amsterdam, Kremer Collection), light from the unseen clerestory windows on the opposite wall dances in an interplay of highlights and shadows across the visible section of the nave wall and triforium (fig. 59). De Witte’s light imitates the shapes of

125 the pointed arches that compose the nave arcade and alternates with the visible clerestory windows. Moreover, the cadence of light characteristic of De Witte (seen also, for instance, in De Witte’s Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, c. 1656, Rotterdam, Boymans, fig. 11) suggests a visual poetry in his paintings evocative of the metered rhythm of the Psalms, a book that played a prominent role in Calvinist worship.14 The Psalm boards (fig. 154) that were important fixtures in Calvinist churches, as they signaled the Psalms for each service,15 indicate the centrality of this poetic book of the Bible for the transmission of God’s Word to the Calvinist community. De Witte’s fellow church interior painters regularly record the inclusion of Psalm boards or panels in the new Calvinist spaces of worship.16 Curiously, in view of the frequency with which De Witte depicts the Calvinist service and the regular appearance of Psalm boards in paintings by his contemporaries, De Witte never, to my knowledge, includes a clearly identifiable Psalm board in any of his own works. His exclusion of Psalm boards is less surprising, however, when considered in terms of De Witte’s mode of naturalism, which reveals a preference for implication rather than explication. It is possible that De Witte’s poetic employment of light is intended to suggest the centrality of the Psalms to Calvinist worship, whereas the literal presence of the Psalm board in paintings by other Dutch artists describes it. Significantly, Psalmic verses regularly invoke light imagery in their descriptions of God’s presence and divine Word.17 Psalm 119:130, which proclaims, “The entrance of your words gives light. It gives understanding to

126 the simple,” is particularly appropriate for interpreting De Witte’s light as analogous to spiritual life: through light, the “simple” worshipers who have gathered for the service, along with the viewer-as-congregant, are enlightened by the Word. De Witte perhaps illustrates this metaphor in his Kremer Oude Kerk (fig. 58): the light that enters the space through an unseen aisle window and illuminates the compound pier in a rhythmic interplay of light and shadow creates a series of curved bands over the heads of the congregants in the foreground (fig. 60). This same light source highlights the young girl and her mother at the far right, both of whom hold books—possibly Psalters, or conceivably Bibles or kerkboeken, which would have contained the book of Psalms along with the rest of the Biblical narrative. The daughter, “simple” in her youth and innocence, looks to her mother as if for guidance. The mother’s book is open, its margins highlighted by a curling stroke of yellow paint, and she makes eye contact with the viewer. The metaphorical light of the Word, conveyed through the visual light in the painting, the illuminating text that the woman holds, and (we may presume) the enlightening message of the preacher, “gives understanding” to the congregant. In this way, De Witte perhaps suggests a connection between textual and visual poetry, and simultaneously “invites” the viewer-as-congregant, through the woman’s gaze, to attend to the scripture. Through his application of light, De Witte paints the Word.

127 Painting Sacred Light De Witte’s paintings inherit the tradition of painted sacred architecture, and painted sacred light, just as they depict co-opted sacred spaces. Calvinists did build new churches, but they also took over Catholic worship spaces. Although Calvinists removed the devotional content of Catholic Mass from these churches, the architecture still functioned as a house for Christian worship. The light that penetrates the windows of these Gothic structures, regardless of whether they house Catholic or Protestant activities, endows their interiors with the sense of God’s divine presence. Art historians have traditionally traced the origins of seventeenth- century church interior painting to the architectural paintings of sixteenth- century artists, for whom scholars assume that perspective emerged as an increasing preoccupation. Although literature typically demarcates the fifteenth-century church interiors of Flemish artists as part of a fundamentally different tradition due to their devotional content, it is possible to discern in these works a distinctly Netherlandish attention to naturalism based on observation and intuition that anticipates the style and technique of De Witte. In particular, Jan van Eyck, the forerunner and catalyst of the emerging interest in church interior painting in the Netherlands, exploits oil paint to evoke the shimmering, reflective quality of light that invests his painted light with a sense of the sacred. This is evident in two paintings by Van Eyck formative to our discussion, Madonna in a Church (figs. 72-74, c. 1425, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen) and Annunciation (fig. 75, c. 1434-6, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art).

128 De Witte inherits and transforms the Northern tradition, initiated by Van Eyck, of elucidating divine presence and spirituality in church through painted light. Whereas Van Eyck utilizes light to enhance the vision of the holy literally depicted in his paintings, De Witte suggests the invisible essence of God through his treatment of light, which functions as a surrogate for the sacred. The Catholic Church depicted by Van Eyck is holy because God symbolically and literally inhabits it; the Calvinist Church represented by De Witte is made holy by the activating light within it, which manifests the Reformed believer’s internal experience of the divine. De Witte’s creamy, textured brushwork creates light that is both material (in its composition as paint) and immaterial (in its representation as light), which translates the ethereality of God’s presence into a visually accessible vocabulary for De Witte’s predominantly Calvinist viewers. Despite differences in faith establishments and time periods, there is much to be gained by considering De Witte and Van Eyck as representatives of a common stylistic tradition and genre of church interior painting. Our understanding of De Witte’s treatment of light as palpably spiritual, albeit in a manner palatable for a Reformed audience, may be enhanced through a brief examination of Jan van Eyck’s

Madonna in a Church (fig. 72). In Van Eyck’s painting, the Virgin Mary, as the embodiment of the church, dominates the ornate church interior. That Mary’s size is disproportionate to the architecture of the building—Craig Harbison estimates that she would tower as tall as 60 feet in relation to her environment18— signifies her figurative role as the house within which Christ dwells. Van Eyck

129 renders her as both in and of the Church. The sacredness of the space Mary occupies is emphasized by the lack of human worshippers in the church and the angels that occupy the choir in the background. Van Eyck depicts Mary not only as the bearer of Christ, but also—indicated both by her crown and by the reference to Christ’s crucifixion in the background above the choir—as the Queen of Heaven. Hence, the Church in the Berlin panel is one of post- “enlightenment” that signifies the New Order of Christ, and Van Eyck formally acknowledges this through the pervasive light of God, both natural and spiritual, that floods the interior. Van Eyck creates the appearance of filtered light as it would penetrate an actual church interior, which heightens the sense that the holy figures, and the sacred space they inhabit, are physically accessible to the viewer. The enhanced naturalism of the light in Van Eyck’s Berlin Madonna in a Church is indicative of his awareness and mastery of the formal and symbolic significance of light. Van Eyck exploits the translucent effects of oil paint both to infuse the church with natural light and to signify Mary’s virginity. Light enters through the stained glass clerestory windows (fig. 73), gleaming over Mary’s crown and highlighting the floor of the nave (fig. 74), which leads back to the altar within the choir. Just as the architectural forms echo Mary’s structural role as the upholder of the church, the light-filled interior recalls the presence of God in this holy space. Visible in both the frames around the clerestory windows and on the floor of the church, Van Eyck builds up the oil paint in layers to simulate the effect of dappled sunlight that seeps through glass. The light that passes through the windows signifies Mary’s purity,19 and

130 by extension establishes the penetration of God into the sacred space of Mary and/as the church. Both Van Eyck and De Witte demonstrate awareness of light’s potential to convey spirituality through formal and symbolic means. However, whereas Van Eyck utilizes light in the service of crafting an image intended for Catholic devotion, De Witte’s light draws attention to Reformed beliefs. As an example, let us take De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (figs. 18-21, 1660, London, National Gallery); through the nave arcade, three aisle windows, inset with stained glass, open the church to a view of the sunny sky beyond its walls. The window directly in the center of the painting, installed in the Oude Kerk in 1542, prominently features a stained glass representation of the four evangelists with their symbols (fig. 19).20 It is unusual for De Witte, who typically only summarily depicts the decorative elements of his church interiors, to devote such attention to the details of the window. We can even discern the identities of the evangelists: Luke, for example, is accompanied by his ox on the far left, and Matthew by his angel in the center. The four evangelists sit at a table writing their gospels; above, rendered through yellow patches of paint, De Witte depicts the divine light of inspiration shining down on the authors of the gospels. This obviously holy light, signifier of God’s presence in the painting-within-a-painting, contrasts with the natural light hitting the pier to the right of the organ, which De Witte paints with thick, white strokes that characteristically melt away the architectural element.

131 Van Eyck also employs two different types of spiritual light in his Annunciation (fig. 75),21 where the diffuse natural light that enters the windows contrasts with the seven crisply delineated rays that herald the entrance of the dove of the Holy Spirit.22 Even though the source of the natural light that comes through the windows and softly illuminates the interior of the church is the sun, its occupation of the sacred space invests this light with spiritual significance. That Van Eyck employs stylized rays of light to denote the Holy Spirit distinguishes this light as a direct communication from God, whereas the natural light clarifies the spiritual atmosphere of the scene enacted within the church. We may attribute similar significance to the two types of light evident in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk: in addition to the painted light of the Holy Spirit in the scene itself, the stained glass figures are illuminated by the natural light filtered into the church through the window. As the latter permeates God’s House, it is inherently spiritual. Just as the light enters the church through the stained glass, the Word of God is filtered through the divinely inspired evangelists. This analogy recalls the metaphorical use of light in Van Eyck’s paintings, where it penetrates the windows in reference to God’s penetration of Mary. In De Witte’s work, the use of light takes on an appropriately “Calvinist” significance: the stained glass featured in the center of the composition draws attention to New Testament scripture that emphasizes the importance of God’s Word. It is also significant that, whereas Van Eyck populates his naturalistically rendered church interiors with holy figures, De Witte

132 incorporates these figures into the window, resolving the dissonance between the material and the immaterial that his seventeenth-century Protestant audience likely perceived in fifteenth-century devotional paintings. Perhaps not coincidentally, the stained glass in De Witte’s painting is framed on the left by the preacher delivering his sermon. His placement in close proximity to the glass suggests that the divine Word received and transcribed by the evangelists is filtered through the preacher to the congregation, just as light filters through glass. It is important to reiterate here that the architectural spaces represented by fifteenth-century artists such as Jan van Eyck—Gothic churches (albeit “imaginary” in the sense that they do not depict identifiable places)—are part of the same architectural tradition as those painted by De Witte and his contemporaries. The theological fracture signified by the Protestant Reformation does not necessarily equate with a break in the architectural tradition, even though Calvinists made significant alterations to the interiors of these formerly Catholic spaces. Notably, the stained glass windows of churches in the Netherlands frequently remained intact, even when they depicted devotional content.23

The superficial changes made to the centuries-old church interiors after the 1578 Alteratie notwithstanding, the deep respect that the Protestant Dutch held for these preexisting sacred spaces is indicated, above all, by their choice to inhabit them and perpetuate the Christian tradition within them—even when, as on the occasion of the 1645 fire that destroyed much of Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk and precipitated its restoration, they had the opportunity and the

133 financial means to eradicate the old and start anew. Moreover, De Witte and his contemporaries consistently—exclusively in the case of De Witte—chose to depict the interiors of formerly-Catholic churches rather than the newly-built Calvinist churches in the northern Netherlands, revealing not only their own, but also their clients’ abiding interest in these appropriated buildings.

Sanctification of Space Although no autograph preparatory drawings of his church interiors are extant, Houbraken indicates that De Witte did employ sketches. Additionally, De Witte sometimes (but not always) lays out the guiding lines of his composition directly on the panel or canvas in a loose grid of horizontals and verticals that serve as a rough guide for his underdrawing and painting.24 His cursory preparatory grid and willingness to abandon its guiding function are indicative of De Witte’s perception and description of nature: after arranging the barest of preliminary grid lines, he seems to succumb to his impulse to paint freely and loosely in defiance of any pretense of order established by his underdrawings. Still, his at times inconsistent and apparently hastily constructed perspective is usually founded on an underlying structure. Based on this knowledge of his artistic process, we may surmise that De Witte’s creation of space was not accidental or haphazard, but purposeful. In sermon paintings such as his Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 15), De Witte creates an immersive space for the viewer-as-congregant through his manipulation of architectural elements and use of light to articulate depth. The effect De Witte creates is that of an uninterrupted foreground space that allows the viewer access to the preekkerk without the need to navigate around the

134 piers that should, in reality, define the boundary of the nave. This invitation to the beholder to “enter” the composition and explore the seen and the unseen within the church environment emphasizes the sanctifying power of the individual believer, who transforms the building into a sacred realm by experiencing it as a place of worship. De Witte’s construction of space facilitates not only directed acts of looking,25 but also sensory engagement with the service. The experiential nature of De Witte’s space, in effect, “sanctifies” according to the Reformed definition of sacred space that is made holy through the spiritual activity within the church. Traditional scholarship, pioneered by Max Weber, has argued that the Reformation—and Calvinism in particular—precipitated the de-sanctification of physical churches by removing the “magic of religion” from these spaces and instituting a “disenchantment of the world.”26 Calvin advocated the notion that “Church” is located not within any physical space, but within the heart of the believer: “For if we are the real temples of the Lord, we must pray to him within ourselves if we wish to invoke him in his real temple.”27 Such a view is antithetical to the Catholic understanding of the physical Church as a manifestation of the sacred, exemplified in its conception of the Virgin Mary as the embodiment of the Church and represented, for example, in Van Eyck’s paintings. However, as Will Coster and Andrew Spicer argue, the Protestant attitude toward sacred space is more complex than Weberian scholarship would have us believe; the Reformation led not to a desacralization of place, but to a revision of the concept of the sacred structure.28 This is evident in the

135 retention of pre-Reformation worship spaces, but with the reallocation of their internal landscape.29 For Calvinists, this meant, for instance, the privileging of space devoted to the service at the expense of the choir space formerly dedicated to Mass. Reformed churches also emphasized communal, as opposed to private, worship space by removing altars and devotional objects from individual chapels and centralizing the pulpit as the focal point of the congregation.30 Spicer also points to the persistence of burials within Reformed churches as evidence that, Calvin’s rejection of the physical Church as inherently sacred notwithstanding, the populace continued to regard the space confined within church walls as holy ground.31 Furthermore, as Christian Grosse notes, the dissemination of Reformed theology resulted in the modification of Calvin’s view in favor of emphasizing the holiness of the physical worship space because it facilitates worship activity.32 This stance was formally adopted by the Reformed church in Switzerland and Scotland in 1566, two years after John Calvin’s death, in the Second Helvetic Confession, written by Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), which affirms that “places dedicated to God and to his worship are not profane, but holy because of God’s word and the use of holy things to which they are devoted.”33 Bullinger emphasizes that, in contrast to the view of the Church in the Catholic tradition, “the place of itself is nothing holy; but because these holy things are done in that place, in respect that they are done there, the place itself is called holy” [italics mine].34 Hence, for Calvinists, it was the liturgical function of the Church that sacralized it; that is, the activity of the Calvinist community within

136 the space designated it as a “privileged venue for sanctification.”35 De Witte’s investment of his painted churches with scenes of worship draws attention to the sacred nature of the space not through the definition of the building as “Church,” but by virtue of the services enacted within them. De Witte does not consistently employ linear perspective, an illusionistic strategy he used when working closely with Gerard Houckgeest in Delft before largely abandoning the scientific approach in favor of a seemingly more intuitive one evident in most of his later Amsterdam paintings.36 In De Witte’s Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 15), for example, the orthogonals created by the lines in the floor, the bases of the pews, and the steps to the chapel lead to various vanishing points in the left background of the composition. However, he achieves a convincing sense of spatial recession, in part, through atmospheric perspective, evident in the blurring of forms beyond the window to suggest depth. The use of atmospheric perspective, which imitates the indistinct colors and shapes that the eye perceives at a distance, is both particularly Northern and typical of De Witte’s interest in creating an impression of a scene rather than describing it in exacting detail. As De Witte elsewhere demonstrates his capability of employing accurate perspective, we must not mistake the ambiguous space of the Los Angeles painting for lack of skill. For instance, he achieves consistent one- point perspective using a pinhole technique to mark the vanishing point and lay out his orthogonals using string in such paintings as Interior with a Woman at a Clavichord (fig. 37, c. 1665, Rotterdam, Boijmans) and Choir of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam with the Monument to Michiel de Ruyter (fig. 66, 1683,

137 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).37 The view through two rooms depicted in the former painting, wherein the orthogonals created by the marble tiles on the floor, the rug under the bed, the open door, the door frames, and the window sills converge on a single vanishing point in the background window, demonstrates a complicated and strict adherence to a perspectival system that focuses the gaze. It is notable that De Witte employs linear perspective in paintings that prioritize a particular focal point, such as his Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent (fig. 7, 1653, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), which frames the tomb between two foreground piers and creates spatial recession through the orthogonals of the columns and wooden ceiling struts. His Woman at a Clavichord guides attention through the doorsien; his depiction of Michiel de Ruyter’s monument establishes the tomb as the central feature. On the other hand, the intuitive space typical of sermon paintings such as the Los Angeles Oude Kerk involves the viewer in the painted service by encouraging engaged looking, and suggests a place filled with sights and sounds for the beholder to investigate. Additionally, De Witte layers forms in the Los Angeles Oude Kerk so that they establish a progressively distant view of the church interior. He strategically and convincingly composes the space to guide the viewer through the carefully choreographed arrangement of figures, furnishings, and architectural elements, which subtly reinforces the tangibility of the service. This is most evident in the series of arches nearest the picture plane, which frame the smaller arches that define the boundary of the side aisle; the

138 windows on the opposite wall that are visible through the aisle arcade, in turn, designate the architectural periphery of the church. The space demarcated by the second arch from the left, in fact, is perfectly bifurcated by the colonnette that segues into the supporting pier behind the arch; De Witte further demonstrates the existing space between this large arch and the two smaller ones that it frames through the device of the chandelier, which appears to hang in front of the aisle piers, as its beaded cord is visible against the white wall above the smaller arches, but behind those arches closest to the nave. All of these spaces are visually accessible to the viewer, who may “enter” via the opening just behind the band of light at left between the two pews that designate the boundary of the preekkerk proper and weave through seated and standing congregants to reach the aisle on the far side, where a dash of paint highlights the floor to the right of the pier in the background. Despite the impression of spatial clarity, close examination of the system of piers and arches reveals the ambiguity of the space. The arcade below the wooden barrel vault should indicate the opposite end of the nave, as the pews that inhabit the preekkerk appear to be positioned beneath the barrel vault. However, the organ at the left and the pulpit at the right are located behind these piers, two of which also support the canopied box seats that, in reality, occupy the space on the outskirts of the preekkerk. De Witte’s space defies rationalization, as the tallest series of piers and arches seem at once to cut through the middle of the preekkerk and to designate the liminal area of the nave.

139 Most of the space in the composition is actually dominated by the side aisle outside of the preekkerk in the foreground (figs. 16, 17), which is where the De Graeff chapel and the adjacent window are located both in the actual Oude Kerk and in the painting. De Witte collapses the space of the nave as defined by the arcades and expands the foreground space, which is composed of an impossibly broad side aisle with a point-of-view from within a side chapel; he reconciles this spatial incongruity by disguising the bases of the piers with box seats, so that their point of contact with the ground is indefinite, and by extending the furnishings and population of the preekkerk beyond the limits of the nave and into the side aisle. De Witte’s placement of the compound pier in the right foreground, which in the physical Oude Kerk marks the edge of the chapel wall at the northwest corner of the church, deceives the viewer into assuming that it is, instead, part of a series of arches and piers corresponding to those on the far side of the vault. The indefinite space characteristic of De Witte’s Calvinist church interior paintings, which at once resists rationalization and insists upon the viewer’s acceptance of its naturalism, is apropos to the Calvinist conception of God as immeasurable. Whereas the science of linear perspective implicitly limits space to that which is calculable, the shifting, destabilizing architecture of De Witte’s paintings suggests an intuitive understanding of space akin to the essence of God or faith. In this sense, De Witte’s space is not illogical; it is beyond logic. Furthermore, the shifting planes of perspective in De Witte’s works entice the viewer to engage with the painting—not only to see, but also to look. As the space never resolves, the beholder is unable to “complete” the

140 act of looking through empirical study of forms; instead, the painting insists that the viewer perceive the space intuitively. This emphasis on viewer participation effectively draws the spectator into the service and ensures that the space becomes sacred through the activities performed both by the painted faith community and the viewer-as-congregant.

A Signature Style Considering the popularity of church interior paintings in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, it is a curious circumstance that De Witte was the sole artist located in Amsterdam who specialized in the genre during the mid- to late seventeenth-century.38 Church interior painters tended to congregate in a few centers, including Delft, Haarlem, and Rotterdam.39 Perhaps competition with so many fellow specialists in the genre in Delft prompted De Witte to position himself in Amsterdam, where he could corner the market for church interior paintings. De Witte’s relocation to Amsterdam not only established him as the only local painter at that time to depict Amsterdam’s church interiors, it also contributed to the development of his distinct style. For Amsterdam was the home of an artist whose work De Witte must have known and admired: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), who had moved there from Leiden in 1631 and established a large workshop and sphere of influence.

Opticality and Illusionism in Delft

In order to understand the transformation in De Witte’s technique that coincides with his move to Amsterdam, it is necessary to remark upon the

141 nature of De Witte’s style during his time in Delft, where he worked closely with church interior painter Gerard Houckgeest. De Witte’s A Sermon in the Oude Kerk, Delft (fig. 4, c. 1650-1, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada) and Houckgeest’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, with a View of the Pulpit (fig. 120, c. 1651, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) reveal common interest in opticality and spatial illusionism that typifies the so-called “Delft school,” and particularly architectural painting,40 of the mid- to late-seventeenth-century. Both paintings present an oblique view of the sixteenth-century pulpit through an arched “window.”41 The points-of-view are slightly different, as De Witte depicts the pulpit to the right of the pier with a view to the north wall of the nave in the background, whereas in Houckgeest’s painting, the pulpit peeks out from the left side of the pier, with part of the nave visible to the left and the choir screen at the east end of the church to the right. In addition to the similar use of the trompe l’oeil curtain and focus on the Oude Kerk’s pulpit, the most striking common interest evident in these two works is their attention to light, which Houckgeest applies in a more painterly manner than he does just a few years later, after his departure from Delft. For his part, De Witte employs a somewhat finer technique here than he later adopts in Amsterdam. We may take the correspondence in style between the two artists as a product of their proximity and interaction within the Delft artistic community—a factor that, as we shall see, likely also impacts De Witte’s mode of painting after he moves to Amsterdam. Both artists show particular interest in the effect of filtered light caressing the pier that supports the pulpit. Whereas De Witte applies white

142 highlights in a thin layer of paint to the left side of the pier, Houckgeest’s brushwork is a bit thicker and more visible, and he skillfully adds touches of blue, red, and yellow to imitate the effect of light cast through stained glass. Houckgeest depicts the light hitting the base of the pier in a series of slashes, whereas the corresponding light in De Witte’s painting is more evenly applied. De Witte has not yet developed his characteristic rhythmic pattern of light that we so often see on the background walls of his later church interior paintings. He does show interest in applying touches of light to the figures in the foreground, although here, unlike in his later paintings, the light accentuates the details of the figures instead of obscuring them (as, for example, it highlights and models the hindquarters of the dog and the little girl’s forehead). It is likely that De Witte and Houckgeest knew of Rembrandt’s works while they worked together in Delft. Scholars have pointed out Rembrandt’s early use of the trompe l’oeil curtain in his Holy Family (1646, Kassel, Staatliche Museen), which predates its employment by Houckgeest and De Witte.42 Sergiusz Michalski even attributes the introduction of the two-point perspective scheme for constructing a church interior, so integral to Houckgeest’s conception of space, to Rembrandt: in Rembrandt’s etching of

Medea, or the Marriage of Jason and Creusa (figs. 104 and 105, 1648), although the space does not systematically conform to this type of perspective, Michalski notes that the prominent foreground pier just to the left of Juno and the angle of the elevated platform in front of it anticipates Houckgeest’s use of this technique.43 In this way, Michalski explains the seemingly sudden and

143 revolutionary fascination with perspective that emerges in the Delft school as stemming from Rembrandt. The publication of Rembrandt’s etching as the frontispiece for Jan Six’s tragedy Medea would have exposed Delft church interior painters to Rembrandt’s work. However, the argument that Rembrandt provided the impetus for such defining characteristics of the Delft school as the illusionistic curtain and oblique perspective tells us more about Houckgeest’s development than it does that of De Witte. More important for the maturity of De Witte’s style is the suggestiveness of Rembrandt’s technique, created by strategically placed dense hatching. The repoussoir figure of Juno and the adjacent pier provide striking contrast with the highlighted figures of Jason, Creusa, the priest, and the surrounding audience. The ominous and darkly shadowed figure of Medea, who approaches from the lower right of the composition (fig. 105), lends an element of suspense to the narrative, and encourages the viewer to imagine the dramatic conclusion of the story. De Witte’s Oude Kerk in Delft During a Sermon (fig. 3, 1651, London, Wallace Collection) depicts the same pier and pulpit as his Ottawa painting, from a point-of-view that more closely approximates that of Houckgeest in his

Amsterdam Oude Kerk (fig. 120). We may consider De Witte’s elimination of the curtain, which facilitates his emulation of Houckgeest’s characteristic two- point perspective, as a possible response to his compatriot’s demonstration of skill in this illusionistic device.44 De Witte’s light in this painting is remarkable for its golden, glistening quality, which anticipates the closely observed optical effects of fellow Delft artists Vermeer and De Hooch.45 For

144 example, when the piers of De Witte’s Oude Kerk are viewed in raking light, it is apparent that De Witte not only builds up dashes of white and yellow paint using impasto to create the impression of strong light (fig. 3), but also dabs dots of paint on the surface to create a sparkling effect similar to that regularly employed by Vermeer beginning just a few years later in works such as The Kitchen Maid (c. 1660, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). In his Ottawa and Wallace Collection paintings, De Witte seems to take his cue from Houckgeest by similarly blocking viewer access to the background of the church, although in De Witte’s case, his horizontal band of foreground figures who stand in front of the baptismal enclosure in both paintings is likely also a method of establishing spatial division between foreground and background and, in the Wallace Oude Kerk, a way of disguising the nebulous spatial relationship between the central and right piers. This spatial ambiguity is, as I demonstrated earlier in this chapter, also evident in De Witte’s later paintings, but whereas in his Los Angeles Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, it takes on a purposeful character and is only perceivable upon close study of the painting, in the Wallace Oude Kerk in Delft it appears as though De Witte is still experimenting with different means of conveying recessional space in his church interiors. Notably, in his Wallace painting he establishes a more gradual sense of depth than in his Ottawa Oude Kerk; in the former, we are afforded a glimpse into the preekkerk through the crowd, whose heads get smaller as they recede into the background. De Witte’s interest in opticality and illusionism, evident in his Ottawa and Wallace Oude Kerken, indicates that he engaged closely with the artistic

145 community in his working environment of Delft. Although De Witte and Houckgeest were the forerunners of this sensation in Delft, they likely interacted with other artists whose paintings only slightly postdate their 1650- 1651 works. Three are worth mentioning here. Louys Aernoutsz Elsevier (1618-1675), who registered in the Delft guild in 1646, employs a fictive frame in his sole extant church interior painting, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, Seen through a Stone Archway (fig. 125, 1653, Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga), which recalls the illusionistic curtains of Houckgeest and De Witte. Additionally, his dabs of paint that highlight the left foreground pier are similar to De Witte’s treatment of light in his Wallace Oude Kerk. Although Hendrick van Vliet (c. 1611-1675) does not adopt church interior painting as a specialty until De Witte’s departure from Delft, he was a lifelong resident of Delft and a member of the guild from 1632. His Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, with the Tomb of Piet Hein (fig. 122, c. 1652-3, New York, Zukerman Collection), with its trompe l’oeil curtain, two-point perspective, and dashes of painted light, evidences his acquaintance with De Witte and Houckgeest. Finally, it is worth considering Carel Fabritius (1622-1654), whose interest in opticality is comparable to that of De Witte, as a possible acquaintance, especially as Fabritius would have facilitated, if indirectly, De Witte’s exposure to Rembrandt’s style. Although Fabritius moved to Delft at about the same time that De Witte departed for Amsterdam,46 it is conceivable that their paths may have crossed in one of these locations. Fabritius’s A View in Delft (fig. 123, 1652, London, National Gallery), which depicts the exterior of Delft’s Nieuwe Kerk from an acute angle that suggests it was originally

146 viewed in a perspective box,47 is an example of his fascination with illusionistic space. It is easy to imagine that the inspiration for this painting may have come from Fabritius’s knowledge of his compatriot’s work, or perhaps that the two artists corresponded with each other. Fabritius, who trained in Rembrandt’s studio, may have introduced De Witte to the painterly style of brushwork characteristic of the Rembrandt school, which perhaps provided impetus for De Witte to relocate to Amsterdam. Fabritius’s adaption of Rembrandt’s technique is evident, for example, in the loose application of visible paint in The Goldfinch (fig. 124, 1654, The Hague, Mauritshuis), where the bird’s feathers are composed of broad slashes of brown and gray paint, the tip of the wing highlighted with a dash of yellow.

Bravura Brushwork in Amsterdam After De Witte’s move to Amsterdam, his paintings show increasingly loose, visible brushwork that reveals the impact of Rembrandt and his circle. We may observe this shift in style as early as 1654 in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon (figs. 8-10, The Hague, Mauritshuis). For example, the faces of preacher and congregants are rendered more broadly than most of those in De Witte’s Wallace Collection Oude Kerk in Delft (fig. 2, 1651). The impressionistic brushwork is much more evident in De Witte’s works that date from the 1660s to the end of his career. In his Rijksmuseum Protestant Gothic Church (figs. 39-43, 1669), for instance, the figures are generalized, often defined solely by blocks of light and dark colors created by patches of paint. De Witte establishes the crowd of congregants seated in the preekkerk by combining a sequence of light brown circles framed

147 in black circles to denote the faces of congregants facing the viewer with a number of dark-brown ovular shapes ringed by black to suggest the hats of congregants who face the preacher (fig. 41). De Witte creates a sense of community by dissolving individual figures at close range into slashes and patches of paint—it is only when one takes in the scene as a whole, as an image of worship, that the figures come together in a meaningful way to establish a cohesive sense of Calvinist identity. In his insightful essay on Rembrandt’s technique, Jakob Rosenberg aptly describes Rembrandt’s painterly style as one that evokes the invisible through mere suggestion of the visible, which alludes to what is not actually depicted. 48 Such a “sketch aesthetic” 49 encourages the viewer to employ imagination to complete the scene. De Witte adapted Rembrandt’s “rough manner,” the term employed during the seventeenth century to describe loose, visible brushwork.50 So crucial to the suggestiveness and psychological intensity of Rembrandt’s paintings, it evokes a sense of spirituality in De Witte’s depictions of Calvinist church interiors. The painterly quality of De Witte’s brushwork, its swirls and daubs, its animation and palpability, contributes to a “signature style” inspired by Rembrandt. 51

Coarse texture rendered with heavy impasto characterizes the bravura brushwork of Rembrandt’s paintings throughout his career. One painting that might have particularly appealed to De Witte for its articulate arrangement of multiple figures within a sacred space as well as for its loose and visible handling of paint is Rembrandt’s The Woman taken in Adultery (figs. 106-109, 1644, London, National Gallery of Art). The Biblical narrative in which Christ

148 admonishes the scribes and Pharisees for their judgment of an adulterous woman takes place within a cavernous temple interior. Aside from a Corinthian column, its fluting and acanthus leaves barely discernible, which segues to a groin vault at the top of the composition and suggests the monumentality of the space, the architecture dwells in shadow (fig. 107). Rembrandt utilizes a winding staircase to separate the foreground figures of Christ, the woman, and her accusers from the line of Jews awaiting an audience with the high priest, who sits on a resplendent throne at the apex of the composition. Notably, Rembrandt’s diagonal view into the composition, established by the thread of the Jewish faithful, and his employment of architectural forms to create a sense of space without relying on linear perspective are tactics employed by De Witte in a number of his early Amsterdam paintings, including his Rotterdam Nieuwe Kerk (fig. 78). In a manner similar to Rembrandt, whose London painting establishes recessional space by layering bands of figures with architecture, De Witte arranges his composition by alternating congregants and pews that lead attention to the preacher in the pulpit in the background, who occupies an elevated location in the composition. Also worth mentioning are the similarities between Rembrandt’s London painting and his Medea print (figs. 104-105), as Medea might have been the first Rembrandt seen by De Witte. Both of these works by Rembrandt evidence a theatrical quality in the tableau of figures and forms arrayed horizontally across the picture plane, as well as Rembrandt’s use of the curtain

149 (prominent in Medea but merely suggested by vertical strokes of red paint at the right of the London composition) and his strategic and dramatic contrast of light and shadow. In the London painting, for instance, light illuminates the central figures of Christ and the adulterous woman, whereas the surrounding area is in shadow. The dark passage separates the foreground group from those gathered at the golden throne in the background, which Rembrandt highlights with dabs and swirls of paint. Rembrandt, essentially, provides De Witte with a viable means of laying out his compositions to maximize the sense of dramatic recessional space within his church interiors by employing architecture as the backdrop for the human element. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, Rembrandt’s painting creates an impression of a scene through cursorily applied brushwork that suggests but does not define figures and forms. This is evident, for example, in Rembrandt’s summary rendering of the Jewish masses that converge at the altar; most faces are implied through a hint of shadow below the brow, and sometimes a vertical stroke of dark paint to delineate a nose (fig. 108). Often, as is the case with the kneeling figure just behind the more colorfully dressed figures at the altar, only the shape of the head and jawline are visible; the monochromatic figure otherwise blends in with the background. Below this figure on the stairs leading to the altar, barely perceptible shadows suggest mass and occasionally reveal sketchlike form, as is the case with the hand visible to the right of Jesus’ head. The crowd appears to fade into the wall; we sense its presence despite its invisibility.

150 Rembrandt’s reputation still loomed large in the 1660s, when De Witte’s brushwork definitively departed from the relatively descriptive quality characteristic of his Delft work in favor of the loose, visible character evident in his renderings of Amsterdam churches. The increasingly painterly nature of De Witte’s brushwork is evident, for example, in comparing the finely detailed facial features of the little girl in the foreground of his 1651 Ottawa Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft (fig. 4) with those of the child standing next to his mother on the outskirts of the preekkerk in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 31, 1661, Amsterdam Museum). Whereas De Witte distinguishes the plump red cheeks and individual strands of hair on the former, the face of the child in his 1661 Oude Kerk is much more cursorily rendered, with slashes of dark paint to indicate the eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth, and broad strokes of yellow paint to suggest hair. In De Witte’s Rijksmuseum Oude Kerk from 1669, the child looking out at the viewer from the foreground of the composition is even less detailed (fig. 42): all we see is a lighter shade of brown on the left side of the face, which contrasts with the darker brown on the right to suggest that the latter half is in shadow; the barest of smudges in an even darker tone hint at the child’s facial features.

The 1677 Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (figs. 53-55, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) demonstrates the extremely free brushwork characteristic of De Witte’s late paintings: for example, both the conversing burgher and gravedigger are executed in slashes of paint that recall Rembrandt’s brushwork. The contrast with De Witte’s relatively detailed description of a similar pair of figures in his 1660 Washington Oude Kerk

151 (figs. 27 and 54, National Gallery) reveals the extent of De Witte’s summary treatment of forms in the latter part of his career. Whereas De Witte models the gesturing hands of the pair in his Washington Oude Kerk in light and shadow, taking care to delineate individual fingers and even to highlight the protruding fleshy area of the gravedigger’s left palm and the veins on the back of the burgher’s pointing hand, in his Amsterdam Oude Kerk the hands are briskly applied dashes of paint that are distinguished from their environment primarily due to their flesh tone. Whereas the light that falls on the right shoulder of the gravedigger in the 1660 painting is diffuse, that which illuminates the same shoulder of his 1677 counterpart is an isolated, yellow splotch of paint. De Witte’s suggestive rendering of figures through individual touches of paint recalls not only the looseness of Rembrandt’s painting—evident, for instance, in the dash of yellow paint that highlights the cheekbone of an onlooker in the foreground right of The Woman Taken in Adultery (fig. 109)— but also the handling of Italian Renaissance master Titian (c. 1488-1576).52 Significantly, like Titian and Rembrandt, De Witte evolves over the course of his career toward an increasingly painterly technique, perhaps consciously in emulation of Rembrandt and in accordance Karel Van Mander’s exhortation to painters to attempt the rough manner, a style recognized for its difficoltá, only after gaining experience in the art of painting.53 De Witte’s application of paint in dashes, swirls, and smears, which marks his paintings according to their distinct style, may, in the tradition of these forebears, be termed “bravura” for its daring brilliance of execution and its signature character.

152 De Witte's movement toward such a painterly treatment of forms, possibly precipitated by his exposure to Rembrandt's rough manner, is not limited to the figures in his paintings, but extends to the architecture. One particularly good example is De Witte’s treatment of the compound piers supporting the highlighted arch in the background of his 1677 Oude Kerk (fig. 54); the architectural supports are composed of broad, roughly rendered slashes of paint and accented with more thickly applied yellow paint to create the effect of bright light illuminating them on the right. The passage of yellow paint on the right side of the left compound pier, wherein De Witte appears to have employed the end of his brush to scrape through the paint in multiple directions, is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s technique. A similar effect is evident in De Witte’s 1678 Kremer Oude Kerk (fig. 58), for instance, in the texture created by the brushwork on the pier at the left. In both of these late works, De Witte’s painterly strokes suggest an impression of the scene as a whole, a technique particularly suited to evoking the perception of a place. More importantly, De Witte’s emulation of Rembrandt’s painterly technique indicates that De Witte discovered a means for communicating in paint the intangible “essence” of spirituality that pervades his church interiors.

It is possibly in part for this reason that De Witte deviates from the relatively meticulous painting employed earlier in the century by Saenredam. Whereas the descriptive technique pioneered in seventeenth-century church interior painting by Saenredam implies stasis and characterizes the Church according to the immobility and solidity of its architecture, the suggestive brushwork of De Witte communicates temporality and liveliness appropriate for a faith that

153 defines sacred space as a temple—whether within or without the self—that is dedicated to worship. De Witte, seeking success in Amsterdam, perhaps consciously adopts a notoriously difficult manner reminiscent of Renaissance masters such as Titian and suited to the expressive effects he wanted to achieve in his paintings.54 Additionally, we may speculate that De Witte shared Rembrandt’s independent mindset, as reported by Houbraken, who quotes Rembrandt as stating, “If I want to restore my spirit, then it is not honor I seek, but freedom.”55 It is possible to detect in both, for example, a freethinking approach to religion that is difficult to reconcile with any particular church. If we accept that De Witte was self-aware in fashioning a Diogenes-inspired persona, it follows that, like Rembrandt and other early modern artists such as Frans Hals, he intentionally adopts the seemingly spontaneous but actually deliberately applied sprezzatura, or “looseness,” that was considered in his day the mark of a virtuoso painter.56 De Witte distinguishes his style from that of other church interior painters through signature brushwork that suggests the immaterial by means of the material. Perhaps, like Rosenberg centuries later, De Witte viewed Rembrandt’s style as a viable means of expressing “a space which is never sharply limited but seems to be part of the infinite space around and behind the forms,” as a way of communicating “a fusion between the visible and the invisible”57 that, as adapted by De Witte, expresses the spiritual vitality and identity of the Calvinist community.

154 A Lively Brush for a Living Word De Witte is comparable to Rembrandt in one other important respect: both artists evidenced interest in Amsterdam’s Jewish community. The extensive literature on Rembrandt and the Jews investigates his employment of Jewish models for Christ and other Biblical figures, his interest in Old Testament subjects popular with the Jewish faith, and his interaction with prominent Amsterdam Jews such as Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657).58 For De Witte’s part, we may point to his three depictions of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish Synagogue, erected in 1675 and painted by De Witte around 1680. Whereas De Witte’s Catholic interiors, such as the Naumann painting (fig. 48) examined at the beginning of this chapter, are rendered using relatively fine brushwork and meticulous application of light, his paintings of the Synagogue, or Esnoga, employ the loose and visible paint characteristic of De Witte’s late style. Since these works postdate the maturation of De Witte’s painterly style, it is possible that he adapted the technique that had proven successful in its elucidation of Calvinist spirituality for the expression of God’s presence in another sacred space. Like Calvinism, Judaism emphasizes scripture as the foundation of its tenets. The importance placed on the Torah (the first five books, or Pentateuch, of the Bible’s Old Testament) in Jewish worship is evident in its prominent location within the Ark of the synagogue, included in the background of De Witte’s Interior of the Portuguese Jewish Synagogue in Amsterdam (fig. 64, 1680, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). As in his numerous paintings of the Calvinist service, De Witte’s Rijksmuseum Synagogue depicts the faith community gathered to worship; in this case, the Jews congregate on the far

155 side of the low wall that separates visitors from participants, and the rabbi reads the Torah from the Bimah (“platform”) at left. Figures and forms are summarily rendered; for instance, the light that touches the prayer shawl of the rabbi is conveyed through a curving stroke of white paint. Similarly suggestive waves of paint mark the covered heads of the congregation, and wet-in-wet vertical swaths of yellow define the window recesses. Although the plethora of windows that puncture all three visible walls of the Synagogue suggests the fluidity of inside/outside space, light does not penetrate the interior of the Synagogue to the extent that it infiltrates contemporary Calvinist interiors such as Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 67, 1686, Detroit), where cast light stretches toward the preekkerk and highlights sections of the triforium. In the Synagogue painting, the lighting is more even, and less imbued with the lively, animated quality typical of De Witte’s Calvinist church interiors. A swath of light, broadly painted, composes the back left pier and leads directly down to the rabbi, perhaps signifying the sacred nature of the scripture he imparts to the faithful. Elsewhere, much of the Jewish community stands in shadow. We may conclude that De Witte’s distinctive style and technique, characterized by impressionistic brushwork and activating light, is modified to convey the worship of a contemporary faith community whose conception of God revealed through holy scripture is, in a sense, analogous to that of Calvinism. Whereas the relatively rational and static light of De Witte’s Synagogue evokes a sense of an old order founded on Biblical ancestry and the authority of the Old Testament, the “lively” light that creates spiritual “life” in

156 De Witte’s Calvinist interiors conveys a newness, a freshness, that perhaps communicates the nascence of the Reformed faith and its emphasis on the New Testament. The carefully observed faith communities and worship spaces in his paintings suggest De Witte’s immersion in Amsterdam’s multiconfessional environment. Familiarity with these spaces precipitated an intuitive awareness of the worship experience that translated to De Witte’s paintings.

Conclusion: An Invitation to the Service In his Introduction to the Academy of Painting (Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst) Dutch artist and theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) stresses the performativity of painting, meaning the work of art should recreate reality so convincingly that the viewer becomes immersed in the subject “as if he were another bystander.”59 Van Hoogstraten derives this notion of affective involvement of the viewer in part from the classical rhetorical strategy of ekphrasis, which involves the graphic description of a scene with the aim of creating a moving mental picture for the viewer. The goal of the artist is to describe the subject so convincingly that the viewer is immersed in the depicted moment as if the event is actually taking place before him.60 Van Hoogstraten illustrates this concept through analogy to the performative illusion that takes place in theater: as in a stage performance, the scene plays out before the viewer, though the painting accomplishes this through the depiction of a single moment that induces the viewer to experience the rest of the narrative sequence in his mind.61 The painting-within-a-painting displayed on the back wall of De Witte’s Portrait of a Family (figs. 56-57, 1678, Munich, Alte Pinakothek)

157 dramatically presents a “sermon” in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk through the illusionistic device of the painted curtain. The curtain piques the curiosity of the viewer, whose impulse is to peek behind the curtains and view that which is hidden (fig. 128). The curtain within De Witte’s painting sets the stage for the Calvinist service to unfold in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, where the family depicted in the portrait likely attended church. The rough manner of the painting-within-a-painting, which contrasts with the relatively detailed brushwork De Witte employs to depict the family, suggests that De Witte consciously manipulated his style, and that he reserved his loose and visible brushwork, his signature style, for his depictions of sacred spaces. Accordingly, the remainder of this dissertation focuses on De Witte’s time in Amsterdam, where De Witte executed the vast majority of his works. In the words of Van Hoogstraten, it is time to “open the princely Theatre…draw the curtain within ourselves,”62 and experience the service. The preacher, the topic of our next chapter, has ascended the steps to the pulpit. The sermon begins.

158 ENDNOTES

1 On the correspondence of Saenredam’s church interior paintings to their physical counterparts, see Arie de Groot, “Pieter Saenredam’s Views of Utrecht Churches and the Question of Their Reliability,” in Pieter Saenredam: The Utrecht Work, ed. Liesbeth M. Helmus (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998), 17-50; Celeste Brusati, “Reforming Idols and Viewing History in Saenredam’s Perspectives,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 31-55; Brusati, “Perspectives in Flux: Viewing Dutch Pictures in Real Time,” in The Erotics of Looking: Early Modern Netherlandish Art, ed. Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 53-59.

2 Brusati, “Perspectives in Flux,” 53-59.

3 For example, Ilse Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692 (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger and Co, 1963), 39-44 and passim; Gary Schwartz, “With Emanuel de Witte in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam,” in Geest en gratie: Essays Presented to Ildikó Ember on Her Seventieth Birthday, ed. Orsolya Radványi (Budapest: Szépművészeti Múzeum, 2012), 84-91.

4 Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718), 1: 283.

5 It is significant that Saenredam based this painting on a drawing of the Janskerk, dated 15 September 1636 (Hamburg, Kunsthalle), in which he marked the vanishing point with a circled dot at the upper left of the pew. The dot on the drawing corresponds to a hole in the painting, which indicates that Saenredam employed the pin-and-string technique to ensure the correct perspective. Liesbeth Helmus, “The Nave and Choir of the St. Janskerk with St. Anthony’s Chapel in Utrecht,” in Pieter Saenredam The Utrecht Work: Paintings and Drawings by the 17th-century Master of Perspective, ed. Liesbeth Helmus (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), 259.

6 67½ x 53 7/8 in. This is De Witte’s largest extant painting. Otto Naumann, Ltd. “Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Catholic Church,” accessed 23 October 2013; available from http://www.dutchpaintings.com/witte.html.

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7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge, rev. ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2008), 11:13 (58).

8 This conception of the manifestation of God’s paradoxically impalpable presence, disseminated from Calvin to seventeenth-century Reformed practitioners, is evident in the personal accounts, or “spiritual journals,” kept by the contemporary faithful throughout Europe. One such record by Londoner Nehemiah Wallington (1598-1658) poetically recounts his 1643 mystical experience of God’s presence: “The Lord (like a tender Father or Mother) comes softly on me, withdraws the curtain, looks on me: when I least think on Him, He wakes me and takes me to Himself in such heavenly meditations that I see things unutterable.” Quoted in Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 519. The Reformed conception of God as simultaneously accessible through His intimate spiritual relationship with the believer and yet physically unobtainable, a belief in common with other Protestant traditions, distinctly differs from Catholic practice. The latter enables the laity to address God only indirectly through the hierarchical structure of the Church, which renders Him, in effect, spiritually remote, while at the same time physically within reach through tangible representations of the divine in devotional art. Benedict, 519-522.

9 Calvin, Institutes, 1:13:1 (66).

10 Ibid., 1:13:8 (71).

11 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Enquiry Into the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (London, 1925), 6-41.

12 That the paintings are a pair is indicated by a number of factors: they are the same size and, according to examination by Laurent Sozzani, made from the same plank of wood. Furthermore, their provenance indicates that at least as early as 1808, they were part of the same collection and sold together as a pair. Although certain details within the paintings differ (notably, the pulpits are not identical), there are a number of compositional parallels, such as the inverse relationship between the three pillars in each painting (two in the foreground and the middle one in the background in the work depicting a burial, and two in the background with the middle in the foreground in the sermon scene) and the opposing gestures of the gravedigger and preacher, that also support the paintings’ identification as a pair. For provenance, see the Rijksmuseum website, “Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church During a Service, Emanuel de Witte, 1669,” accessed 23 October 2013; available from https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objecten?q=emanuel+de+witte&p=1&ps=12&i i=6#/SK-A-4055,6.

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13 The pointed hat worn by the woman is typical of lower-class Dutch costume from the period. For illustrations of upper- and lower-class seventeenth-century Dutch attire, see Renee Kistemaker and Roelof van Gelder, Amsterdam: The Golden Age, 1275-1795 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1982), 224-225. Note that working-class women also wear this hat in De Witte’s paintings, as in his Market in the Amsterdam Port (1660s, Moscow, Pushkin Museum), so although it is not necessarily a marker of indigence, it does generally indicate a lower social standing.

14 See chapter seven for a discussion of the importance of David as Psalmist in the context of the Dutch organ debate.

15 Mia Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1566-1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 272.

16 For example, on the pulpits in Gerard Houckgeest’s St. Gertrudiskerk, Bergen op Zoom (1655, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst), Gerrit Berckheyde’s Interior of the Bavokerk, Haarlem (1673, London, National Gallery), Daniel de Blieck’s Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam (1652, London, Peter H. Tillou Gallery), Cornelis de Man’s Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft (London, Trafalgar Galleries), Anthonie de Lorme’s View of the Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam (figs. 42 and 43, 1662, Los Angeles, Getty), and Pieter Saenredam’s drawing of the Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Haarlem (1650, New York, Morgan Library).

17 See Psalms 36:9 (“In your light shall we see light”), 104:2 (“He covers himself with light as with a garment. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain.”), and 119:105 (“Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path”). NRSV.

18 Craig Harbison, Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism (London: Reaktion, 1991), 169.

19 Evidence from the original frame of the painting demonstrates Van Eyck’s intended allusion to Mary as a pure vessel for Christ, popularly symbolized in fifteenth-century Flemish paintings as light passing through glass. The frame referred to a medieval nativity hymn that included the stanza: “As the sunbeam through the glass / Passeth but not staineth / Thus the Virgin, as she was, / Virgin still remaineth.” Millard Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth-Century Paintings,” The Art Bulletin 27, no. 3 (1945): 180.

20 According to church archives, this window, installed in the Smiths’ Chapel by 1542, remained in situ through the eighteenth-century. The Smiths Chapel was founded between 1475 and 1491 by the Smiths and the Coopers, which until 1542 were united into a single guild. Since the glass occurs in the church archives as “Blacksmiths and

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Coopers glass,” it must have been installed by 1542. Eighteenth-century neglect of the stained glass windows in the Oude Kerk led to the destruction of all but six of the thirty-two stained glass windows, most of which dated from the sixteenth-century, four from the seventeenth and one from the eighteenth. See B. Bijtelaar, “De geschilderde glazen van de Oude Kerk te Amsterdam,” Oude Holland LXXI (1956): 206.

21 Van Eyck even utilizes different techniques to illustrate light in his painting; whereas he renders the natural light in paint, the light that signifies the Holy Spirit is applied using gold leaf. That Van Eyck goes so far as to distinguish between the actual gold of this divine light and the appearance of gold he creates using paint to execute the details of Gabriel’s brocade demonstrates Van Eyck’s literal and symbolic use of the “material” to communicate the presence of the immaterial. Melanie Gifford, “Van Eyck’s Washington Annunciation: Technical Evidence for Iconographic Development,” The Art Bulletin 81, no. 1 (Mar. 1999): 108.

22 Traditionally, scholars have distinguished the two types of light in Van Eyck’s Washington painting as celestial (designated by the rays) vs. terrestrial (the natural light that illuminates the interior). See, for example, Gifford, 108.

23 The Janskerk in Gouda is a famous example.

24 In many cases, these lines are observable today beneath the paint layers; I viewed horizontal and vertical “guidelines” in De Witte’s Church Interior (1680, Rotterdam, Boijmans), Interior of a Gothic Church (undated, Rotterdam, Boijmans), Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (1656, Rotterdam, Boijmans), The Choir of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam with the Tomb of Admiral de Ruyter (1683, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (1659, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), and Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude and Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (1659, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

25 For a discussion of Saenredam’s means of controlling the viewer’s experience through perspective, see Brusati, “Reforming Idols and Viewing History,” in The Idol in the Age of Art, passim.

26 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1930), 105.

27 Calvin, Institutes, 3.20.30.

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28 Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, “Introduction: the Dimensions of Sacred Space in Reformation Europe,” in Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5.

29 Ibid., 6.

30 For a discussion of “egalitarian space” in sixteenth-century Genevan churches, see Christian Grosse, “Places of Sanctification: The Liturgical Sacrality of Genevan Reformed Churches, 1535-1566,” in Sacred Space, 75-76.

31 Andrew Spicer, “‘What kinde of house a kirk is’: Conventicles, Consecrations and the Concept of Sacred Space in Post-Reformation Scotland,” in Sacred Space, 89.

32 Grosse, 64-65.

33 Quoted in Grosse, 65.

34 Heinrich Bullinger, The Decades of Heinrich Bullinger, ed. T. Harding (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1849-1852), 4, 500; Quoted in Spicer, “‘What kind of house a kirke is,’” 89.

35 Grosse, 80.

36 The question of which artist may have influenced the other, and to what extent, has been the subject of scholarly debate. Walter Liedtke advocates Houckgeest as innovator. Vermeer and the Delft School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 102-113. In “Gerard Houckgeest and Emanuel de Witte: Architectural Painting in Delft around 1650,” Simiolus 8 (1975-1976), Arthur Wheelock characterizes De Witte as a young and innovative artist and Houckgeest, nearly twenty years De Witte’s senior, as one too set in his ways to come up with something new on his own (170- 178, 182-184). However, art historians have not considered the possibility that instead of one artist leading the other, the two enjoyed a competitive relationship similar to that of Rembrandt and Jan Lievens in Leiden, which may have occasioned a discursive development of the “Delft style” in tandem.

37 For a description of the pinhole technique and its application by artists including De Witte, see Jorgen Wadum, “Vermeer in Perspective,” in Johannes Vermeer (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1995), 68. I have observed pinholes in De Witte’s Rijksmuseum and Boijmans paintings with the assistance of Laurent Sozzani and Jeroen Giltaij.

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38 Jeroen Giltaij, “Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century,” in Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1991), 14. Although De Witte’s only pupil Hendrick van Streeck (1659-1720) specialized in church interiors, his small oeuvre, produced in the mid-1680s and 1690s, almost all post-date De Witte’s extant works. Jan van der Heyden, whose diverse oeuvre included exterior views of churches, also resided in Amsterdam, but he did not paint church interiors.

39 Ibid., 14.

40 Liedtke, Delft School, 436.

41 The inclusion of the trompe l’oeil curtain hanging from a curtain rod that casts a fictive shadow on each painting is significant in light of the possibility that Houckgeest and De Witte competed with each other. The illusionistic curtain demonstrates the artists’ virtuosity in their creation of a painting-within-a-painting that seduces the viewer into mistaking the painted curtain for physical drapery. The trompe l’oeil device makes it first appearance in a story from classical antiquity related by Pliny: “In a contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasios, Zeuxis produced so successful a representation of grapes that birds flew up to the stage-building where it was hung. Then Parrhasios produced such a successful eye-deceiving picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, puffed up with pride at the judgment of the birds, asked that the curtain be drawn aside and the picture revealed. When he realized his mistakes, he conceded the prize with an unaffected modesty, saying that whereas he had deceived birds, Parrhasios had fooled him, an artist” (Pliny, Natural History, XXV, 65). As Parrhasios emulated Zeuxis in his practice of artistic deception, and Pliny specifies that the two artists, clearly in conversation, produced their trompe l’oeil paintings as part of a contest, this story demonstrates the efficacy of friendly rivalry in improving the art of painting. Perhaps De Witte and Houckgeest implicitly refer to the classical competition in their incorporation of faux curtains into their church interior paintings. Their choice to depict similar scenes within a year of each other certainly supports the idea that these two works, in particular, were executed as a comparative demonstration of their skills.

42 Mariët Westermann, Rembrandt (New York: Phaidon, 2000), 184-185; Sergiusz Michalski, “Rembrandt and the Church Interiors of the Delft School,” Artibus et Historiae 23, no. 46 (2002), 186-187.

43 Michalski, 191.

164

44 Accordingly, De Witte arranges the piers so that the central one forms the foreground point of the oblique perspective, with the pier at the right and the compound pier at the left establishing distance points. However, the linear perspective in De Witte’s painting is inconsistent. The arch that connects the center and right piers suggests that the latter is located deeper in space, but the distance between the two appears to diminish toward the bases of the piers, where the support on the right meets the ground just behind the baptismal enclosure; the orthogonals created by the intersection of the low walls reveal that the corner protrudes further into the foreground than the central pier.

45 For instance, the little boy in the foreground of De Witte’s painting (fig. 44), his hands clasped in a pious gesture, is bathed in sunlight, which accentuates the yellow of his clothing and backlights his hair in a manner that looks forward to De Hooch’s similar treatment of sunlight casting a glow on the hair of the child in his The Bedroom (1658-60, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

46 Fabritius may have been living in Delft as early as 1650, but did not register in the guild until 1652. Liedtke, Delft School, 247.

47 Liedtke, Delft School, 251.

48 Jakob Rosenberg, “Rembrandt’s Technical Means and Their Stylistic Significance,” Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, 8 (1940), 199.

49 Chris Atkins uses this term to describe the similarly rough handling of Frans Hals’ brushwork in The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity (Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 18.

50 Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Manner: Technique in the Service of Illusionism,” in Rembrandt: the Master and his Workshop (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 16.

51 For a recent examination of early modern self-awareness in formulation of a “rough” style of painting, see Atkins, The Signature Style of Frans Hals, passim.

52 Van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997), 165.

53 Karel Van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck (Haarlem 1604), trans. Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk 1994) fol. 176 verso, 177; Van Mander, Den Grondt der edel vry schilderconst (Haarlem 1604), trans. Hessel Miedema (Utrecht 1973), Cap. XII, line 23.

165

54 See Atkins, 17-18, who suggests that Hals intentionally adopts a style with prestigious connotations derived from renowned practitioners of the rough manner. For a comparison of Rembrandt and Titian, see Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Manner,” 16-22. Also Van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, 164-169.

55 “Als ik myn geest uitspanninge wil geven, dan is het niet eer die ik zoek, maar vryheid.” Houbraken, Groote Schouburgh I: 273.

56 For a discussion of sprezzatura, see Van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, 161-162.

57 Rosenberg, 199.

58See, for example, Steven Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Michael Zell, Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Shelley Perlove and Larry Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith: church and temple in the Dutch golden age (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).

59 Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst; anders de zichtbaere werelt (Rotterdam, 1678), 116. Quoted in Thijs Weststeijn, The Visible World: Samuel Van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 137.

60 Weststeijn, 137-139.

61 Weststeijn, 149-152.

62 Van Hoogstraten, 178. Quoted in Weststeijn, 142.

166 Chapter 5

THE ART OF PREACHING

Emanuel de Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Service (fig. 58, 1678, Amsterdam, Kremer Collection) depicts a nave full of the Reformed faithful who have gathered to hear the preacher’s sermon. The congregation spreads out in a sea of sober black emanating from the pulpit, where the preacher, or dominee, reinforces the message of his sermon through the extension of his left arm (fig. 61). Although De Witte locates the preacher in the background of the Kremer Oude Kerk, several visual elements draw attention to him. His black cloak contrasts with the brown wood of the pulpit, and his placement in the pulpit elevates him above the surrounding crowd. The octagonal soundboard over the preacher’s head frames his figure and magnifies his “voice.” Additionally, he utilizes body language to help him disseminate God’s Word to the congregation. This chapter considers the preacher’s gesture as rhetoric, a form of communication that eloquently employs language as means of persuasion. It is my contention that the painted preacher’s manual rhetoric evokes the oral component of an actual sermon. By understanding gesture as a universally accessible mode of speech that conveys the sonority of the Reformed sermon,1 we may begin to establish the role of painted “sound” in developing a Calvinist aesthetic. The preachers in De Witte’s paintings are often underappreciated by scholars, perhaps due to their recurring relegation to the background. Their

167 small size and seeming insignificance could be interpreted as De Witte’s questioning of the dominee’s authority. It bears repeating that, according to Houbraken, De Witte approached Biblical material (“bybelstof”) with skepticism, perhaps precipitated in equal parts by his argumentative nature and a Diogenes-inspired attitude toward organized religion.2 It is possible that De Witte intends, quite literally, to bring the preacher down to size. Conceivably, De Witte’s treatment of the preacher is meant to suggest to contemporary viewers that they temper their confessional commitment and unquestioning adherence to the preacher’s sermon with a greater openness to interfaith (or even extra-faith) examination of truth. Viewed in a more positive light, the preacher in De Witte’s works may be understood as a humble purveyor of the Word. His typically diminutive size, as in De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk (figs. 58, 61), suggests a distinctly Calvinist understanding of the preacher as a conduit of an entity whose omnipotence exceeds the bounds of human comprehension: the preacher is the leader of the congregation, but remains a servant of God’s will.3 The smallness of De Witte’s preacher distinguishes his human authority from both papal infallibility and priestly privilege. In accordance with the Protestant objection to the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and the supremacy of the pope, De Witte perhaps intends the minuteness of the dominee to designate him as teacher rather than tyrant. Moreover, it is possible to determine the painted preacher’s authority not by his size in the composition, but by his role in “sounding” the sermon. The preacher persuades through the power of his words; De Witte

168 demonstrates this by foregrounding the community of listeners and evoking the distinctive soundscape of the Calvinist church. The preacher’s emphatic gesture, which is so pronounced that it reaches both those on the outskirts of the preekkerk and the viewer, suggests that his voice carries through the space in a like manner. In this sense, his small size is irrelevant; what matters is that he is “heard.”4 This chapter explores how De Witte’s painted preachers speak the sermon to the faithful. De Witte’s conception of the Calvinist community is defined by the reciprocal roles of the preacher and his congregation: the preacher translates God’s Word to the Reformed community, which critically appraises the preacher’s interpretation of the Word. De Witte implies this interaction between divinely ordained orator and pious listener, a fundamental component of the Calvinist service, through the visual representation of sonorous experience—that is, the sight of sound. Paintings provide visual cues to the viewer that indicate how they “sound.” As an example, let us compare De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk to Saenredam’s North Transept of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft (fig. 95, Turin, Galleria Sabauda). Whereas De Witte’s painting teems with instruments of sound—the preacher, the congregants, the dogs, and the organ— Saenredam’s painting depicts relatively few. In the latter, only a dozen or so congregants gather around the base of the pulpit. That the preacher in each painting is the primary source of sound is indicated in part through the gesture of his right hand, which extends out and over the audience. The broad expanse of space created in De Witte’s painting by the many windows and the soaring

169 pointed arches, which extend beyond the composition on each side, suggests the building’s acoustics and sound-filled environment, reiterated by the soundboard and the monumental organ. On the other hand, the space in Saenredam’s work is comparatively small: a shadowed barrel vault limits its height, and piers frame the sides of the composition. The closeness of walls and ceiling in Saenredam’s painting implies that the “sound” uttered by the preacher is contained. Saenredam’s preacher speaks without the aid of a soundboard; we may surmise by the pose of the standing man at the left, who leans forward as though straining to hear, that the dominee orates in low tones appropriate for an intimate audience. From these signs, it is plausible to conclude that Saenredam’s painting “sounds” quiet; De Witte’s work, however, “sounds” loud. The noise of the service suggested in De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk reflects the liveliness of the well- attended sermon, and signifies the communal and spiritual activities of the Reformed faithful. The auditory aesthetic expressed in De Witte’s sermon paintings, which is both complementary to and facilitated by visuality, recreates a crucial aspect of Calvinist worship. The pealing of church bells, the piping of the organ, the psalm-melodies of the congregants, and the voice of the preacher constituted the contemporary Reformed service. Perhaps the most important sound was that of the dominee delivering the Word to the faith community in the vernacular, which reflects the Calvinist ideal of clear communication to a wide audience.5

170 We may contrast the accessibility of the spoken Word as the fulcrum of Reformed practice with the Catholic Latin Mass, which was understood only by a select few. The shift from Catholic to Calvinist worship during the Alteratie precipitated a change in the character of sound that pervaded public sacred spaces, where transmission of the widely intelligible Word distinguished Reformed worship as a fundamentally new kind of spiritual access to God. The first section of this chapter compares De Witte’s anonymous preachers to contemporary preacher portraits that act as “speaking likenesses” of the orators depicted. We may posit a correlation between De Witte’s painted “portraits” of preachers who actively deliver the Word and depictions of specific preachers whose countenances are associated, in accompanying elegies, with their estimable character and eloquence. I next consider the spoken content of the typical Dutch sermon. As the homily was the primary element of the seventeenth-century soundscape during worship, our understanding of the Calvinist aural aesthetic must take into account the words that filled the spaces depicted by De Witte, as well as the sounds created by the preacher’s delivery of these words.

The paired importance of elocution and gesture in crafting an effective sermon may be understood in the context of the Dutch rhetorical tradition, which developed during the course of the seventeenth-century along with the rising education of ministers. Learned preachers drew on the classical promotion of manual rhetoric to enliven their delivery of the Word and heighten the persuasiveness of their sermons. The theatricality of preaching

171 that resulted may be compared to the affectiveness of Dutch art, which was intended to instruct, guide, and move the viewer through convincing naturalism. De Witte’s paintings, in particular, take on the quality of “living images” that stress the communicative power of the preacher through the universal language of gesture. The chapter closes with a consideration of contemporary perceptions of preachers, which establishes the willingness of congregants to hear and heed the leader of their worship community.

Speaking Likenesses and Eloquent Orators The gesticulating preachers in De Witte’s church interior paintings demonstrate surprising affinities with contemporary portrait prints of preachers, which are often accompanied by laudatory verses extolling their moral virtues and eloquence. The visual and the verbal intertwine in these portraits to emphasize likeness, character, and penchant for preaching. The seventeenth-century trope of the “speaking likeness” usually applies to portraits in which lifelike, momentary qualities, such as lips parted as though in the act of speaking, create a sense of the figure’s real presence. The anonymous preachers in De Witte’s paintings may also be considered, in a sense, “speaking likenesses,” as their gestures emphasize and elucidate the Word. Perhaps the most extensively studied portrait print, which gained attention from Jan Emmens in 1957, is Rembrandt’s Cornelis Claesz Anslo (fig. 97, 1641, London, British Museum). The Mennonite lay leader Anslo is depicted seated at his desk, head turned to the side, his left hand clasping a book and his right gesturing toward the open book in front of him. His eyes

172 seem to focus intently on something outside of the composition. The figure’s gaze and pose contribute to the sense of the momentary; it appears that Anslo has been interrupted from his studies by an outside party, or perhaps that he is explaining a scriptural passage to an unseen audience. This seeming transience lends a sense of life to Anslo, and creates the impression that he is depicted in the act of speaking—a skill that is paramount to his vocation. As Emmens and Stephanie Dickey have noted,6 in capturing a visual likeness of Anslo, Rembrandt focuses on painting Anslo’s “voice,” which is the distinguishing feature of his office. As with other contemporary preacher portrait prints, an inscription was later appended to the image. The poem by Amsterdam writer and historian Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) reads, “Ay, Rembrandt, paint Cornelis’ voice. / The visible is the least of him. / The invisible can be known only through the ears / He who wants to see Anslo must hear him.”7 Although Emmens interprets this verse as an attack on Rembrandt’s artistic talents and a challenge to capture voice in paint,8 Dickey has more convincingly proposed that Vondel intended not to devalue Rembrandt’s product, but to praise the sitter’s gift of eloquence.9 The poem and the portrait indicate contemporary

Dutch appreciation for speaking the Word. Rembrandt’s portrayal of Anslo, additionally, suggests that artists of the period actively sought ways to make their subjects “speak.” It is notable that Anslo adopts the posture of Cesare Ripa’s personification of Eloquence by gesturing with his left hand, which enhances the subject’s sense of movement and subtly indicates his oratorical skills.10 A 1646 elegy dedicated to Anslo, written by Caspar Barlaeus, allows

173 us to draw a further conclusion: the contemporary Dutch, or at least the elite, understood art’s capacity to “speak” to the viewer. Barlaeus extols of Anslo, “His piety manifests itself so that if perchance he in old age should cease to speak, his likeness could speak to the people.” It is clear, as well, that Protestants valued artful speech because it facilitated the preacher’s transmission of scripture—a point reinforced in Rembrandt’s print, where Anslo places his right hand on a book (most likely a Bible) and raises his left in a rhetorical gesture. Although Anslo was a Mennonite, emphasis on the preacher as orator is also apparent in the numerous portrait prints of Calvinist ministers. Of the 104 preachers who served the Reformed Church in Amsterdam between the establishment of Calvinism in the Netherlands and 1692, the year of De Witte’s death, Amsterdam’s Kerkelyk Register den Predikanten (Ecclesiastical Index of Preachers)11 specifies that 53 were memorialized in portrait prints (zyn afbeelding haat in prent uit), which suggests the popularity of preserving the likeness, legacy and language of these community leaders.12 That such prints were displayed on the walls of domestic interiors throughout the Netherlands is evident in Pieter van den Bos’s Portrait of a Young Woman (fig.

127, 1643, Saint Petersburg, Museum of Fine Arts), as well as Quiringh van Brekelenkam’s Old Woman Combing a Child’s Hair (fig. 128, 1648, Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal).13 Although the print depicted in Van den Bos’s painting does not contain any visible text, it is common for a laudatory poem to be inscribed below the printed portrait, as is the case with Rembrandt’s portrait of Anslo. We also see this in the print of the Leiden

174 dominee Ludovicus de Dieu (1590-1642) that hangs above the chair at the left of Van Brekelenkam’s composition; the text, however, is not legible.14 An example of a Reformed preacher’s posthumous glorification in print via image and text is Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jan Cornelis Sylvius (fig. 98), created eight years after the preacher’s death. In his 1646 etching, Rembrandt captures a “speaking likeness” of Sylvius, preacher at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam from 1621-1638.15 As if in the grip of a sermon, Sylvius appears to extend the gesture of his right hand, which casts a shadow on the fictive frame, beyond the oval boundary of the frame and into the viewer’s space. A much later portrait of Leiden preacher David Knibbe (fig. 152, 1696, Utrecht, Catharijneconvent), author of the homiletics manual Manuductio,16 depicts Knibbe in a pose similar to that of Sylvius, with his right hand also overlapping the ovular frame, palm facing upward in an expressive motion. Dickey interprets such portraits of preachers, who appear to speak through the aid of gesture, as countering “the insurmountable obstacles of visual silence”17 inherent to the depicted image. According to seventeenth-century English physician John Bulwer (1606-1656), an early proponent of education for the deaf, the extended and upturned palm, “the fingers unfolding themselves in the motion,”18 connotes gentle persuasion. This established rhetorical device represents the manual vocabulary of the preacher.19 Sylvius enjoyed a lasting relationship with the Dutch Reformed church. He was the first Reformed preacher to ascend the pulpit in Sloten, and thereafter sustained a long tenure in Amsterdam, where he preached “in alle de

175 Kerken” from 1621 until his death in 1638.20 In the inscription that accompanies Sylvius’s image, Caspar Barlaeus extols:

His eloquence taught men to honor Christ And showed them the true way to heaven. Such was Sylvius’s face, we have heard him Speak to the citizens of Amsterdam with these lips. With these lips he gave precepts to the Frisians; piety And religion have remained long secure because he severely protected them. His age, that is to be honored for its virtues, is eminent, And in his old age he continued to instruct his fellow men. A lover of sincere simplicity, he despised false appearance Nor did he seek to please good men by mere appearances. He put it this way: Jesus could better be taught Through leading a better life than by thundering speech. O Amsterdam, remember the man now deceased who built the city With his righteousness and piled it on God Himself.21 Barlaeus’s elegy characterizes Sylvius as the ideal preacher; he was both learned and simple, and led his congregation through word and deed. The image of Sylvius above the text accords with this characterization; Rembrandt employs the rhetorical gesture described by Bulwer as “the gentle and well- ordered hand, thrown forth by a moderate projection…the shoulders a little slackened,”22 which demonstrates Sylvius’s “sincere simplicity” and suggests a degree of humility valued in the office of God’s servant.

Barlaeus also indicates that Sylvius’s sermons “taught men to honor Christ;” founded on scripture and concerned with matters of faith, they “showed them the true way to heaven,” instead of entering into the social and political disputes than preoccupied some of Sylvius’s contemporaries. Significantly, Barlaeus stresses the power of Sylvius’s tongue by specifically citing his eloquence and asserting his authority to preach the Word. Indeed,

176 Barlaeus’s poem activates the image of Sylvius by repeating the phrase “with these lips,” which we may understand as the slightly parted lips in the portrait. It is also possible to deduce from the elegy a sense of Sylvius’s style of preaching; Barlaeus takes care to emphasize that Sylvius influenced his congregation by acting as a moral exemplar who “severely protected” the faith rather than by “thundering speech.” In light of the tendency of a few outspoken preachers to utilize the pulpit as a platform for engendering, in the words of historian and poet Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (1581-1647), “tempeesten ende onwederen” (“tempests and thunder”),23 we may interpret “thundering speech” as not merely passionate preaching, but as rabble-rousing rhetoric that was anathema to Sylvius. Perhaps in referencing “thundering speech,” Barlaeus intends a nod to the controversial and pugnacious Reformed preacher Adriaan Smout (1580- 1646), whose time in Amsterdam coincided with that of Sylvius, and who had just passed away in Rotterdam two years before the creation of Rembrandt’s print. Smout persistently preached against secular authority and insistently imposed his ultra-Orthodox views on civic affairs.24 Particularly if the two shared Amsterdam’s most prominent pulpits (as seems likely, since Smout’s biography in the Kerkelyk Register does not associate him with a particular church, and the influence Smout exerted suggests he preached from an especially public platform), Sylvius’s virtues may have been magnified by contrast with Smout’s vitriol.25 The exalted language employed by Barlaeus is a convention in elegies that accompany posthumous preacher portraits. It is conceivable to discern in

177 this writing the rhetoric that appealed to a contemporary Dutch audience, and perhaps characterized sermons delivered by popular preachers. For example, the poem inscribed on a portrait print of Laurentius Homma (1627-1681), preacher at Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk from 1661 until his death, asserts, “miracles pour from his God-devoted throat,” which suggests the transforming power of Homma’s sermons. A portrait print (fig. 151, 1682-1691, Utrecht, Catharijneconvent) by Jonas Suyderhof of the Amsterdam preacher Eleazar Swalmius (1582-1652), made after a painted portrait by Rembrandt, includes the following inscription:

Thus Swalmius wears a crown of grey hair, Born from the cares of fifty minus four years, During which he stood as skillful steersman at the church’s helm While he led the people on with a bright light In virtue and knowledge and agreeable speeches And waits until the Lord discharges him from his watch.26

The poet terms Swalmius’s sermons “agreeable,” which suggests they pleased his congregation. This descriptor also implies that Swalmius, like Sylvius, shaped the lives of his community primarily through positive language rather than damning words. Whereas Sylvius is characterized as God’s architect who builds the Church, Swalmius is a sea captain who adeptly steers the Church and its people in the course of righteousness.27 Both are shepherd-types who inspirationally guide their flocks. Preacher portraits and their inscriptions, which celebrate Dutch dominees for their leadership, education, and virtue, find their counterpart in De Witte’s paintings, which depict the preacher spreading the Word to the congregation. The distance of the preacher from the foreground of most of De

178 Witte’s sermon paintings and the preacher’s consequent lack of discerning facial features mean that it is problematic to consider these representations “portraits” in the sense of conveying a likeness in the manner of a portrait print. Still, the painted preachers in De Witte’s church interiors can be considered, in a way, speaking likenesses. In the case of the De Witte’s anonymous preachers, gestures become stand-ins for the spoken Word. For example, the preacher in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon (figs. 22 and 24, c. 1660, London, National Gallery) appears to project his left arm forcefully beyond the pulpit, which conveys the impression that he is in the throes of delivering an impassioned speech. The emphatic nature of this movement may be contrasted with that of the dominee in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Service (figs. 28-29, 1661, Amsterdam Museum), as the latter’s arm is bent at the elbow, which suggests a relatively subdued delivery. Through gesture, the painted preacher overcomes the obstacle of silence and communicates his message to the congregation. It is worth noting here that gesture is a traditionally accepted means of signaling communication with God: clasped hands and bowed head indicate prayer, or “speaking” through silence.

Likewise, God “listens to” or “hears” prayers, and believers may “hear” God.28 In the context of worship, lack of sound, paired with gesture, connotes a spiritual sense of auditory activity. It is plausible that De Witte had specific preachers in mind when he created these works, and likely that a contemporary audience would have identified the painted preacher in the pulpit with the corresponding preacher

179 who held that office at the time. In light of evidence that both preacher portraits and painted church interiors were displayed in Dutch homes, it is even possible that these works were, in some cases, hung alongside each other in commemoration of the preacher depicted in the images. De Witte’s sermon paintings fill a lacuna in the portrait of the preacher we have explored thus far in this chapter. Unlike the portrait prints and their texts, which tell the audience about the preacher, De Witte’s depictions of the Calvinist service show the preacher in action. De Witte may have had a particular interest in depicting Amsterdam’s preachers. His arrival in Amsterdam around 1651 coincided with an important event in the history of Amsterdam’s Reformed Church: the dual confirmation of preachers Petrus Proëlius (1616-1661) and Abrahamus Roehoff (1618-1682) on 7 May 1651 as designated dominees of the Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk, respectively.29 That the Kerkelyk Register den Predikanten,30 which lists all the Calvinist dominees (both permanent and visiting) who preached in Amsterdam’s churches, troubles to indicate not only their joint confirmation date, but also the specific churches they would serve, is significant. Few of the brief, spare biographies in the Kerkelyk Register specify a preacher’s assignment to any particular church, perhaps because they either held multiple positions throughout Amsterdam, or because they were appointed to smaller, less prominent churches.31 Even if De Witte’s move to Amsterdam was not directly precipitated by this event,32 he was in a unique position, as the only church interior painter in Amsterdam, to depict both preachers in their appointed pulpits.

180 The portrayal of specific preachers in church interior paintings was likely not unprecedented. Interior of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft (figs. 92 and 93, 1649, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) is one of only three paintings by Pieter Saenredam that depict the Calvinist service.33 Saenredam renders the Odulphuskerk in his hometown of Assendelft based on a drawing of 31 July 1634 (Amsterdam Museum), created when Saenredam returned to his birthplace and spent a summer making sketches of the church. The preacher in Saenredam’s composition extends his right arm, palm upward, in a manner of supplication that anticipates the gesture employed by Rembrandt in the portrait print of Sylvius. The intimacy of the preacher’s gesture in Saenredam’s painting is apropos to the small audience that he “gently persuades,” and lends credence to the idea proposed by Schwartz and Bok that Saenredam depicts his relative Johannes Junius (1587-1635), preacher in Assendelft until 1631.34 The painting certainly betrays a personal element in Saenredam’s foreground inclusion of his father Jan Saenredam’s gravestone.35 The painting acts as a memorial not only to Saenredam’s father, but also to the Lords of Assendelft buried in the prominent tomb, which supports the interpretation of the preacher as Junius, despite the fact that he had quit this post and moved to

‘s-Hertogenbosch before Saenredam made his preparatory composition, and died there of the plague in 1635. Moreover, Saenredam’s propensity for immortalizing the Church in his paintings suggests that he may have approached his depiction of the preacher in a similar fashion, particularly as this church was so inextricably linked with Saenredam’s family.

181 In light of this information, it is worth noting that at least four of De Witte’s sermon paintings of Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk date from 1660-1661: two versions located in London’s National Gallery (figs. 18 and 22), the Los Angeles Oude Kerk (fig. 15), and the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (fig. 28). All of these are fairly accurate renditions of the extant church (with the exception of De Witte’s choice to move the transept organ from the north to the south side of the nave in fig. 18). Their execution approximately coincides with the death of the Oude Kerk’s preacher Petrus Proëlius in August of 1661. It is plausible that De Witte was commissioned to paint one or more of these renditions of the Oude Kerk’s service in remembrance of Proëlius. Perhaps such a painting even hung in someone’s home beside the posthumous portrait print of Proëlius (fig. 139, 1661, Amsterdam City Archives). Considering the connection between portrait prints and preacher popularity, the very existence of the print of Proëlius, created by Jan de Visscher (1633-c.1692) after a (no longer extant) painted portrait by Jan van Noordt (1623-1681),36 suggests his important role as minister of Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, as well as the high regard for his preaching. The accompanying poem by Jacobus Heiblocq (1623-1690), inscribed in both Latin and Dutch, conveys a keen sense of grief experienced by both the Amsterdam faith community and by Heiblocq, rector of the Latin school in Amsterdam who apparently knew Proëlius personally:

It’s long enough in the grave, and hidden behind the cloth, That has hid his face now for around a year, Why has so many an eye shed bitter tears, He has exchanged the mortal for the eternal, The BREAKING SUN that gave to the Y a bright star,

182 For which the Guardian of Heaven so favorably created him. Among your Amsterdammers, you have earned this lavish portrait; So you also, my faithful bosom friend, live on after dying.37 Significantly, like the elegy that accompanies the print of Sylvius, this poem emphasizes Proëlius’s situation within and contribution to the faith community of Amsterdam; the inscription is tailored to the intended local audience for the portrait, who must have been eager to acquire and display this memorial to their spiritual leader. Comparison of the portrait print of Proëlius to the preacher in De Witte’s Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (figs. 28 and 29) suggests that they could have functioned together in a complementary fashion. The preacher in De Witte’s painting extends his hand outward from his body in addressing the congregation; the print of Proëlius reverses this gesture by turning his hand toward himself, indicating a focus on the man’s faith and inner character rather than his profession.38 Also, whereas De Witte’s technique imbues his painting with a temporal quality, the print emphasizes permanence: the column behind Proëlius, which conveys a sense of stability and signifies Proëlius’s ministerial role as a “pillar of the church,”39 reinforces the message of the inscription, which asserts that Proëlius “has exchanged the mortal for the eternal.” Whereas De Witte depicts the preacher acting in his transient human post, the print portrays Proëlius immortalized for posterity, so that both his image and his soul “live on after dying.” Such correlation between preacher portraits and depictions of the Reformed service may be found in Joos van Laren’s Twee-en-vijftigh predicatien, posthumously published by Van Laren’s son Abraham in 1670, eighteen years after his father’s death. The title page (fig. 143) represents a

183 preacher animatedly gesticulating in the pulpit. The portrait print of Joos van Laren that immediately follows the book’s “Dedication” reveals strong similarities in facial features to the preacher in the pulpit: angular face, large forehead, and pointed beard (fig. 144). Considering the context within which the title page was published, it is almost certain that the preacher who looms over his congregants is none other than Van Laren. Variations on the portrait print of Joos van Laren were also printed and disseminated separately to reach a more extensive audience. One version (fig. 145) is accompanied by a Latin inscription by Joannes Schildius that also appears on the facing page in Twee-in-viftigh predicatien:

When Larenus, that enemy of error and the darkness of the age, Abandoned the earth that so deserved him, A host of learned goddesses gave way to lamentations, And each was assiduous in her complaints. The muses of Latium wept over the loss of that great hero, And those of Athens could not restrain their tears. Nor was it enough for the nymphs of Greece and Italy to mourn. The maids of Jerusalem were also unable to restrain their tears. ‘Weep,’ they said, ‘maids of Zion. He was an interpreter of heaven, a honeyed tongue.’ When Integrity saw this, she said, ‘Include me, me I pray, in your lamentations. Larenus was unadulterated integrity!’40

Like the elegies discussed earlier in this section, this exalted description of Van

Laren’s capabilities must be understood in terms of the hyperbolic language conventionally employed in these posthumous poems. However, that does not mean that such accolades do not contain an element of truth. Van Laren is hailed as “an interpreter of heaven, a honeyed tongue,” which draws attention to both his capacity for transmitting God’s Word and to his eloquence. It is also significant that Van Laren, the “enemy of error” and personification of

184 “unadulterated integrity,” is distinguished as a moral exemplar for his community. The viewing experience of Twee-en-vijftigh predicatien, which gives its audience a framework for interpreting the sermons contained within the text by preceding them with an image of Van Laren in the act of giving a sermon, a conventional portrait print of Van Laren, and an elegy to his memory, suggests that visual and verbal modes of reimagining the service were likely not understood autonomously. Contemporary readers of Joos van Laren’s book of sermons might have referred to the title page while reading the sermons collected within the book, and perhaps even imagined themselves in the context of the service led by the preacher. Both the publication of Van Laren’s sermons in text and the accompanying print of Van Laren in the pulpit demonstrate the contemporary desire to preserve the otherwise transient experience of the service; as English minister Samuel Ward (1577-1640) asserts in his The Happiness of Practice (1621), sermons are “as showers of rain that water for the instant,” whereas “books are as snow that lies longer on the earth.”41 Ward’s comparison of books to snow may be extended to De Witte’s paintings of the Calvinist service, which perhaps functioned as visual reminders of lessons learned at church or even as attempts to preserve the pictorial memory associated with specific sermons, just as published or printed sermons captured their verbal content. It is significant that a number of sermons were later published in books or pamphlets; additionally, preachers utilized the printing press as a means of circulating polemical texts or

185 scriptural exegesis that extended their influence beyond the pulpit.42 We may imagine that such literature was frequently read aloud, particularly since many are specifically addressed to the lay public.43 De Witte’s sermon paintings, along with preacher portraits, perhaps helped to recreate the experience of worship within the home-as-kleyne kerck, where family prayer, Bible study, and discussion of spoken or published sermons and related texts reinforced the auditory culture of the Reformed Church.

The Sound of Sermons Thus far in this chapter I have addressed visual representations of the Dutch Reformed preacher and elegies that testify to the legacy of influential seventeenth-century dominees. In this section, I take up the preacher’s message: that is, what it meant to preach the Word in the Dutch Republic. We may reconstruct the resonance of the seventeenth-century spoken sermon by investigating the implied sounds of contemporary published sermons, most of which were originally intended to be delivered from the pulpit.44 Understanding the content and style of typical Reformed sermons delivered in the Dutch Republic helps today’s viewer to imagine the soundscape of the Calvinist church during seventeenth-century worship. The new layout of recently converted Calvinist churches promoted the Protestant belief in the primacy of scripture conveyed by the preacher, who was designated as God’s divinely inspired deliverer of the Word to the congregation. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin emphasizes the authority invested in the preacher as the disseminator of the Word:

186 Here, then, is the sovereign power with which the pastors of the church…ought to be endowed. That is that they may dare boldly to do all things by God’s Word; may compel all worldly power, glory, wisdom and exaltation to yield to and obey his majesty; supported by his power, may command all from the highest even to the least; may build up Christ’s household and cast down Satan’s; may feed the sheep and drive away the wolves; may instruct and exhort the teachable; may accuse, rebuke, and subdue the rebellious and stubborn; may bind and loose; finally, if need be, may launch thunderbolts and lightnings; but do all things in God’s Word.45

The focal point of the Catholic service had been the high altar, located behind the choir screen, which limited lay access to the Mass. In contrast, Reformed worship shifted emphasis to the pulpit in the preekkerk with permanent and temporary seating situated around it. The shared access to the Word implied in this arrangement tied the identity of the congregation to the preacher in the pulpit, the authority figure positioned in an elevated and central location to emphasize his fundamental role in delivering the sermon. The rearrangement of the church also facilitated the auditory experience of worship, as it allowed greater numbers of people to engage with the preacher’s message. Popular preachers regularly drew large crowds to their sermons, which were held two or three times on Sundays as well as during the week.46 The riveting sermons of Dordrecht preacher Jacobus Borstius (1612-1680), for example, enticed congregants to wait outside the church doors for hours to secure a seat for the service.47 The high yields of the collection from his sermons also indicate the influence of his words.48 Pamphlets—printed material intended to persuade the reader by virtue of a compelling argument, termed blauwe boekjes (little blue books) in seventeenth-century Dutch literature—affirm the impact of the well-crafted sermon.49 According to a pamphlet from 1650, “One sermon from the pulpit can do more damage than

187 one hundred little blue books,”50 a statement that indicates the sway of the disseminated spoken word over that of the printed word. The preacher’s prominent position gave him the platform to exert tremendous moral authority over the populace; we may assume that most preachers had a positive effect on their communities, and perhaps even represented the voiceless majority at the expense of the regents, who consequently reviled particularly candid dominees. Thus we may understand the opposition of the kerkeraad and the regent class to Amsterdam preacher Adriaan Smout, outspoken colleague of Sylvius. Smout stood up for the oppressed, evidenced in his sermons against the abuses of the Dutch East India Company, which had failed to provide for the needs of widows and orphans of sailors lost at sea.51 Shortly after Smout’s denunciation of the Company, its representatives issued an apology to those involved, revealing the influence a preacher was able to wield from the pulpit.52 It is important to emphasize the diversity of Reformed sermons, both in terms of style and substance.53 Whereas a few notorious preachers such as Smout utilized the pulpit to pronounce their opinions on contemporary political or cultural issues, most relied on scripture as the touchstone for spreading the tenets of the Reformed faith.54 For example, we may discern between the distinctly transient and localized relevance of the Predicatie van ‘t Lang-Hayr (“Sermon on the Long Hair”) delivered in 1644 by Borstius, a lengthy harangue against the court-inspired vanity of liefdelokken (lovelocks) popular among young men during the early seventeenth-century,55 and the final sermon delivered by Joos van Laren before his death in 1653, published as part of his

188 Twee-en-vijftigh predicatien, which addresses the enduring message of Christian faith.56 In both of these cases, the preachers base their sermons on scripture: Borstius founds his opposition to courtly affect on I Corinthians 11:14, which asserts the “degrading” nature of long hair worn by men; Van Laren begins his sermon on faith with Matthew 14:31, an excerpt from the narrative in which Jesus summons Peter to walk on water. But whereas Borstius employs Biblical authority to condemn a modern fashion trend, essentially beginning with scripture and then orienting his focus outward to contemporary culture, Van Laren, as we shall see, keeps his attention inward, on the Biblical text. Joos van Laren delivered the final sermon of his career, “Acht-en- veertighste Predicatie,”57 in Vissingen’s Kleine Kerk on 28 September 1653. As the sermon is grounded in scripture rather than temporal concerns, it may serve as a case study for the typical seventeenth-century Reformed sermon. Although not given in the immediate context of De Witte’s Amsterdam, its message is not specifically tied to mid-seventeenth century Vlissingen, and therefore represents the type of Biblically-based sermon equally relevant to any Dutch congregation of the period.

As is typical of contemporary Dutch sermons, “Acht-en-veertighfte Predicatie” introduces the foundational scripture for the preacher’s message before the sermon begins. In this case, the sermon is based on Matthew 14:31: “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’”58 It is clear from numerous entries in Amsterdam’s Kerkelyk Register that a sermon is identified, first and foremost,

189 by the Biblical excerpt on which the preacher expounds. We may refer to the Kerkelyk Register’s biography of Amsterdam preacher Jacobus Trigland (1583-1654), who gave the 1642 concluding sermon (“affcheid-predikatie”) for the South Holland Synod in Gorinchem on I Timothy 4:15-16; Abrahamus Roehoff, preacher of the Nieuwe Kerk during De Witte’s time in Amsterdam, delivered the farewell sermon for the 1659 South Holland Synod in Hoorn on Matthew 5:14.59 In these instances, as with Joos van Laren’s sermon, the emphasis on the sermons’ scriptural basis signifies that the preachers began with the Word and shaped their message around this authoritative text. This does not mean that the preacher simply quoted scripture, but that he interpreted the text to convey a clear and persuasive message to the congregation, typically supported with numerous other Biblical excerpts. As Van Laren elucidates immediately after relating the story of Peter’s lack of faith, which causes Peter to sink in the water until Christ saves him, the message of the sermon is that even “extremely small belief will find mercy in Christ.”60 Van Laren initially illustrates this message with the example of Peter:

The Lord Christ had to let him come to grief in the water as a just penalty for his small faith. But the heart of Christ that ignites in compassion over the weaknesses of his faithful is stirred in Christ like the heart of a delicate mother is stirred if she sees her child in extreme danger. This causes the Lord Christ, not considering Peter’s mistake, not considering his small faith, to stick his hand out to Peter to deliver him from danger.61 Van Laren makes the Biblical message relevant to his audience by comparing the mercy of Christ to the love and compassion of a mother for her child—a

190 strategy he employs throughout his sermon. For example, he delivers similes repeatedly in the following passage:

A small faith is a true faith, just as a great faith, like a small child is a true man, as well as a great man; and a small drop of water is true water, just as the whole sea. A small belief is also made holy, just as a great belief; because even the smallest belief unites us with Christ …it is not the strength or greatness of the faith that makes it holy, but the truth and sincerity of faith…we are not made holy by the quantity of faith, but through Christ, who accepted a weak faith as well as a strong faith: like the weak hand that shelters food in the mouth will feed a body as well as if it were a strong hand, because the body is not fed by the strength of the hand, but by the good of the food.62 Van Laren compares true belief to the truth of a drop of water or a small child, whose existence is not measured according to size. Perhaps most effectively, Van Laren likens faith as a vehicle for receiving Christ to a hand as a means by which the body acquires food; as he perceptively points out, what matters is the nourishment of the food, not the strength of the hand that carries it to the mouth. Another approach that Van Laren uses to reiterate his message is referencing other Biblical characters and verses, beginning with figures from the Old Testament, which establishes the relevance of the Old Testament to the New. He assures his congregation, “We may not all have such a strong belief as” Jacob (Genesis 32:26) or David (Psalm 23:4 and 27:1-3);63 he extends his enumeration of the faithful to the New Testament figure of Paul, whose faith is exemplified in the Biblical text of Romans 8:38-39, which Van Laren quotes in his sermon: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the

191 love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”64 In contrast to these stalwart defenders of the faith, Van Laren points to the New Testament example of Christ’s disciples, who flee when Christ is arrested due to the weakness of their faith, and who doubt Christ until they receive proof of His holiness in His Resurrection (Acts 2:1-6). Van Laren declares of the disciples, “How outstandingly great was this ignorance and small faith! However the Lord Christ is merciful…And one cannot produce a single word or example of one who in the strict justice of God is repudiated for having small faith.”65 Having established the compassion of Christ and the validity of the small and wavering faith, provided it is earnestly sought, Van Laren emphasizes to his congregation the importance of continually striving to strengthen that belief, as “small belief will neither secure or reserve the victory and obtain the eternal redemption…it is not wisdom for someone with a small faith to be at peace, if there is a significant opportunity to be able to recover great belief.”66 In the latter section of his sermon, Van Laren stresses the importance of the journey toward the utmost faith in Christ, here through the employment of metaphors to clarify his meaning to his audience. For example, he provides the following illustration:

If two people go a mile up a high mountain, the one being tall and strong, the other short and weak: they indeed both climb up, but the one goes the whole way resolutely and comes to the top without once seriously panting after his breath: but the other resents having a quarter hour gone, begins to look pale, and must rest, then he goes a little again, then he moves not much forward, then he must again sit down, then he again stands up, sometimes he creeps on elbows and knees, and comes at long last to the top, but with incredible pain and labor.67

192 Van Laren here makes the point that faltering belief may ultimately attain the same end as steadfast devotion, but only if one perseveres and stays the course. For, Van Laren reasons, “Who would want to be weak if he were allowed to be strong? Who would want to be poor if he were allowed to be rich?...For he that has but a weak belief that will lack solace which a strong belief has: every challenge will alarm him: he will be full of angst and fear…it will be all he can do to withstand them.”68 Again in these passages, Van Laren stresses the message of his sermon by relating scripture to secular situations meant to illuminate the significance of the Word for contemporary Dutch congregants. Van Laren closes his sermon by exhorting his congregants to resist the temptation of sin and to work proactively to strengthen their faith, just as “our Lord Christ prayed for Peter’s belief that it not depart,”69 neatly bringing the sermon back to the primary scriptural verse upon which it is based, as well as supporting this example with still more scripture: “So prayed the Apostles (Luke 17:15) and the man (Mark 9:24), ‘I believe Lord, come help my unbelief.’”70 In the last words of his sermon—indeed, the concluding message of his long career in Vlissingen—Joos van Laren pronounces, “Let us take this to heart, so that we will indeed stand in faith and in no day falter…waves of temptation climb as high as the waters of Noah, fifty cubits above the highest mountain, our belief will stand above there.”71 From the example of Van Laren’s sermon, we may draw several conclusions about what it meant to preach the Word in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, and, by extension, what it meant to hear the sermon. First, preaching the Word signified reliance on scripture, not only as the basis for the

193 sermon’s message, but also as supporting evidence for the preacher’s interpretation of that particular excerpt. In Van Laren’s “Acht-en-veertighfte Predicatie,” he cites no fewer than thirty-four different chapters or verses from the Old and New Testaments; in some cases he quotes the Biblical passages, in others he paraphrases. Van Laren’s extensive citations reiterate the scriptural foundation of his sermon and help his audience to understand these individual verses and their overall thematic relevance as components of “the Word.” Furthermore, Van Laren’s reliance on scripture establishes his knowledge of the Bible and validates his authority as interpreter of God’s Word for the congregation. We may surmise from De Witte’s paintings, which frequently show figures pouring over texts during the sermon (figs. ), that it was not uncommon for worshippers to refer to Biblical passages cited by the preacher, whether to verify his claims or to ensure their understanding of the material. Second, a sermon that “preaches the Word” is most effective when the message is elucidated so that it is intelligible to a lay congregation. This is particularly important when we take into account that the initial—and primary—audience for sermons received the Word aurally. In the case of Van Laren’s final sermon, his congregation listened to his message in 1653; it was not until the sermon was published in 1670 that a select few were able to read it. One tactic Van Laren utilizes to articulate his message, discussed earlier, is his repeated employment of similes and metaphors to render Biblical texts relevant to his audience. In other words, he tailors the content of his sermon so that his congregation can easily absorb it. It is perhaps no coincidence that Van Laren selects a story in which water figures prominently, considering the

194 intimate relationship of the Dutch with water.72 Vlissingen, in particular, was an important harbor town. In this context, Van Laren’s sermon, which concludes with the survival of the faithful on dry land far above the water’s reach, must have resonated with his audience. Likely, these analogies were delivered in dramatic fashion. One gets the sense, for example, that Van Laren intended his mountain metaphor to be read aloud, as the climber’s tortured ascent would be enlivened by differentiated vocal tones, gestures, and theatrical pauses. Likewise, the comparison of the small but true faith to a small child or a weak hand lends itself to emphasis through gesture during oral delivery: we may imagine Van Laren using his fingers or hands to demonstrate the height of a child, or the motion of bringing the hand to the mouth to imitate food consumption. This makes otherwise potentially inscrutable Biblical passages accessible to those with varying degrees of literacy and familiarity with scripture. Additionally, Van Laren exercises rhetorical devices to communicate his message clearly. One recurrent tool integrated into the sermon examined above is parallel grammatical structure, which Van Laren utilizes both to emphasize his points and to add an element of artistry to his sermon. Hence, a third element to “preaching the Word,” which, as we shall see in the following section, became increasingly important in the Dutch Republic during the latter half of the seventeenth-century, is eloquence in delivery. For example, at the beginning of his sermon, Van Laren incorporates the rhetorical strategy of antithesis to state the points he intends to make in the form of two contrasting ideas: “The work of Christ’s hand to help,” and “The word of Christ’s mouth

195 to punish.”73 This skillful setting out of the key ingredients in Van Laren’s sermon serves the dual purpose of clarifying his message and demonstrating his “honeyed tongue.” Van Laren also employs parallelism in the form of anaphora, which involves repetition of a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, evident in his thrice-over reiteration of “We may not all have such a strong belief as” Jacob, David, and Abraham. Again, the structure of Van Laren’s sentences emphasizes his point for the benefit of his listeners, but also invests his words with artfulness—a skill that merited the “lamentations” of “learned goddesses” upon Van Laren’s passing. Armed with an understanding of the content and style of the Word preached from the pulpit, we may examine the expression of these sounds in De Witte’s paintings. For instance, De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk (figs. 58-59) suggests the preacher’s artful delivery in the lyrical patterns of light that dance across the triforium and play in a series of concentric arcs along the lower portion of the right foreground pier. Additionally, the springing of the vault from the pier in the left foreground may be interpreted as a sound metaphor: just as the ribs spread upward and outward from their solid foundation, the sermon (with Biblical authority as its foundation) emanates from the mouth of the preacher and permeates the church interior. The arch shape, which closely approximates that of the pulpit canopy, may be found in the background aisle windows as well as the arches on either side of the nave. Throughout the composition, the repeated arches, which are smallest behind the dominee and become sequentially larger as they approach the foreground, suggest both the resonance of the preacher’s “voice,” which

196 bounces like light off of the surrounding architecture, and the rhetorical strategy of artful repetition often employed in sermons. As “echo forms,” the arches in the painting draw attention to the Oude Kerk’s acoustics, and indicate that despite the preacher’s small size, his amplified “voice” penetrates the ears of even those on the outskirts of the preekkerk. The largest arch, in the foreground, frames the visible portion of the preekkerk, soars high above the heads of the crowd, and reinforces the power of the sermon’s sounds—and, by extension, the significance of its message. The preacher’s expansive gesture, arm extended and palm facing his congregants, calls attention to the vast soundscape of the Oude Kerk, its acoustic potential realized in his transmission of the Word to the large faith community gathered around him.

The Pedagogy of the Preacher and the Rise of the Rhetorical Tradition De Witte’s sermon paintings date from the latter half of the seventeenth-century, by which point verbal and manual rhetoric were acceptable and even desirable skills for the Reformed preacher to utilize in delivering his sermon. The Calvinist rhetorical tradition that permeated Dutch preaching culture when De Witte painted may be construed as a direct consequence of the rise in learned ministers as the century progressed. 74 Such respect for rhetoric was not always the case; early seventeenth-century critics of Dutch preachers suggested that “German Clerics”—so called because they did not know Latin and could only speak in “low German” (that is, Dutch)— employed impassioned, if uninformed, verbal and manual rhetoric to disguise their ignorance.75 Leiden professor Petrus Cunaeus (1586-1638) asserts that such preachers masked their ineptitude by “pouring out several sayings with a

197 smooth tongue, a severe and stately countenance in place, and other such things, that promise great erudition.”76 However, the situation had apparently changed drastically by the 1660s, when Dutch historian Lieuwe van Aitzema (1600-1669) asserted, “An educated and well-spoken preacher is someone given respect among his members.”77 Aitzema’s observation demonstrates both the existence of such eloquent preachers and the value that contemporary society placed on their education—including their rhetoric.78 Before examining the employment of manual rhetoric in De Witte’s sermon paintings, it is useful to survey the increasing emphasis placed on homiletics, or the art of preaching, in the mid- to late seventeenth-century. Franciscus Fabricius (1663-1738), named Leiden University’s first professor of “sacred rhetoric” in 1721, specifically addresses the importance of eloquence in delivering sermons:

This is what people want, indeed they crave for such preaching. This is what they mean when they ask, ‘does the preacher also have any talents?’, whereas they have little or no interest in erudition. Look at what is happening in the churches. In which of these, I pray you, do you see the larger congregations? Is it those whose preachers are very learned men, but without any agreeability of voice, and without adornment of befitting gestures? Or is it those whose preachers, while not particularly learned, are highly skilled in physical eloquence? Surely, without such eloquence, all sermons, however learned they may be, seem thin and cold to the congregation. Physical eloquence is essential if people are to fully comprehend the theological rules governing daily life.79

Such attention to the value of eloquence reveals that by the beginning of the eighteenth century, preachers and congregants were aware of the importance of speech and gesture as vehicles for communicating God’s Word. Although Fabricius indicates that erudition and eloquence were sometimes found

198 separately, he implies that the ideal preacher employed both in his delivery of the sermon. It is likely that De Witte was especially attentive to the art of preaching, as (according to Houbraken) his father was a rhetorician. Moreover, the rise of the rhetorical tradition and the accompanying emphasis placed on education shaped the sonority of Calvinist worship, dependent on the oral transmission of scripture. Dutch churches at the turn of the seventeenth-century were replete with untrained and unqualified preachers, primarily due to the lack of candidates to fill the position in the wake of the Reformation.80 The earliest Calvinist sermons were informal, sometimes spontaneous events that took place in open countryside rather than within a church, which encouraged the leadership of untrained hedge preachers.81 Compounding the issue was the popularity of “prophecy” as a means of establishing, through a non-academic route, a legitimate claim to the pulpit. In the Dutch Republic, some self-appointed preachers among those same unlearned craftsmen who assumed the post in the wake of the Reformation saw their calling as analogous to that of the Old Testament prophets, invested with authority directly from God.82 In 1612, the Leiden preacher Caspar Coolhaes (1536-1615), one of few learned preachers during this period, numbered among his fellow ministers “tailors, shoemakers, weavers and ditch-diggers”83 who came to their calling after practicing “slave crafts.”84 Although the number of preachers who entered their posts with the relevant training was low at the turn of the seventeenth-century, it is clear that from its inception, the Reformed Church placed high value on the formal

1 99 education of ministers, largely as a consequence of the Reformation’s new emphasis on the preacher as the authoritative conveyor of Biblical text. When church visitations revealed the “indecent and bad” state of preaching during the formative years of the Dutch Calvinist church, preachers were given money to buy books and exhorted to study “diligently” (“neerstigh”).85 Access to academic training was available for at least some of the population from the earliest years of the Reformation in the Netherlands; its first university was founded in Leiden in 1575, just three years after the Sea Beggars’ initial defeat of the Spanish officially introduced Calvinism to the northern Netherlands.86 As the century progressed, complaints about untrained ministers drastically diminished, largely due to the emphasis the Reformed church placed on academic preparation and the mounting number of preachers who became schooled in their discipline once Calvinism had firmly entrenched itself in the Dutch Republic.87 Theological curricula typically included training in scripture, languages, philosophy, and both civil and ecclesiastical history.88Apprenticeship with a senior pastor outside of the university curriculum was considered essential for the training of a Reformed preacher, as eloquence was an increasingly desirable ministerial talent. In some cases, this practical experience was integrated into the curriculum of Reformed theology programs.89 Aspiring preachers were not only afforded applied knowledge in the art of public speaking; they also received formal training in classical rhetoric, and were even tested on their bodily eloquence as part of their licentiate exam.90

200 Emphasis on convincing delivery through the eloquence of the body stems from the classical rhetorical tradition, and notably the writings of Quintilian (b. 35 CE), the first public professor of rhetoric in Rome. Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria gives detailed treatment of bodily eloquence, at times expanding on texts by Cicero (106-43 BCE), who writes, “Every motion of the soul has its natural appearance, voice and gesture, and the entire body of a man, all his facial and vocal expressions, like the strings of a harp, sound just as the soul’s motion strikes them.”91 Quintilian elaborately defines a code of gestures employed for Roman orators, emphasizes the fundamental role of gesture in conveying the emotion of the speaker and moving the audience,92 and asserts that gestures “are almost as expressive as words.”93 The rhetorical tradition initiated by classical writers such as Quintilian and Cicero increasingly informed seventeenth-century homiletic manuals, or guides to the style of preaching. For example, the first complete preaching manual by a Dutch Reformed minister, Johannes Hoornbeeck’s Tracatus de ratione concionandi (1645), specifically cites Quintilian in its discussion of the delivery of the sermon.94 A number of homiletic manuals, all written in Latin (which in itself demonstrates both the rise in classical education and the increased importance of such training for Reformed ministers),95 followed during the latter half of the seventeenth-century, including Methodus concionandi, illustrate commentariis et exemplis (1688, translated into Dutch and published in 1705 as Predik-ordre) by preacher Salomon van Til (1643- 1713).

201 Van Til and other late seventeenth-century preachers increasingly drew attention to the kind of classical rhetorical gestures advocated by Quintilian, such as the action of pointing a finger while threatening,96 a device particularly appropriate to the “thunderbolts and lightnings” Calvin encouraged preachers to call forth upon their congregations. Significantly, as P.J. Schuffel points out, Van Til’s manual shifts from regular use of the term “preacher” to the term “orator” to describe the role of the figure in the Reformed pulpit, which signifies a willingness to deliver the sacred Word of the preacher according to the secular rhetorical tradition of the classic orator.97 At the same time, a rising number of such manuals were translated, either in whole or in part, into Dutch toward the end of the seventeenth-century.98 The availability of these books in the vernacular suggests the broad appeal of the homiletic tradition, which must have extended, by this period, beyond the cognoscenti and permeated the literate portion of the lay populace. In his 1701 homiletics manual Verhandeling van de uitspraak en gebaarmaaking van eenen redenaar (Treatise of the articulation and gesticulation of an orator), Petrus Francius (1645-1704), seventeenth-century professor of rhetoric at Amsterdam Athenaeum Illustre, criticizes the lack of art in delivery of sermons he witnesses in Dutch Reformed churches, and objects to their monotonous tone, unpolished gestures, inarticulateness, and inappropriate posture. Francius outlines specific precepts for ministers at the pulpit; he specifies, for example, that one’s stomach should maintain a distance of two fingers from the edge of the pulpit. He also advises preachers to “keep [the body] lively…so that it is clear that one is a human and not a statue.”99 For

202 Francius, body language, countenance and gesture play equally important roles as the voice in communicating the orator’s message.100 Francius’s pupil Fabricius expresses what may by 1721 have been a more generally accepted notion that God-given talent must be honed through rhetorical skill:

Since…it pleased the good God to favor his holy Prophets and Apostles in an extraordinary way with the benefit of eloquence through the Holy Spirit, it evidently follows, that this gift is completely good, sacred and necessary. Further, as such extraordinary inspiration by the Holy Spirit has now ceased, but this office of proclaiming the Word of God to the people in an appropriate way continues to exist, one must therefore attempt to obtain both this very useful gift and the other one by human diligence, under divine cooperation.101 Although Fabricius’s statement dates from a bit later than the time period under discussion, it is likely that his remarks are applicable to the manner of preaching practiced in Reformed pulpits during the latter part of the seventeenth-century, considering the observations recounted earlier by Francius, as well as the increasing interest in rhetoric that appears in contemporary preaching manuals. Fabricius likely carried on his teacher’s conviction that the message of the orator was conveyed through a successful combination of verbal and manual rhetoric. The well-articulated sermon was not a speech; it was a performance.

The Performative Preacher and the Language of Gesture

In his commentary on Galatians 3:1, Calvin promotes pastoral rhetoric in the form of ekphrasis, which is intended to move the congregant just as a painter provides visual stimulation:

203 To show how energetic his preaching was, Paul first compares it to a picture, which exhibited to them, in a lively manner, the image of Christ. Paul’s doctrine had instructed [his audience] concerning Christ in such a manner that it was as if He had been shown to them in a picture, nay, crucified among them…Let those who want to discharge the ministry of the Gospel aright learn not only to speak and declaim but also to penetrate into the consciences of men, to make them see Christ crucified, and feel the shedding of his blood. When the Church has such painters as these she no longer needs the dead images of wood and stone, she no longer requires pictures; both of which, unquestionably, were first admitted to Christian temples when the pastors had become dumb and been converted into mere idols, or when they uttered a few words from the pulpit in such a cold and careless manner, that the power and efficacy of the ministry were utterly extinguished.102 Despite Calvin’s disapproval of affect in preaching and his intolerance toward devotional images, he characterizes the preacher as a “painter”; preaching, by extension, is a form of art, which—at its most effective—paints an image for the avid listener.103 For Calvin, the living preacher replaces “dead images” as the means of communicating God’s presence to the faithful. Calvin’s analogy suggests that in order to “penetrate into consciences,” the minister, like the artist, must act. Following the example of Paul-as-painter, preaching should be “energetic” and “lively.” Accordingly, this section addresses the performativity of De Witte’s paintings, which record the dual actions of artist and dominee.

The equation of painter and preacher described by Calvin finds a parallel in seventeenth-century art theory. For instance, Samuel van Hoogstraten subscribes in his Inleyding (1678) to the contemporary theoretical concept of the passions—that is, the idea that convincing depiction of facial expression and body language would emotionally involve the viewer in the painting.104 Van Hoogstraten likens the artist to the orator, both of whom

204 adhere to the rhetorical tactic of “instructing, delighting, and moving” the viewer. 105 According to his erstwhile student Houbraken, Van Hoogstraten taught his pupils verbal and manual rhetoric, and even enlisted them to perform in plays, which demonstrates his understanding of the relation between orating and painting.106 In this context, it may be said that De Witte paints the preacher in the act of “painting” the sermon. Just as De Witte persuades his audience through his handling of paint, so does the preacher appear to captivate his congregation through his delivery of the sermon. De Witte wields the brush; the preacher brandishes the finger. They “speak” to the audience without words, through the universal language of gesture. De Witte’s painted church interiors translate the sermon spoken by the physical preacher to the Word gestured by the painted preacher. Gesture stands out as the mode of transmitting the painted preacher’s message by virtue of the typically generalized depictions of the preacher figures in De Witte’s paintings. For example, the preacher in De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk (figs. 58 and 61) is small and distant from the foreground, and his facial details are not discernible; in Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon (figs. 18 and 20, 1660, London, National Gallery), the preacher is viewed from behind.

However, in each case, his pose is so emphatic that it draws attention to the preacher’s presence and sermon. Even more significant is De Witte’s reiteration of the preacher’s gesture in all of his depictions of the Calvinist service. A fundamental tool in articulation of gesture is the hand. As André Leroi-Gourhan observes, “The hand has its language, with a sight-related form

205 of expression…gesture interprets the word.”107 Seventeenth-century awareness of the preacher’s hands is indicated in the following passage by Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637), rector of the Latin school in Dordrecht, which describes his experience of a sermon delivered in Rotterdam:

He places his right hand gently against his breast; sometimes he brings them [the hands] quickly there, throws them stiffly against his breast, slow, quick, from high to low, slowly, quickly…throws them upwards, slowly, stretches them breadthwise, away to the right, stretches them high, throws them straight aside, down, now here, now there, both hands suddenly apart, the left hand rarely alone…he brushes his right hand from one side to the other over the lectern, beats it against his left hand, counts on the fingers of his left hand, claps in his left hand, slaps the lectern, keeps it for a long time on one place…”108

Beeckman’s account, which demonstrates the extent to which the physical and the verbal intertwined to communicate the visual and aural message of the sermon, also takes the trouble to note which hand the preacher employs for any given gesture. Generally, the right hand plays the more dynamic role and acts upon the left.109 As in the example of a print that shows a preacher in the pulpit pointing with his right hand while enumerating with his left, Beeckman’s preacher “counts on the fingers of his left hand” (fig. 79).110 The correspondence of the preacher’s hands in the sixteenth-century French or

German print with those of the seventeenth-century English preacher whose sermon in a Dutch church is described by Beeckman suggests a codified language of gesture that was more or less universal, consistent, and fundamental to the communication of sermons during the early modern period. Notably, De Witte demonstrates his own understanding of the hand’s communicative powers in his London Oude Kerk (figs. 18 and 19) painting-

206 within-a-painting of a stained glass window that depicts the Evangelists; Matthew, seated in the center of the group, holds his writing instrument in his right hand as the angel guides Matthew’s inspired words by pointing to the text with his left hand. The hands of the angel and Matthew are juxtaposed in the central pane of the stained glass window, which is also located in the center of De Witte’s painting. De Witte accentuates the preacher’s extension of his right arm, palm forward and parallel to the congregation, by contrasting the dark color of his hand with the stark white of the background pier that frames it. The placement of the preacher’s hand below and just to the left of the stained glass perhaps adds a layer of significance to my chapter four interpretation of the Word filtering through the preacher as light filters through the window. Possibly De Witte means to indicate that God guides the hand of the preacher, just as He does those of the evangelists. The significance of God’s guiding hand in seventeenth-century Dutch culture is evident in a mid-century engraving by Michel Natalis after Abraham van Diepenbeeck (fig. 113, 1640, Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library), which depicts “The primary lesson of the Christian faith: One God, in three persons.”111 Although the print appears in a Jesuit text, it is still a part of a reforming tradition set within the context of a largely Reformed society,112 for which reason it remains relevant to this discussion. The image, which clearly draws upon traditional depictions of the angel guiding the hand of Matthew, illustrates two arms, here intended to represent God the Father and the Son.113 The continuation of the poem on the facing page, written from the perspective of a child who is learning to write, clarifies the content of the print:

207 But when he came to hold my hand, And managed to softly push it, And steered it here and there, Then I learned the art. So he pushed, so he turned, So he taught me this letter That one writes with three legs But that is nevertheless one letter, Then he started to show me here, One God, and three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The letter “M,” which contains three parts in one symbol, stands here for the Trinity. The print both emphasizes the divinely inspired activity of writing and the related role of gesture (in this case, employed to make the letter) as modes of communicating the message of God. De Witte’s painting, which places the preacher in close proximity to the Evangelists, utilizes a similar comparison of writing and gesturing as linguistic tools (represented in the stained glass) and extends this analogy to the verbal and manual rhetoric of the preacher as means of conveying the Word. The idea of gesture as a universal language, advocated by Van Hoogstraten as more persuasive even than speech,114 first gained prominence during the seventeenth-century through the writings of John Bulwer, whose interpretation of manual rhetoric I discussed briefly in relation to Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jan Cornelis Sylvius earlier in this chapter. Bulwer’s treatises on gesture, Chirologia: or, The Natural Language of the Hand, and Chironomia: or, The Art of Manual Rhetoric, published as a single volume in 1644, stress the transcendent language of the hand as superior to the tongue:

Nor doth the hand in one speech or kind of language serve to intimate and express our mind: it speaks all languages, and…is generally understood and known by all nations among the formal

208 differences of their tongue. And being the only speech that is natural to man, it may well be called the tongue and general language of human nature which, without teaching, men in all regions of the habitable world do at the first sight most easily understand.”115

Bulwer’s texts define specific meanings associated with gestures, many of which are illustrated in accompanying tables. A number of Bulwer’s gestures, including “the gentle and well-ordered hand” seen in the print of Sylvius,116 are relevant to the manual rhetoric of the preacher. For example, “to extend out the right hand by the arm,” a gesture illustrated in box O of Bulwer’s table117 and similar to that of the preacher in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk (figs. 18 and 20), according to Bulwer “is the natural habit wherein we sometimes allure, invite, speak to, cry after, call, or warn to come, bring into, exhort, give warning, admonish, protect, pacify, rebuke, command, show…authority, give free liberty of speech…and appear to undertake a business.”118 All of Bulwer’s associations with this particular gesture are apropos to the impassioned speech of the preacher. “The holding up of the forefinger,” illustrated in box G of one of Bulwer’s tables (fig. 129), is a sign of “threatening and upbraiding.”119 The related action of pointing (box F, fig. 129) is interpreted by Bulwer as demonstrative, “such that we use to forewarn and rebuke children.”120 The pointing index finger appears regularly in De Witte’s church interior paintings: it is evident in his Ottawa Oude Kerk in Delft (Fig. 4), his 1651 Oude Kerk in Delft in London’s Wallace Collection (Fig. 2), and his 1680 Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft at the Art Institute in Chicago (Fig. 52). In each of these cases, the preacher appears to chastise, warn, or even condemn his

209 congregation through body language and gesture, which implies a similar message delivered through speech. De Witte was not alone in depicting the preacher in the pulpit in command of manual (and, by extension, verbal) rhetoric. The employment of the pointing forefinger also appears in Gerrit Berckheyde’s Interior of the Bavo Kerk, Haarlem (fig. 146, 1673, London, National Gallery). Berckheyde shows the preacher animatedly and ominously leaning forward over the edge of the pulpit and raising his finger threateningly in the air as though to warn or chastise his congregation (fig. 147). This gesture is almost exactly paralleled by the adult who similarly bends over a pair of children in the foreground with upraised finger (Fig. 148).121 Because this man carries a whip, it is possible he holds the position of dog-hitter, or hondenslager, employed by the Bavo Kerk to quell disturbances created by dogs and small children.122 The location of this figure just to the right of the so-called Dog Whippers’ Chapel in the physical Bavo Kerk, which occupies a niche near the northwest corner of the church (beyond the left frame in the foreground of Berckheyde’s composition), supports this interpretation.123 Thus, the adult might be acting in an official as well as a paternal capacity in reprimanding the children. Furthermore, as one of the children holds fruit and bread and leans against the Bavokerk’s Orphans’ Chest, a collection box dedicated to the care of orphans,124 these youngsters may have depended solely on the Church for their upbringing and discipline; the gesture of the hondenslager, perhaps not coincidentally, also points toward the chest. The likely status of the two children as wards of the Church, emphasized by

210 the pointing finger of the hondenslager, is a striking contrast to the well- dressed child at the far right, who holds a cross instead of food and is shepherded by a motherly figure, who points to an elegantly clad youth accompanied by a well-behaved dog. The reiteration of gesture in the pointing fingers of preacher and hondenslager could convey a didactic function for the painting that anticipates Fabricius’s emphasis on physical eloquence as the means by which the congregation will absorb the moral lesson of the sermon and apply it to their daily life. Just as the adult exercises his paternal authority over the children, so does the preacher exercise his moral authority over the congregation. However, although the gestures of the preacher and the adult communicate similar messages of authority, there is a significant difference in the orientation of each figure’s index finger. Whereas the man in the foreground angles his finger so that it is aimed in the direction of the chastised children, the preacher’s finger points upward, toward heaven. It is possible that Berckheyde intends this difference to reinforce the divinely invested authority of the preacher, who rebukes his congregation on behalf of God, as opposed to the earthly and therefore more limited authority of the adult, who in his position as hondenslager receives his power only from the Church. The likely edifying function of this painting, which may have been inspired by the sermon paintings of De Witte, who visited Haarlem in 1655,125 suggests that such works acted as painted “sermons” within the home. De Witte’s two Protestant Gothic Church paintings (figs. 39 and 44, 1669, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), which were likely displayed together in a

211 domestic setting, may also have guided the contemporary Calvinist viewer-as- congregant to apply the tenets of the Reformed church to daily life. For instance, the gesture of the preacher (fig. 43) closely resembles that illustrated in box E of another of Bulwer’s tables.126 According to Bulwer, to hold out the stretched arm with raised hand signifies “prohibition” comparable to the interdiction of the angel who, in this manner, prevents Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac.127 Bulwer asserts, “men are wont to use this expression by gesture to those they hold worthy of rebuke and punishment, that being terrified thereby they might reclaim them from vice.”128 This particular motion was surely an integral component of the preacher’s manual rhetoric, particularly since, as Bulwer points out, “in many places of Scripture this gesture implies the chastising Hand of God.”129 It is possible to attribute a more specific meaning to the preacher’s prohibitory gesture if we read the work in relation to its pendant, which depicts two sets of figures: a gravedigger within a partially-dug grave in conversation with a burgher, and a woman and child asking a gentleman for alms (fig. 44). Perhaps, in this context, the preacher’s gesture warns the congregation against avarice and attachment to earthly belongings. Conversely, charity, which was actively endorsed by the Calvinist church and is likely depicted in the pendant painting, is promoted as a Christian means of detachment from worldly riches. Significantly, the only figure to make eye contact with the viewer in each work is a child: one of privilege in the sermon painting (fig. 42), and of poverty in its pendant (fig. 45). Berckheyde’s similar juxtaposition of children from different social spheres in his Haarlem Bavokerk supports the

212 interpretation of De Witte’s paintings as didactic and paired in their message, and suggests that both artists drew on the timely preoccupation of the Reformed community with charity in order to enliven their paintings and enhance the accessibility of their content. We may compare this strategy to that employed in contemporary Dutch sermons: like the preacher, the artist strives to make his work relevant, so that the audience will “listen.” In De Witte’s sermon painting (fig. 39), the preacher’s gesture of prohibition, directed at his well dressed and mostly attentive congregation, provides a counterpoint to the gestures of supplication enacted by the beggar woman and the gravedigger in the pendant painting (fig. 44). Shared emphasis on the sight of sound, communicated thrice through gesture as a surrogate for speech, creates a dialogue between the two paintings, and lends them an edifying function. In this way, the paintings would have “spoken” to their (likely wealthy) owners by imparting the importance of remembering God’s precepts even while not at church.

Perceptions of the Preacher As I have established thus far in this chapter, it is possible to interpret De Witte’s painted dominees as adept practitioners of verbal and manual rhetoric who “speak” the sermon through gesture. Still, a preacher’s effective communication of his message invariably depended on the receptiveness of his congregation. In order for a sermon to sound, an audience with “open ears” had to be present to hear.130 Before shifting in the following chapter to consideration of De Witte’s painted congregants, who reinforce the sound of the sermon through various modes of “listening,” it is relevant to establish

213 contemporary perceptions of the preaching office expressed by the audience that De Witte represents. By evaluating the receptiveness of the seventeenth- century congregation, we may establish a context for interpreting the degrees and types of “hearing” and “listening” painted by De Witte.131 Many preachers—particularly those in large cities—were held in high esteem in their communities. The preachers in Dordrecht were revered by their congregants, who bent down “for their rod” and had awe “for their wisdom.”132 The Amsterdam preacher Bernardus Somer, who makes an appearance in Houbraken’s biography on De Witte in the context of a dispute over a painting of the Nieuwe Kerk, must have enjoyed high status to be deemed worthy not only of marrying the daughter of Michiel de Ruyter, but also of being laid to rest within the famed admiral’s tomb.133 The privileged post of the preacher was also evident in his exemption from certain taxes and the place of honor he maintained at official events.134 Preachers were even invited to dine once a year with members of the regent circle, after which they were allowed to take home treats to their families.135 After a preacher’s death, his name was inscribed on the lists of preachers that typically lined the side walls of the church. As we have seen, popular preachers were praised in elegies, often written to accompany preacher portraits that decorated the consistory and disseminated in print throughout the homes of their congregations.136 Some contemporary textual sources, however, suggest that the preacher’s moral integrity and influence in his community were occasionally at issue during the seventeenth-century.137 This literature took the form of pamphlets, poems, satires, and books dedicated to analysis of the preaching

214 office. As critical evaluations of the preacher frequently define him in relation to his congregation, we may employ this primary source material to establish the disdain that certain members of the minority regent class, from whom such criticisms originated, held for the preacher who represented the interests of the populace at the expense of the privileged. The known biases of these authors against dominees render the verity of their claims doubtful or, at best, exaggerated,138 entangled as they are in contemporary religious and political disputes.139 For example, Vondel, who converted to Catholicism in 1648, published a number of acerbic verses about Orthodox Calvinist preachers. Due to the red facial complexion of Amsterdam dominee Jacobus Trigland (1583-1654), Vondel dubs him a “little turkey” (“kalkoentje”) and accuses him of drunkenness.140 He calls Adriaan Smout a “fathead” (“dikkop”) due to his rotund figure.141 Vondel’s satire “Rommelpot van ‘t Hanekot” describes the kerkeraad (church council) as a cock pen and the preachers as cocks.142 In his poem “Harpoen,” on the other hand, Vondel characterizes the model preacher as an obedient servant who “never bothers himself with the state.”143 Vondel’s preference for docile dominees corresponds with the popularity of Amsterdam figures such as Sylvius, “a lover of sincere simplicity” who “despised…thundering speech,” as well as Eleazar Swalmius, renowned for his “agreeable speeches.”144 Vondel, a member of the regent circle in Amsterdam, solely criticizes preachers who antagonized secular authorities through the political content of their sermons, and does not hesitate to discredit preachers using slander, if necessary.145 Additionally, he relies on

215 embellishment as a staple of the genre, employed to justify the author’s argument.146 Vondel’s censure of Reformed preachers is an extreme example of regent hostility toward the preaching office, as it represents the point of view of one disillusioned with the Calvinist church. From what is known about the identities of critics like Vondel, who belong to the intelligentsia, their opinions represent only a small fraction of the Calvinist community—regents who felt threatened by a preacher’s affiliation with, sympathy toward, and influence over the populace. Some dominees—particularly those who vocalized their disdain for the upper echelon of the Calvinist faith community—acutely felt the contempt of the regent class. This is evident, for example, in the opening appeal of Coevorden preacher Johannes Picardt’s 1650 book on “the authority, dignity and excellence of the holy preaching office”:147

How come then o Holy Jesus Christ, that this prestigious office endures such disgraceful disregard, and we your loving servants are so diminished, that many of the lowest servants of men whom the stinking excrement of this world nourishes, are in higher esteem than the holy servants of God…? And that the degenerate offices of this world, that are but profitable, in higher esteem are held, than that holy preaching office.148 The crux of Picardt’s argument is that the “stinking excrement” who held

“profitable” but “degenerate offices”—that is, the regents—did not esteem dominees in a manner befitting a preacher’s divinely ordained station. For their part, outspoken regents such as Gerard van der Laen (1552-1635) objected to the interference of preachers in government affairs, and asserted that their “unruliness” (“ongestuimicheden”) was the result of their low social origin.149 In Van der Laen’s 1625 speech “concerning the improvement of the progress

216 in the state of administration and religion,” the former Haarlem burgemeester terms the preachers “rabble” (“canaille”) and classifies them among the “ignorant populace, that by nature all hate government.”150 Historian and poet Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (1581-1647) likewise characterizes preachers as “avaricious, frivolous and reckless folk,” and asserts, “The greatest uproar in Christendom is ignited on the pulpit.”151 The assertions of Van der Laen and Hooft establish the elitist contempt for inflammatory preachers by establishing them as members or instigators of the unmanageable masses. The purported connection between preacher and populace is reiterated in contemporary pamphlets, which suggest that preachers actively encouraged popular followings by tailoring their sermons to the interests of their audience. For example, a 1640 pamphlet asserts, “Preachers speak what the congregation likes to hear, in order to get more followers.”152 According to this dubious statement, not only were preachers self-serving in the material they preached, congregants were presumably too ignorant to understand that their preachers manipulated them. The following remark from a 1630 pamphlet plays upon the paired stereotypes of pandering preacher and cretinous congregants in an elaborately imagined scenario:

Preachers are sometimes so unruly that it might be wise to set up another pulpit in the church directly across from theirs, so that the officials of a city might climb up and muzzle their mouths when they try to lead the people by the ear and excite their passions in affairs not within the gospel. Regents could then point out their mistakes, and teach them that it is not their place nor does it become them to give their congregations bad impressions of their magistrates, saying they…are enemies of the church and the country…and suspecting all who do not wish to submit themselves as slaves to their ambitions…The magistrates would do well to be wary of those to

217 whom they entrust the pulpit…, the listeners are stirred up as quickly as the sea by a stiff breeze.153

The message is clear: ministers should answer to magistrates and refrain from meddling in civic affairs or provoking the populace. The above passage casts the preacher as, essentially, a rabid dog who must be tamed and silenced by regent authorities lest his poison infect the impressionable and readily riled audience. While this may have contained an element of truth in isolated cases, it is likely that most of the Reformed faithful, whatever their social status and education, were perceptive enough to discern and disdain disingenuous dominees. Moreover, contemporary textual criticism of the preacher, however abundant, does not represent the general perception of dominees—only that of a few literate members of the elite, whose municipal and confessional interests at times conflicted with those of both the preacher and the community at large. Although a considerable number of seventeenth-century Dutch citizens were able to read with at least some proficiency, owing to the Reformed emphasis on scripture, relatively few could write;154 the voices of the unlettered who filled Calvinist churches (and probably represent the greatest number of congregants in De Witte’s paintings) were not preserved for posterity.

Even among the upper-class minority, aversion to particular preachers must have been the exception rather than the rule. Positive perceptions of popular preachers are evident in the verses appended to their portraits, which were written by members of the same intelligentsia who attacked divisive dominees. Secretary of State Constantijn Huygens, an Orthodox Calvinist and a member of the regent class, comments on “the comforting things heard

218 together [during a sermon] through God’s grace,” which suggests that he and, perhaps, others in his circle appreciated their preacher.155 Furthermore, we may surmise from De Witte’s church interior paintings, which include regents as attentive participants in the Calvinist faith community, that at least some of the elite who attended Reformed services approved of and respected their preachers. It is also critical to bear in mind that no preacher possessed autonomous authority over ecclesiastical affairs; he served as a member of the kerkeraad, which included elders and deacons who helped to establish and maintain church order and communal outreach.156 Significantly, members of the regent class held these prestigious offices.157 The presbyterian structure of the kerkeraad ensured that, for the most part, the interests and actions of the dominee did not contradict with those of the elite; ongoing conflict typically resulted in the preacher’s dismissal.158 Since De Witte’s works were owned primarily by the upper-echelon such as the family depicted in De Witte’s Portrait of a Family (fig. 42, 1678, Munich, Alte Pinakothek), who proudly display De Witte’s painting-in-a- painting in a public room of their house, it is likely that the patrons of his sermon paintings were among those constituents who viewed their local preachers in a positive light. After all, the exhibition of these works within elite homes associated their owners not only with the Reformed faith, but also, in many cases, with a particular church—and, by extension, with the dominee who held the preaching post at the time. It is possible that some of De Witte’s patrons even composed the kerkeraad, whose members typically occupied the pews within the baptismal enclosure during sermons;159 In De Witte’s London

219 Oude Kerk (fig. 14), for example, the top hats and starched collars of the consistory are just visible above the low wall that separates the enclosure from the rest of the preekkerk. Therefore, we may consider another implication of the tiny preacher in De Witte’s paintings: perhaps De Witte places Amsterdam preachers in the background not to diminish their importance, but to feature his clients, some of whom probably numbered among the painted congregants, and to promote the status of his patrons by associating them with the preacher in the pulpit. Additionally, by clustering the kerkeraad around the dominee, De Witte implicitly contrasts the presbyterian structure of the Calvinist church, which allowed for discourse among at least a small portion of its lay community, with the rigid and closed hierarchy of the Catholic faith. In his study of sound in seventeenth-century London, Bruce Smith writes of “the ‘findableness’ of sounds,” which, though fleeting, “still reverberate, however faintly, somewhere in the wild blue yonder.”160 Smith asserts that we may “listen to history”—that is, reconstruct the sources and types of sounds from any given period—by investigating their description in contemporary texts.161 Just as it is possible to “listen” to written sermons, so we may “hear” the voices of preachers and congregants, as perceived by their

(biased) audience, through the literature examined in this section. For instance, Vondel’s description of Trigland as a “little turkey” evokes an aural description of the preacher as one who “gobbles;” Hooft’s characterization of the public’s reaction to inflammatory sermons as “the greatest uproar in Christendom” conjures the clamor of voices raised in anger or protest; Huygens’s mention of “comforting things heard” during a sermon, on the other

220 hand, suggests the dulcet tones of a gentle dominee. In all of these remarks, it is possible to detect echoes of the sounds that may have once filled the churches and streets of Amsterdam.

Conclusion: “Sermons” in the Kleyne Kerck The presence of De Witte’s church interior paintings in the home would have promoted the seventeenth-century conception of the home as a kleyne kerck (little church) where the family gathered to augment the sermon through Bible readings and private worship, or to listen to a reading of a printed sermon.162 Sermons—and their delivery—must have provided fodder for stimulating oral discussion and debate among friends and family, regardless of their social status or their ability to read and write. Contrary to the assertions of the cognoscenti, who portray the populace as blind followers of charismatic and controversial preachers, it is easy to imagine such conversations occurring in the context of Bible readings held by individual families whose access to the scripture outside of service depended on the literate head of household,163 and plausible that at least some of these devout families owned prints of their favorite preachers, which perhaps adorned the same room where these gatherings took place. Elite families of the Reformed faith could afford not only printed and painted preacher portraits, but also De Witte’s sermon paintings. For instance, within the opulent setting of his Portrait of a Family (fig. 42), De Witte suggests an important aspect of the family’s character in the conspicuous display of the painting-within-a-painting by De Witte depicting the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon, possibly based on his Kremer Oude Kerk (fig.

221 1).164 In a domestic context, De Witte’s paintings may have been intended to evoke the experience of the church service as a means of fostering the spiritual at home. It is likely that his works were interpreted as moving “sermons” intended to engage the viewer spiritually by drawing him into the scene. The prominent position of the church interior painting in the Portrait suggests the importance the family placed on the presence of De Witte’s work in their home. As such, the painting-within-a-painting is a marker of the family’s inclusion in the faith-based community that it depicts. The existence of the painting on the wall implies that the family would have interacted with it on a daily basis, whether they just caught a passing glimpse or paused to draw back the curtain and contemplate the service depicted. By witnessing the painted preacher in the pulpit, whose words are implied through gesture, the viewer is persuaded to take part in the sermon as a virtual congregant and “hear” the preacher’s “voice.” The painted sermon could have acted as a mnemonic device that stimulated its seventeenth-century audience to recall and heed the message of an actual sermon delivered in a physical church by a preacher in command of rhetoric and elocution.

222 ENDNOTES

1 On gesture as a universal language that is inherent to humans and determined by our evolutionary development, see Andrè Leroi-Gourhan’s seminal study, Gesture and Speech, trans. Anna Bostock Berger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993; first edition published in French as Le Geste et la parole, Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1964).

2 See my discussion in chapter three. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen (1718-1721), 1: 282.

3 For a discussion of the Reformed minister’s authority, including the ways in which it diverges from that of the Catholic priest, see Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed (New Haven: Yale University, 2002), 435-459.

4 According to Jennifer Rae McDermott, Protestants relied on and promoted sound over image after the Reformation, which both set them apart from Catholic devotion and reflected the importance of speaking and hearing scripture during worship. “‘The Melodie of Heaven’: Sermonizing the Open Ear in Early Modern England,” in Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, ed. Wietse de Boer and Christine Göttler (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 177-195.

5 Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands 1544- 1569 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 125-128.

6 J.A. Emmens, “Ay Rembrandt, maal Cornelis stem,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 7 (1956): 133-165; Stephanie Dickey, Rembrandt: Portraits in Print (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004), 61 and passim.

7 Ay Rembrant mael Kornelis stem. / Het zichtbre deel is ‘t minst van hem: / ‘T onzichtbre kent men slechs deur d’ooren. / Wie Anslo zien wil moet hem hooren.” Quoted in Dickey, 329.

8 Emmens, 140 and passim.

9 Dickey, 60.

10 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Padua, 1611), 139. Referenced in Dickey, 43.

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11 The full title is Kerkelyk Register der Predikanten, Die, zedert de Kerkhervorming, de Gereformeerde Nederduitsche Gemeente te Amsterdam tot aan den Jaare 1759 bedient hebben; Behelzende hunne Geboorten, Studiën, Standplaatsen, Afsterven, Nakomelingen, Schriften, en andere byzonderheden; Ten dienste der Amsterdamsche Kerke en haarer Liefhebberen opgestelt (Ecclesiastical Index of Preachers, Who, from the Reformation to the year 1759 have served the Low German Community of Amsterdam; Including their Births, Studies, Stands, Deaths, Offspring, Writings, and other details; drawn up in service of the Amsterdam Church and her Sympathizers). Hendrik Croese Gerardszoon (Amsterdam: Hendrik Dideriks, 1778).

12 See Kerkelyk Register entries beginning with Johannes Cuchlinus, the first Reformed preacher in Amsterdam, who took up his post in 1578, and ending with Adrianus van Oostrum, whose tenure began in 1692 (17-128).

13 Van den Bos portrays a woman standing in a sparsely appointed room, the wall behind her adorned only with a print that depicts the Rotterdam Remonstrant preacher Simon Episcopius (1583-1643), who had passed away the year the painting and the print were executed. Although Episcopius had been exiled from the northern Netherlands during the height of the Arminian controversy, he was allowed to return in 1626, when he took a preaching position in Rotterdam. The unidentified woman is accompanied by a dog, a traditional symbol of fidelity apropos for communicating the faith-based relationship between congregant and preacher. The woman’s expression of faith is reiterated by the presence of the book, likely a Bible or kerkboek, on the chair below the print. Prachtig Protestant (Utrecht: Museum Catharijneconvent, 2008), 52. The print is after a painting by Hendrik Martenszoon Sorgh, also dated 1643.

14 Dickey, 30.

15 For Jan Cornelis Sylvius biography, see Kerkelyk, 40.

16 Manuductio ad oratoriam sacram (Manuduction to Sacred Rhetoric, 1679) by David Knibbe (1639-1701). Knibbe’s publication was later summarized in Dutch under the title “Kort onderwijs van de preek-order” (“Concise Lesson of the Sermon- Order”) at the end of his De leere der Gereformeerde kerk (The Doctrine of the Reformed Church, 1689).

17 Dickey, 42.

18 John Bulwer, Chirologia: or, The Natural Language of the Hand, and Chironomia: or, The Art of Manual Rhetoric, 1654, ed. James Cleary (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), 30-31.

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19 Dickey, 43, 176 n. 79.

20 Kerkelyk Register, 40.

21 Quoted in Dickey, 337-338.

22 Bulwer, 30-31. See also Dickey’s discussion of “sincere simplicity,” or simplicitas, as a desirable trait for preachers (43). Such plain speaking was particularly popular in the first half of the seventeenth-century.

23 P.C. Hooft, Leringen van Staat, (1609-1626; The Hague: Boucher, 1961), 59 and 66; quoted in Gerrit Groenhuis, De Predikanten: De sociale positive van de gereformeerde predikanten in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden voor 1700 (Groningen: Wolters Noordhoff, 1965), 113-114.

24 For example, in 1613, Smout published a pamphlet demanding that the States of Holland impose the death penalty for blasphemy and heresy, for which the government exiled him to s’-Gravenzhande. While in exile, he nevertheless was invited to preach on several occasions in Amsterdam, which suggests that the government’s action against Smout only secured his fame. When he emerged from exile, he was called to Amsterdam and remained in this post for ten years, during which time he denounced the election of insensible people to the city council. See Karel Bostoen, “Vondel contra Smout. De calvinistische predikant Adriaan Joriszoon Smout in Vondels hekeldichten” Literature 6 (1989): 202. Groenhuis, 121.

25 Those who are memorialized in prints had typically enjoyed long tenures at their respective churches in Amsterdam. These preachers often came to Amsterdam after serving in several smaller towns and held their positions in Amsterdam for an average of ten to twenty years (some as many as thirty), almost always until their death or their retirement with the title emeritus. Most preachers who were dismissed from their posts—for example, the aforementioned Adriaan Smout, and a certain Cornelis Hancopius (in Amsterdam from 1625-1626), whose disagreement with the church council over the discipline of Remonstrants sharply curtailed his employment—were not portrayed in print (see Kerkelyk Register, 51-52 for biography of Cornelis Hancopius). We may surmise, then, a correlation between the preacher’s popularity in Amsterdam—at least with the regent circle, which undoubtedly determined the length of time he held the post, as the kerkeraad consisted of regents—and his posthumous commemoration in portrait print. One exception is Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698), whose controversial four-volume book Die Betooverde Wereld (The World Bewitched, 1691), which dismissed witchcraft and demon possession as superstitions, led to his dismissal from his Amsterdam post. He was depicted in numerous prints, perhaps in part owing to the fame of his publication. It is notable that Bekker was not

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unanimously despised by the Church; although the most conservative ministers rejected the non-literal interpretation of the Bible that contributed to his rejection of spirit belief, others defended him. An elegiac poem that accompanies one portrait print of Bekker (Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit) conveys the latter sentiment: “O Amsterdam, if you are not hard of hearing/hear your teacher, whom the art in front of you depicts from life/and say, if you see him, this is he, that in faith/the last death blow in his writings has given/Those who want to know Bekker, put down bias/he establishes God’s honor, not the devil’s; that is his doctrine.” For an account of the Bekker controversy, see Andrew Fix, Fallen Angels: Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief, and Confessionalism in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). See Kerkelyk Register, 110-112, for Bekker’s biography.

26 Quoted in and translated by Dickey, 337.

27 Whereas Sylvius’s portrait and the accompanying inscription were created shortly after his death, the Swalmius print and inscription were not executed until forty years after his passing; it is likely the author of the poem did not know Swalmius personally, and was subscribing to an elegiac formula, inspired by Swalmius’s surviving reputation, rather than embellishing his own memories of the preacher.

28 Murray Schafer, “Open Ears,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, ed. Michael Bull and Les Back (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 26-28.

29 “[Proëlius] bevestigt den 7 May 1651, te gelyk met Abr. Roehoff, hy in de Oude en Roehoff in de Nieuwe Kerk.” Kerkelyk Register, 71.

30 See n. 11.

31 In several cases, as with Laurentius Homma, who became preacher at the Oude Kerk in 1661 after the death of Proëlius (84), the Kerkelyk Register indicates the former preacher that the new one is called to replace; usually, it merely indicates that the preacher in question “was called here” (that is, to Amsterdam), along with the month and year of their calling and of their confirmation.

32 De Witte’s earliest extant sermon painting of an Amsterdam church is dated c. 1653: Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (Cape Town, Michaelis Collection). De Witte’s Mauritshuis Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam dates to 1654. De Witte’s Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (c. 1656, Rotterdam, Museum Boymans- van Beuningen) is one of his earliest extant sermon paintings of Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk.

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33Gary Schwartz and Marten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and his Time (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 97. The other extant painting is North transept and adjoining areas of the choir and nave of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft (undated, Turin, Galleria Sabauda). The third is lost. See Catalogue raisonné van de werken van Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 1961), nr. 22.

34 Schwartz and Bok, 98.

35 The painted version of the still extant gravestone reads: IOHANNIS SAENREDAM/SCULPTORIS CELEBERRIMI/PETRI DE JONGE XLIV ANNOS ASSENDELPHI PRAETORIS./GERARDI DI JONGE FILII I.V.D. ET ADVOCATI IACET HIC QUOD FUIT. (“Here lie the remains of Jan Saenredam, celebrated engraver, Petrus de Jonge, sheriff of Assendelft for 44 years, his son Gerard de Jonge, doctor of worldly and ecclesiastical jurisprudence.”) As quoted in Jeroen Giltaij and Guido Jansen, Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1991), 113.

36 David de Witt, Jan van Noordt: Painter of History and Portraits in Amsterdam (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 212-214.

37 Quoted in and translated by De Witt, 212-214.

38 In depictions of preachers, the self-referential gesture, wherein the hand is directed toward the heart, is a convention that signifies faith. Dickey, 36, n. 34. For a specific identification of the gesture exhibited by Proëlius with that of the confessor, see De Witt, 214.

39 See Dickey, 37, for Rembrandt’s use of the motif in depictions of preachers. As Dickey notes, the association of pillar and theologian is a convention traditionally employed in art, as in representations of Saint Jerome.

40 My thanks to J. Holland for the Latin translation.

41 Samuel Ward, The Happiness of Practice (London: 1621).

42 A.Th. Van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 272; On preachers and pamphleteering, see Craig Harline, Pamphlets, Printing, and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), esp. 134-154.

43 Harline, 58-59.

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44 On reconstructing sound, see Bruce R. Smith, “Tuning into London c. 1600,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, 127-135. Smith specifically mentions seventeenth-century sermons as one source for implied sound (131).

45 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 4.8.9.

46 Groenhuis, 31.

47 Groenhuis, 31; Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Random House, 1987), 45.

48 Groenhuis, 31.

49 Harline, 3.

50 Quoted in Harline, 152. According to the corresponding Knuttel catalog number (Catalogus van de pamfletten-verzameling berustende in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 6851), the pamphlet in question is in praise of William II, Prince of Orange, on the occasion of his death in 1650. Jacobus Stermont, Lauweren-Krans: Gevlochten voor Syn Hoocheyt, Wilhelm, de Heer Prince van Oranjen, Over sijne eeuwig roembaere handelinge, gepleegt tot ruste deser Vereenigde Lantschappen, in’t Jaer 1650.

51 Groenhuis, 122.

52 Ibid., 123.

53 See Mia Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Images after Iconoclasm, 1566-1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 155, for the variety in the form and character of sermons.

54 Van Deursen, 265, gives a good assessment of the typically Biblically-based sermon expounded from the pulpit during this period. H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 123 and 126, discusses the centrality of Paul and his message of God’s saving grace as the foundation for seventeenth-century sermons.

55 Jacobus Borstius, Van ‘t Lang Hayr (Utrecht: De Roos, 1973).

56 Joos van Laren, Twee-en-vijftigh predicatien, over bysondere texten der H. Schriftuere; Gedaen Binnen Vlissingen, op verscheyde voorvallende gelegentheden (Vlissingen, 1670), 515-522.

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57 The number signifies that this is the forty-eighth sermon in the book (the sermons in the book, however, are not in chronological order).

58 New Revised Standard Version.

59 Kerkelyk Register, 40-41, 71.

60 “uytermaten kleyn geloove vindt genade by Christum.” Van Laren, 516.

61 “De Heere Christus hadde hem in’t water mogen laten vergaen / tot een rechtveerdige straffe van sijn kleyn geloovigheydt. Maer het herte Christi dat in medelijden ontbrandt over de swackheden van sijne geloovige / is beroert in Christo / gelijck het herte van een teere moeder beroert is / als sy haer hindt siet in ‘t uyterste perijckel van vergaen. Dit maeckt dat de Heere Christus / onaengesien Petri faute / onaengesien sijne kleyn geloovigheydt / stracks de handt uytsteeckt om Petrum uyt het perijckel te verloffen.” Ibid., 516.

62 “Een kleyn geloove / is een waerachtigh geloove / soo wel als een groot geloove / gelijck een kleyn kindt soo wel een waerachtigh mensche is als een groot man; ende eenen kleynen druppel waters / waerachtigh water is / soo wel als de heele zee. Een kleyn geloove sal oock saligh maken / soo wel als een groot geloove; want oock even het kleynste geloove vereenight ons met Christo… Want het en is niet de sterckte of grootheydt des geloofs die saligh maeckt / maer de waerheydt ende oprechtigheydt des geloofs… Wy en worden niet saligh gemaeckt door de quantiteyt des geloofs / maer door Christum / die aengenomen wordt van een kranck geloove soo wel als van een sterck geloove: Gelijck een krancke handt die de spijse in den mondt kan steken / soo wel het lichaem sal voeden / als of het ware een sterke handt / dewijle het lichaem niet gevoet en wordt door de sterckte van de handt / maer door de goedt heydt van de spijse.” Ibid., 517-518.

63 “Wy en konnen niet alle sulck een sterck geloove hebben ais…” Ibid., 516.

64 Ibid., 516: “‘Want ick ben versekert, dat noch doot, noch leven, noch Engelen, noch Overheden, noch machten, noch tegenwoordige, noch toekomende dingen, noch hooghte, noch diepte, noch eenigh ander schepsel ons sal konnen scheyden van de liefde Gods, welcke is in Christo Jesu onsen Heere.’”; NRSV translation quoted here.

65 “Hoe uytnemende groot was dese onwetenheydt ende kleyn geloovigheyt! Evenwel de Heere Christus ontsingh haer genadelijck… Ende men kan niet een eenigh woordt of exempel voortbrengen van eenen die in strenge rechtveerdigheydt van Godt verorpen is / om sijn kleyn geloovigheydts wille.” Van Laren, 517.

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66 “kleyn geloove sal noch ten lesten de overwinninge behouden / ende de eeuwige saligheydt verkrijgen…‘t en is geen wijsheyt voor yemant hem met een kleyn geloove te vreden te houden / als ‘er bequame gelegentheydt is om een groot geloove te konnen bekomen.” Ibid., 520-521.

67 “Gelijck indien twee menschen een mijle weeghs op te gaen hebben na eenen hoogen Bergh / den eenen zijnde kloeck ende sterck / den anderen swack ende kortborstigh: Sy klimmen wel beyde op / maer den eenen gaet den wegh gantsch kloeckelijck / ende komt boven sonder eens qualijck te hijgen na sijnen asem: Maer den anderen qualijck een quartier uurs gegaen hebbende / begint bleeck te sien / ende moet wat rusten / dan gaet hy wederom een weynigh voort / dan moet hy weder wat neder sitten / dan staet hy weder op / somtijdts kruypt hy op knien ende ellebogen voort / ende komt ten langen lesten noch boven / doch met ongeloofelijcke pijne ende arbeydt.”., 520.

68 “Wie soude willen wesenswack / als hy mochte wesen sterck? Wie soude willen zijn arm / als hy mochte zijn rijck?... Want hy die maer een kranck geloove heeft / die sal ontbeeren de vertroostingen / welcke een sterck geloove heeft: Elcke aenvechtingesal hem ontstellen: hy sal vol angst ende vreese zijn…‘t Sal al zijn dat hy se sal konnen wederstaen.” Ibid., 521.

69 “onse Heere Christus badt voor Petri geloove dat het niet en besweke.” Ibid., 522.

70 “Soo baden de Apostelen, (Luc.17.15.) Ende dien man (Marc.9.24). ‘Ick geloove Heere, komt mijne ongeloovigheydt te hulpe.’” Ibid., 522. NRSV.

71 “Laet ons dan dese ende diergelijcke middelen ter herten nemen / soosullen wy vast staen in ‘t geloove / ende ten geenen dage wanckelen… golven der versoeckinge soo hooge klommen als de wateren Noe / vijfthten ellen boven de hooghste berghen / ons geloove sal noch het hooft daer boven uytsteken.” Ibid., 522.

72 For the significance of water to the Dutch, see Schama, 15-50.

73 “Het werck van Christi handt ter hulpe” and “Het woordt van Christi mondt ter bestraffinge.” Van Laren, 515.

74 Groenhuis, 120.

75 In his study of the social status of seventeenth-century Dutch preachers, Groenhuis points out that the contemporary description of Gouda Remonstrant preacher Passchier de Fijne (1588-1667) as “being indeed a German cleric, but of an exceptionally vibrant and intelligent spirit” (“Sijnde wel een Duytsche Clerck, maer van een seer

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wakkre en schrandere geest”) indicates that untrained preachers who possessed innate gifts for ministry were the exception rather than the rule. 110-111. See also Van Deursen, 264. P.J. Schuffel argues that Dutch theologians of the early- to mid- seventeenth century tended to subscribe to the view that understanding of classical rhetoric was unnecessary for a preacher divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. Schuffel, “From Minister to Sacred Orator: Homiletics and Rhetoric in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century Dutch Republic,” in The Low Countries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs, ed. Arie Jan Gelderblom (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 227.

76 “etlijken spreukskens met een seer gladde tong uit te storten, een straf en staetig gelaet te setten, en ander diergelijke dingen, die grote wijsheit beloven.” Quoted in Groenhuis, 110.

77 “Een geleert ende wel-spreekent Predicant is wat gheacht om sijne personeele gaven.” Lieuwe van Aitzema, Historie of verhael van saken van state en oorlogh in ende omtrent de Vereenigde Nederlanden, IV (Gravenhage, 1669-1672), 1008.

78 Groenhuis, 120.

79 Fabricius, 63. Quoted in and translated by Schuffel, 241.

80 Groenhuis, 110; Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands 1544-1569 (London: Cambridge, 1978), 2, 39-41.

81 See Crew for a discussion of hedge preaching during the summer of 1566, 5-10.

82 Groenhuis, 98. This comparison stemmed from the popular conception of the Dutch Republic as a second Israel, delivered from its oppressor, Spain, by virtue of God’s covenant with His “chosen” people. On the popularity of this image in Dutch culture, see Schama, 68.

83 “cleermakers, schoemakers, wevers en slootmakers,” quoted in Groenhuis, 110.

84 “slaefsche ambachten,” quoted in Groenhuis, 110.

85 “onordentlicken ende slecht,” according to dominee Hadrianus of Mijnsheerenlandt. Quoted in Groenhuis, 109.

86 Benedict, 439.

87 Groenhuis, 119.

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88 Benedict, 438-439.

89 Karin Maag, “Preaching Practice: Reformed Students’ Sermons,” in The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Wim Janse and Barbara Pitkin (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 134-140.

90 Herman Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body: Perspectives on Gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), 167.

91 Cicero, De Oratore, 3.216. Quoted in and translated by Fritz Graf, “Gestures and Conventions: the Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators,” in A Cultural History of Gesture from Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. Herman Roodenburg and Jan Bremmer (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 40.

92 Fritz Graf, “Gestures and Conventions,” 40.

93 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 86. Quoted in and translated by Fritz Graf, “Gestures and Conventions,” 41.

94 Schuffel, “From Minister to Sacred Orator,” 231, 235.

95 See Schuffel, 231, for additional examples of manuals written in Latin.

96 Schuffel, 236-237.

97 Ibid., 237.

98 In addition to Van Til’s manual, another example is Manuductio ad oratoriam sacram (Manuduction to Sacred Rhetoric, 1679) by David Knibbe (1639-1701). Knibbe’s publication was later summarized in Dutch under the title “Kort onderwijs van de preek-order” (“Concise Lesson of the Sermon-Order”) at the end of his De leere der Gereformeerde kerk (The Doctrine of the Reformed Church, 1689).

99 Petrus Francius, “Bestieringen aangaande de uitspraak en gebaarmaaking,” in Verhandeling van de uitspraak en gebaarmaaking van eenen redenaar, ed. Michiel le Faucheur (Haarlem, 1701), 227. Quoted in and translated by Roodenburg, 173.

100 Roodenburg, 172-173.

101 Franciscus Fabricius, De heilige redevoerder van Franciskus Fabricius in eene openbaere Akademierede, als zyn Hoogeerwaerdigheit met het Hoogleeraerschap in de H. Redeneerkunde was vereert, op den 8 van Zomermaant 1722. in alle zyne

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hoedaenigheden voorgestelt; en nu met de aentekeningen en haere vermeerderingen vertaelt door Johannes vander Vorm (Leiden: 1728), 37. Quoted in and translated by Schuffel, 239-240.

102 John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 62-63.

103 For an interpretation of Calvin’s view of eloquence and preaching, see R. Ward Holder, “Calvin’s Exegetical Understanding of the Office of Pastor,” in Calvin and the Company of Pastors: Papers Presented at the 14th Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 22-24, 2003, ed. David Foxgrover (Grand Rapids: CRC Product Services, 2004), 194-199.

104 Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst; anders de zichtbaere werelt (Rotterdam, 1678), 116. Quoted in and translated by Thijs Weststeijn, The Visible World: Samuel Van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 172-175.

105 Weststeijn, 188, 191-193. Van Hoogstraten derives this strategy from ancient Roman rhetorical devices.

106 Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body, 115.

107 Leroi-Gourhan, 210.

108 Isaac Beeckman, Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 a 1634, ed. Cornelis de Waard (The Hague: La Haye, 1939-1945), 3: 342. Quoted in and translated by Roodenburg in Eloquence, 168.

109 On handedness during the early modern period, see Claire Richter Sherman, Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Carlisle: Dickinson College, 2000), passim and especially 20-21 for the contemporary significance of the left vs. the right hand.

110 Sherman, 20.

111 The inscription here and below the image, which continues on the following page of the manuscript, is quoted in Sherman, 253, and translated by Paul and Marianne Meijer (see Sherman 253 n.1). The image is from an emblem book by Jean de Bolland (1596-1665), Afbeeldinghe van d’eerste eeuwe der Societeyt Jesu (Antwerp: Plantin, 1640).

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112 For a discussion of the interconfessional dialogue between Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth-century northern Netherlands, particularly regarding the image question and its role in worship, see Els Stronks, Negotiating Differences: Word, Image and Religion in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2011), passim.

113 Sherman, 253.

114 Weststeijn, 182.

115 Bulwer, 16.

116 Ibid., 30.

117 See table in Bulwer, 150-151.

118 Ibid., 42.

119 Ibid., 127.

120 Ibid., 126.

121 Scholars have suggested a didactic function for the figures in the painting, but they have focused on the juxtaposition of the disobedient children and chastising man on the left next to the well-behaved boy and his similarly docile dog on the right as an allegory of obedience. Cynthia Lawrence, Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (1638-1698): Haarlem Cityscape Painter (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1991), 42.

122 On the importance of dog hitters in contemporary church interiors, see Beverly Heisner, “Mortality and Faith: The Figural Motifs within Emanuel de Witte’s Dutch Church Interiors,” Studies in Iconography 6 (1980): 112. Additionally, Timothy Trent Blade references a man with a whip chasing disobedient children as a motif that occasionally occurs in church interior paintings. “Two Interior Views of the Old Church in Delft,” Museum Studies 6 (1971): 49, n. 11.

123 See Mochizuki, 4, for a layout of the post-iconoclasm Bavokerk.

124 Mochizuki, 275-276. The box dates to the fifteenth-century; it is accompanied by a panel depicting two orphans that promotes the virtue of charity.

125 Ilse Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692 (Amsterdam : M. Hertzberger, 1963), 2; Lawrence asserts that De Witte was a formative influence on Berckheyde (41).

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126 See table in Bulwer, 155.

127 Bulwer, 74.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid.

130 On the importance of receptiveness to sounds, see Schafer, “Open Ears,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, 25-39.

131 For the contrast between “hearing” and “listening,” see Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening (New York: Fordham, 2002) trans. Charlotte Mandell (2007), passim; also Hillel Schwartz, “The Indefensible Ear: A History,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, 487- 502. Whereas Nancy argues that listening is a more elevated form of hearing, Schwartz asserts that hearing is, in fact, a more discriminating mode of listening.

132 “voor heure roede,” “voor heure wijsheid.” Quoted in Groenhuis, 121.

133 For biographical information on Bernardus Somer, see Kerkelyk Register, 104-105.

134 Groenhuis, 34.

135 Ibid.

136 Ibid., 121.

137 Groenhuis, passim.

138 Ibid., 121.

139 Ibid., 110-111, 121.

140 Ibid., 116.

141 Bostoen, 201.

142 Ibid.

143 “Noyt moeyde hij sich met staet.” Joost van den Vondel, De Volledige Werken van Joost van den Vondel, ed. Hendrik Diferee (Utrecht: Uitgeverij de Torentrans, 1929) 2: 269. Quoted in Groenhuis, 117.

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144 See Barlaeus poem discussed earlier in this chapter.

145 Groenhuis, 114.

146 Bostoen, 200.

147 The title in its entirety reads, The Preacher, That is: Profound Testimony and Proof, taken from Heavenly, Ecclesiastical and Profane Writings: of the Authority, dignity and excellence of the holy preaching office: above all great and dignified offices of the World (Den Prediger, Dat is: Grondige verklaringe en Bewijs, genomen uyt Goddelijcke, Kerckelijcke ende Prophane Schriften: can de Authoriteit, waerdicheyt en uytnementheyt des H. Predigh-Ampts; Boven alle hoogheden, Digniteyten en Officien deser Werelt). Zwolle, 1650.

148 “Hoe komtet dan o Heere Jesu Christo, dat dit hoog-waerdige Ampt van velen so schandelick verachtet, en wy uwe lieve Dienaeren so verkleynet warden, dat vele van die geringste dienstknechten der menschen die den stinckenden dreck deser werelt voeren, in hoogere estime zijn als de geheyligde Dienstknechten Gods…? En dat de allerslechtste officien deser werelt, die maer profitabel zijn, in hogere estime warden gehouden, als dat geheylighde Predig-Ampt.” Picardt, Prediger, 3. Quoted in Groenhuis, 125.

149 Groenhuis, 114.

150 “onwetent volk, die van naturen alle overheat haten…” Quoted in Groenhuis, 114.

151 “eergierige, lichtvaerdige en reucklose luyden van dewelcke de meeste tempeesten ende onwederen werden verweckt.” “De meeste oproer in Christendom wordt op de preekstoelen ontsteeken.” P.C. Hooft, Leringen van Staat, (1609-1626; The Hague: Boucher, 1961), 59 and 66, quoted in Groenhuis, 113-114.

152 Knuttel 3746. Quoted in Harline, 153.

153 Knuttel 4011. Quoted in Harline, 152-153.

154 Van Deursen, 122-125; Benedict 510, 515.

155 Constantijn Huygens, Gebruyck of ongebruyck van ‘t orgel inde Kercken der Vereenighde Nederlanden (Leiden, 1640); ed. and trans. Ericka E. Smit-Vanrotte, Use and nonuse of the organ in the churches of the United Netherlands (New York: Institute of Medieval Music, 1964), 15.

236

156 For the presbyterian administration of the Dutch Calvinist church, see Benedict, 451-459.

157 D.L. Noorlander demonstrates, for example, that the elite Directors of the West India Company frequently held the positions of elder and deacon, which enabled them to work closely with preachers to manage church affairs. “‘For the maintenance of the true religion’: Calvinism and the Directors of the Dutch West India Company,” Sixteenth Century Journal XLIV/1 (2013): 73-95. On the composition of the Reformed consistory in Amsterdam, see esp. 82.

158 As was the case, for example, with Smout.

159 Mochizuki, 159-161.

160 Bruce R. Smith, “Tuning into London c. 1600,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, 128-129.

161 Ibid., 129-131.

162 Benedict, 509. On the Dutch phrase “kleyne kerck,” see Mariët Westermann, “‘Costly and Curious, Full off pleasure and home contentment’: Making Home in the Dutch Republic,” in Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt (Zwolle: Waanders, 2001), 54.

163 Benedict, 509-518.

164 Walter Liedtke, “Faith in Perspective,” The Connoisseur (October 1976): 131; Blade, 37.

237 Chapter 6

THE COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHFUL

De Witte’s representations of the Calvinist service capture a sense of immediacy and suggest the muted sounds of a “living” community that both listens to the sermon and responds to the inevitably shifting, transitory nature of their environment. In his paintings, tardy congregants scurry toward the preekkerk; their movement evokes the accompanying sounds of doors closing and feet tapping on the stones of the church floor (figs. 15 and 28). Restless young children turn to their mothers; the viewer can well imagine their hushed voices asking how much longer the service will last (figs. 18, 22). Older children huddle in whispered conversation on the periphery of the preekkerk, perhaps plotting mischief intended to relieve the tedium of the lengthy sermon (fig. 58). Dogs, even less inhibited by social mores than children, infiltrate the congregation, likely distracting nearby congregants by their urinating, scratching, whining, and barking (see especially fig. 22). Sleeping congregants mumble and snore, oblivious to their surroundings (figs. 28, 32). Even the most attentive congregants surely shift in their seats as they bend over their kerkboeken, the sound of pages turning accompanying the assorted movements and muffled noises of a nave filled with people. The liveliness of the painted faith community reveals De Witte’s insight into human behavior and his sense of delight in observing the human condition. His visual “anecdotes,” which humorously and perceptively

238 describe vignettes within the broad narrative of the service, activate the soundscape of the painted sacred space. The amalgam of attention and distraction evident among the audience indicates that the church is filled with sounds to be “heard.” This chapter addresses the ways in which the assortment of painted congregants signal the aurality of their worship environment. De Witte’s colorful spectrum of Dutch society, at once cohesive in common faith and fragmented in awareness and activity, defines the Calvinist community of the faithful. The ideal image of the Reformed community originates with Calvin’s conception of an obedient yet discerning flock whose role is to heed the good shepherd in the pulpit. Just as Calvin stresses the importance of the preacher properly communicating God’s Word in his sermon, he exhorts congregants to attend to the preacher’s message, for “those who irreverently and contemptuously reject the preaching of the Gospel, the design of which is to bring us into obedience to God, are stubbornly resisting the power of God, and perverting the whole of his order.”1 Calvin also warns congregants against “itching ears”—that is, the temptation of pleasing and gratifying language that does not adhere to the “sound doctrine” of the Bible.2 Calvin emphasizes the dependent nature of the relationship between the preacher and his audience; the latter’s task is to determine whether the preacher’s message is “derived from Christ,” and, once the authority of his ministry is established, to internalize the content of the sermon.3 Whereas Calvin desires the preacher to speak persuasively, he urges congregants to listen.

239 Traditional scholarship has imposed strictly iconographic interpretations on the figures that populate De Witte’s paintings. In contrast, I consider the individuals that compose the congregation as representatives of the seventeenth-century Amsterdam faith community, which included members of multiple social classes, occupations, ages, and beliefs. In the first section of this chapter, I explore how De Witte’s painted community of the faithful demonstrates, though its diversity, various means of internalizing the message of the preacher. In particular, the inhabitants of the foreground of De Witte’s compositions often exhibit the critical form of listening advocated by Calvin. Following this, I place De Witte’s paintings in the context of a history of religious “listening,” and compare his methods of suggesting sound through image with those of his predecessors, most notably Rembrandt. The final section of this chapter considers the fluidity of the Reformed faith, evident not only in the blurred confessional boundaries that allowed anyone with “open ears” to hear the Word, but also in De Witte’s depictions of listeners on the margins of the faith community, who appear to evaluate the “soundness” of the Calvinist denomination.

Diversity and the Discriminating Ear The ideal of Reformed community expressed in the traditional communion formulary, which asserts that “We are members of one body…just as one flour is milled from many kernels of grain and one bread baked; and from many fruits pressed together, one wine and drink flows together…,”4 is visible in the closely quartered constituents of the Reformed faith represented in De Witte’s sermon paintings, many of whom sit shoulder-to-shoulder along

240 the largely occupied pews. And yet, despite the impression of a faith-based community created by the gathering of congregants within a building designated for Reformed worship, their spatial proximity to each other, and their (mostly) shared visual and aural attention on the preacher in the pulpit, De Witte’s paintings of the Calvinist service also convey the diversity and segregation evident within that population. In creating and defining Reformed community, De Witte does not overlook the distinctions of social status and rank that characteristically permeated the Calvinist congregation. This motley assortment of preeminent and proletariat brings a range of lived experience, education, and faith convictions to communal worship, which is reflected in their widely varying receptions of the sermon. Although the Reformed service was open to anyone who wanted to attend,5 the relative proximity of the upper class to the pulpit and their occupation of premier seats for the service implied privileged access to the Word. Seating was so important in Reformed churches that members of the congregation paid for their pews, with a range of price options available from the pews within the baptismal enclosure and the elevated box seats (for example, those inhabited by well-dressed burghers opposite the pulpit in De

Witte’s London versions of the Oude Kerk, figs. 18 and 22) to pews furthest away from the pulpit.6 Those who could not afford the luxury of advantageous locations were relegated to folding chairs or to standing room on the periphery of the preekkerk. Members of distinguished guilds typically sat together in designated pews, and the best seats in the congregation were reserved for the elite: city magistrates, university professors, and directors of seafaring

241 companies, all of whom were full members of the Reformed church and regularly attended service.7 That such a rigid seating structure applied to Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk may be surmised from the Cart vande Sitplaatzen inde Oude-Kerk (Map of the Seating in the Oude Kerk, figs. 156-157, 1787, Amsterdam, Collection of the Oude Kerk), which demarcates pews for men and for women and indicates box seats for high-ranking classes such as aldermen, burgomasters, admirals, and professors. De Witte’s manipulation of perspective and church furnishings, as well as the hundred-year difference between the 1787 Sitplaatzen and De Witte’s paintings, make it difficult to correlate the box seats that De Witte depicts with any particular elite groups. Still, his employment of these distinctive seats, for example, in his two London Oude Kerk paintings (figs. 18 and 22), where they are located almost directly across the nave from the pulpit and inhabited by well-dressed men, indicates that De Witte takes care to note the hierarchy evident in Reformed church seating. Interspersed with these prominently positioned structures, which (both in De Witte’s paintings and in the physical Oude Kerk) are attached to the church’s piers, we may observe in De Witte’s works the diverse assembly of the faithful, perched on pews or portable chairs, standing still or moving among their fellow congregants, attending to the preacher or preoccupied with various distractions. Notably, De Witte’s paintings suggest that congregants prioritized aural access to the sermon over clear views of the preacher. For instance, the kerkeraad (“church council”) seated within the baptismal enclosure (visible in the Kremer Oude Kerk, fig. 58) would have had no problems hearing the sermon; however, they must have

242 had to crane their necks uncomfortably in order to see the dominee in the pulpit. In De Witte’s sermon paintings, the distance of the congregant from the pulpit affects his or her “listening” experience. For instance, most congregants seated near the pulpit in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk (fig. 22) appear to direct their attention to the sermon. Although it is certainly possible that these seemingly engaged worshipers are not heeding as closely as their gazes toward the preacher and proximity to the pulpit suggest, it is likely that most focus their listening on the preacher’s voice. Likewise, the few seated congregants among the crowd who look toward the viewer (for example, the hatted burghers in the far right background) may be aurally attentive to the sermon, despite their visual distractedness. The very act of sitting in the heart of the preekkerk likely indicates the faithful’s commitment to listening. For instance, the wealthy man in the right side of the foreground box seat of the London Oude Kerk (fig. 22) seems firmly ensconced in his seat, as his arm is draped over the edge of the enclosure. He is, in a sense, a captive audience. On the other hand, the liminal space around the periphery of the preekkerk, occupied by a variety of constituents, from latecomers to women and children to (perhaps) uncommitted observers of the service, is a marginal area where congregants exhibit a range of receptiveness. In De Witte’s Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (fig. 28), we may surmise that the couple entering from the right with their children hears the sermon (in the sense that they are aware of sound emanating from the preacher), but their apparent conversation with each other suggests that they do not actively listen (that is,

243 internalize the preacher’s message). One figure with obviously “closed ears” is the sleeping congregant on the lower level of the box seat (fig. 32), who likely does not hear the sermon at all, despite his prominent presence in the preekkerk. He is “sound” asleep.8 In contrast, discriminating listening is suggested in the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk by the woman seated on a folding chair and man in the upper level of the box pew at right (fig. 32), both of whom hold open texts, perhaps to measure the validity of what they hear against what they read. Likewise, the rückenfigur in De Witte’s sermon paintings (for example, fig. 30) seems to assess critically the merits of the dominee. We may extend the rückenfigur undivided visual attention to his aural acuity: his directed gaze, which implies that he listens to the preacher, encourages the beholder to attune to the “sound” of the painted sermon. In De Witte’s London Oude Kerk (figs. 22, 23), a man at left stands in shadow, head bowed, hat doffed. He is a counterpoint to the familiar rückenfigur, the caped man who observes the preacher in the well-lit right foreground. Whereas the man at right is afforded unimpeded visual access to the dominee; the figure in shadow listens to the sermon from behind a box seat, which obstructs his view. The bareheaded gentleman holds his hat in front of his face and lowers his head slightly, which suggests a state of prayer or intense concentration and emphasizes his exclusively aural experience of the Word. It is possibly no coincidence that his ears are visible; perhaps this is De Witte’s way of focusing the viewer on the sound aesthetic of the painting. Notably, both seeing and hearing are employed by the young boy with bare

244 ears at the center of the composition, who—unlike the other children in the foreground—looks to the preacher and appears to listen to his message. De Witte’s focus on these congregants suggests that he intends them as models for commendable behavior and critical appraisal of the preacher. The varied aural attention and activities exhibited by De Witte’s figures contrast strongly with the static, undifferentiated mass of starched collared- congregants who cram into the nave of Gerrit Berckheyde’s Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem (fig. 146, 1673, London, National Gallery).9 Beyond the congregants who stand in the foreground, worshipers are neatly arranged shoulder-to-shoulder in ordered rows that stretch to the east end choir screen in the background (149), their common focus on the vehemently gesticulating preacher in the pulpit. Berckheyde’s placid congregants appear to listen indiscriminately as one silent body in their undivided attention to the dominee. Likewise, in Johannes Coesermans’ Nieuwe Zijds Chapel of Amsterdam During a Service (figs. 138 and 139, c. 1660, Utrecht, Catharijneconvent), almost all the members of the congregation face the pulpit, with the exception of the two standing women who seem to enter the church from the left, both carrying kerkboeken. Few children are present in the painting; the two boys accompanied by their dog look toward the preacher, their gaze reiterated by the pointing finger of the boy on the right. The young child in the foreground looks up at her mother rather than at the preacher who draws the woman’s attention. Remarkable is the lack of activity within the church; aside from the two congregants who move in the direction of the preekkerk, the audience is seated and still. The women who populate the nave

245 sit erect in their chairs, distinguishable only by the differing shapes of their collars. The pose of the standing man with the feathered cap just to the right of the foreground box seat, legs planted firmly on the ground and arms akimbo, conveys a similarly enthralled sensibility. The rapt attention of the congregants, which suggests the uncritically “open” ears of credulous, likeminded, or indifferent listeners, may also in some cases imply a lack of critical investment in their faith. In contrast, De Witte’s congregants are active participants in the reception and expression of their common belief. In the London Oude Kerk (figs. 22-25), the preacher’s forceful gesture conveys an outward expression of inner faith that is reiterated in the congregation. Just as the active light communicates a sense of divine life, so may the movements of the crowd— from the woman near the pulpit who rises to make way for the passing male congregant to the child in the left foreground who leans over his mother’s shoulder to look at her kerkboek (fig. 23)—be interpreted as signifying the dynamic spirituality of the congregation. Their activity indicates aural awareness of the preacher’s sermon. For example, the abovementioned shifting woman and standing man both adopt bent postures to minimize their obtrusiveness, as if they perceive their movements to be distractions from the preacher and his message. Of the three paintings just described (figs. 22, 138 and 146), it is De Witte’s image that most closely approximates Calvin’s vision of the Reformed community. Whereas Berckheyde and Coesermans’ congregants almost all passively and seemingly unquestioningly receive the sermon, the restless

246 activity and sense of independence evident among De Witte’s congregants draw attention to their capacity for discriminating appraisal of the preacher (whether or not they opt to employ it). Regardless of the level of attention paid to the dominee, and the degree to which they appear to accept the preacher as a reliable and compelling transmitter of God’s Word, De Witte’s characterization of the congregants as equal participants in the “faith exchange” between the preacher and his flock challenges the contemporary stereotype of congregants as indiscriminate followers. Also worth noting in the context of this discussion is Gijsbert Sibilla’s Interior of the Grote Kerk or Laurentius Church in Weesp (fig. 110-112, c. 1635, Utrecht, Catharijneconvent), which may be understood in direct opposition to those by Coesermans and Berckheyde: here, the congregants are almost unanimously inattentive to the preacher, himself seemingly distracted from delivering the sermon. Most of the church occupants, including the dominee, face the viewer. It is possible that these figures look outward because they are portraits of real congregants, perhaps patrons who paid for their faces to be visible. Still, as they are placed in the context of the service, they can also be read as part of a narrative that involves the viewer. In this sense, the seeming attention to the beholder, the implied subject of the congregants’ gaze, conveys the impression that the intrusive observer has interrupted the service. The whispering and rustling of curious congregants, who look to each other or to the source of the unexpected sound, punctuates the quiet that follows the abrupt cessation of the sermon. The viewer-as-congregant, who has apparently arrived late to the service, feels keenly the embarrassment associated with

247 becoming the unwelcome center of attention. To the beholder, the “silence” is “deafening.” In contrast to the works by Berckheyde, Coesermans, and Sibilla, which suggest in each case that the painted audience is of one mind in their attention to, or distraction from, the preacher, the sermon paintings of De Witte persuade by emphasizing each congregant’s individual capacity for discriminating appraisal. De Witte’s congregants do not merely passively receive the Word, nor do they uniformly refuse to hear. They variously affirm, question, or refute the authority of the preacher’s voice; they discriminately listen, and they respond.

The Netherlandish Tradition of Religious “Listening” De Witte’s congregations fit within an established tradition of depicting the populated church. Northern Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth- and early-sixteenth centuries developed the prototype for depicting the faith-based Dutch community. For instance, Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c. 1455/65-c.1485/95) depicts the extended family of Biblical matriarch Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, in his Holy Kinship (fig. 76, c. 1485-1496, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).10 Although the painting is a type of group “portrait” that emphasizes family ties, Geertgen also establishes a sense of the faith community by locating family members together within a church interior.11 The contemporary clothing, Gothic architecture, and medieval rituals evident within the painting make this proto-Christian community relevant to Geertgen’s audience; the localization of the subject is also apparent in the Dutch stepped façade visible in the exterior view.12

248 Geertgen crafts this painting according to a primarily visual aesthetic. Almost all of the figures in the foreground, though physically proximate, avoid eye contact with each other, which implies a lack of interaction or “sound” among those most prominent. Not coincidentally, these are also the most significant figures in the matriarchal lineage of Christ;13 Geertgen acknowledges this through their iconic representation. Furthermore, that this group faces the viewer rather than the altar table in the background suggests their unawareness of the aural activity taking place in the choir, where lesser family members converse. There is, in a sense, a reverential “silence” observed by the holy figures in the foreground. Although scholarship today views Geertgen as a painter of devotional subjects, he was, during his own time and in the seventeenth century, also lauded for his paintings of churches: a painting of the Bavokerk attributed to Geertgen, described by Van Mander as “very truthfully and attractively done,”14 hung in the Bavokerk and is depicted in Saenredam’s Interior of Saint Bavo, Haarlem (fig. 84, 1631, Philadelphia Museum of Art) as testament to Haarlem’s lineage of church interior painting.15 It therefore seems plausible that in the Holy Kinship, Geertgen combined a devotional scene with a

Haarlem church interior (or, at least, elements from it), and drew inspiration for his painting from observations of Christian worship in his neighborhood faith community. The altar boy lighting the candles on top of the choir screen, for example, was likely a common sight in Catholic churches of the period. Geertgen’s Holy Kinship previsions De Witte’s interest in depicting a community of the faithful gathered in common expression of their beliefs. That

249 Geertgen’s work depicts holy figures rather than lay worshipers does not detract from its contribution to the development of church interior painting in the northern Netherlands. We can see in Geertgen’s painting motifs that recur in De Witte’s, though within a different religious context: for example, the women who occupy the chairs and study their prayer books or mind their children in the foreground of Geertgen’s church frequent the same space and exhibit similar activities in De Witte’s paintings. The pairing of the seated mother holding an open book with her daughter in De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk (fig. 60) is reminiscent of the juxtaposition of Anne with her daughter Mary in Geertgen’s Holy Kinship. In the middle ground of the church, the three boys absorbed in their own activity (albeit a Christian ritual of symbolic significance rather than a children’s game) anticipate De Witte’s similar interest in depicting restless youths. Although many of the men and women in Geertgen’s work face the viewer rather than the altar, their containment between the two rows of columns that designate the nave of the church and their symmetrical placement around the altar implies that just as they share genealogy, they constitute a community of the faithful. An unusual painting attributed to the Leiden artist Aertgen Claesz. van

Leyden (c. 1498-1564), The Calling of St. Anthony (fig 80, c. 1530, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) also deserves consideration for its depiction of a faith-based Dutch community—despite Karel Van Mander’s assessment of Aertgen’s style as “shoddy and unpleasing.”16 In this painting, Aertgen’s congregants, who demonstrate awareness of their surroundings, interact with each other, and in some cases attend to the preacher, create a much more

250 convincing sense of a diverse community that has come together in profession of faith than that pictured in Geertgen’s Holy Kinship. The subject of the painting is a continuous narrative that shows St. Anthony, the patron saint of infectious disease, twice: once as a prominent member of the congregation gathered to hear the priest’s sermon, and again at right, distributing bread to the poor and the lame. He is distinguished by his blue, fur-lined coat and the cross and bell around his neck, which he wears in both scenes. Presumably, at the sermon on the left, Anthony experiences his calling from God after hearing a verse from the book of Matthew commanding him to “go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.”17 At the right, he acts on this initiative (but in Aertgen’s version of the story, Anthony distributes bread instead of possessions and apparently decides to keep his fine clothing). The painting is notable for its foregrounding of “listening,” most notably in the figure of Anthony, who gazes at the preacher as he delivers the sermon. Proof that Anthony heeds the preacher’s words lies in his subsequent actions, which play out in the background of the painting. Although the church interior at the left of the composition, with its ornamental swags and garlands and its putti peeking through oculi in the barrel vault, is likely a fanciful rendering rather than a depiction of an actual church, Aertgen creates a persuasive sense of community among the congregation; in contrast to Geertgen’s detached figures, Aertgen unifies the congregants by creating a focal point—the priest in the pulpit—to which most attend. Additionally, he presses the throng of people shoulder-to-shoulder with their

251 neighbors and includes several conversing figures, such as the seated man and woman who lean toward each other in the foreground. A few of the constituents, including the young child in the foreground, the woman with her hands together just behind the child, and the standing man in a black cape at the right, make eye contact with the viewer. De Witte later employs all of these methods of designating community and involving the viewer-as-congregant. Aertgen’s Catholic congregation is oriented not toward the altar in the choir, visible in the background of the painting, but toward the priest in the pulpit, who occupies a significant amount of space in the foreground. De Witte’s fascination with the theme of the preacher delivering a sermon finds its sixteenth-century counterpart in Aertgen’s painting: both Aertgen and De Witte feature the preacher leaning over the edge of the pulpit and gesturing animatedly to the congregation. Considering the date of the painting, it is possible that this focus on a priest sermonizing to the laity reflects some early stirrings of controversy regarding the practices of the Catholic Church and the Habsburg dominance over the Low Countries—or perhaps an effort to emphasize the preaching aspect of the Church as defense against Protestant polemics. It is also notable that, although the painting depicts scenes from the life of a saint, it draws attention to the importance of listening to scripture as guidance for conducting one’s daily life.18 The didactic nature of the painting is reiterated in the image of Moses with the Ten Commandments that hangs above the priest’s head. Aertgen’s foregrounding of the faithful and their varied degrees of attention to the sermon anticipate De Witte’s depictions of discernment and distraction within the Calvinist community.

252 Although precedents for the representation of faith-based community may be traced to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuries, more immediate and likely accessible models for De Witte’s conception of the Reformed congregation may be found in Rembrandt’s oeuvre: specifically, his painting of John the Baptist Preaching (fig. 96, c. 1634, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbeistz Gemäldegalerie) and his two prints of Christ Preaching, better known as La Petite Tombe (fig. 103, c. 1652) and The Hundred Guilder Print (fig. 99, c. 1649). Rembrandt’s works—which, unlike those of Geertgen tot Sint Jans and Aertgen Claesz van Leyden, were produced in the Calvinist context of seventeenth-century Amsterdam—possibly inspired De Witte’s images of Reformed worship. In particular, Rembrandt and De Witte share an interest in creating a sense of the diversity of the preacher’s audience that perhaps reflects the colorful assortment of listeners attracted to contemporary Reformed sermons in Amsterdam. All three of Rembrandt’s images depict a charismatic Biblical orator delivering a Christian message to a multifarious gathering assembled in an ambiguous setting. Despite the motley nature of the audience in these works, the common bond of belief is evident among those who watch and hear. For example, in John the Baptist Preaching, Rembrandt highlights a circle of mostly receptive, seated audience members immediately surrounding John; some of these figures gaze upward at him, whereas others cock their heads or rest their chins contemplatively on their palms, which suggests willingness to listen. Likewise, La Petite Tombe features three figures at Christ’s feet in similar poses. The Hundred Guilder Print, which may be considered more of a

253 complex narrative than the other two works,19 communicates the common faith persuasion of the crowd through the surge of the sick and impoverished at right toward Christ and the approach of the mothers with their children at left. Still, not all of those in attendance are receptive to the sermons of Christ or John the Baptist. This is particularly evident in the Hundred Guilder Print (fig. 102) and John the Baptist Preaching, where Rembrandt contrasts the attentive congregants of every age and status with the Pharisees and Sadducees, who visibly reject the speaker’s authority by turning away from him to confer amongst themselves, signifying that their ears are intentionally “closed.”20 Additionally, in John the Baptist Preaching, Rembrandt incorporates alongside listening constituents a number of possibly well intentioned but evidently otherwise-occupied adult audience members, perhaps models for the inattentive among De Witte’s worshippers. We see this, for example, in the figure of the man asleep at John the Baptist’s feet, as well as the mothers attending their children in the same painting. These distracted figures in Rembrandt’s works should not be confused with the identifiable Jews, who intentionally turn away from the Christian message. Of the three representatives of Rembrandt’s oeuvre mentioned here, particular attention must be paid to his John the Baptist Preaching as a model for De Witte’s depictions of Reformed worship. De Witte might have had the opportunity to see this work, as it was in the Amsterdam collection of Jan Six from sometime before 1658 until 1702.21 Considering this possibility, it is significant that Rembrandt not only distances John the Baptist from the foreground of the composition (perhaps to allow him to display the reactions of

254 the congregation, as well as the sweeping landscape behind the figures), but also that John the Baptist employs ardent gesture to “speak” to his followers. He extends his right hand, palm upward, while clutching his left to his heart—a pose that conveys both inner conviction and outward persuasion.22 De Witte may have discovered in Rembrandt’s painting, which—despite its condemnation of Jewish rejection of Christ—incorporates representatives from countries all over the world,23 inspiration for his cosmopolitan assembly of Calvinist congregants who gather to assess the preacher’s delivery of the Word. It is nevertheless important to take into account the fundamental difference between the human preachers in De Witte’s paintings and the holy figures who lead the sermon in Rembrandt’s works: the authority of Christ and that of John the Baptist is understood, whereas fallible preachers who disseminate the Word must gain the respect of their congregations. This lends an element of clarity to the reactions of the crowds in Rembrandt’s images, and explains the impulse of the receptive to draw near to these charismatic leaders. The lure of Christ in the Hundred Guilder Print is palpable; the human tide of believers surges toward him. Only the unbelievers abstain. In contrast, a number of the faithful along the periphery of the preekkerk in De Witte’s paintings, including the pervasive rückenfigur, may earnestly listen to and evaluate the preacher. Their distance does not necessarily signify lack of faith or commitment; it perhaps suggests a commendable, discriminating approach to the Calvinist service.

255 Whereas the oft-mischievous children in church interiors paintings by De Witte and his contemporaries are generally interpreted as lessons in Christian obedience,24 Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print specifically associates their presence with Matthew 19:13-14. According to the story, when Christ’s disciples objected to children being presented to him for blessing, “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’”25 At the center of the composition, Rembrandt depicts Christ with arm outstretched as he prepares to lay his hand on the proffered child (fig. 100); behind them, another youth points eagerly toward Christ and tugs on the clothing of his mother (fig. 101). Notably, the theme of this narrative is Jesus’s inclusive definition of community; his reprimand to the disciples both asserts the place of children in Christian worship and suggests that all who follow Jesus are like children in their newfound faith. We may extend this understanding to the distracted little boy in La Petite Tombe, who draws in the dirt rather than looking to Christ. It is likely that he still hears, but lacks the maturity to listen. The child’s inattention may be viewed sympathetically; although he is too young to understand the significance of Christ’s sermon, he nevertheless numbers among the blessed. It is even possible to apply this interpretation to the children who frequent De Witte’s sermon paintings. Like the many congregants new to the Reformed faith community, children represent the “unlearned” that occupy the ideological—and, at times, physical—margins of Calvinist worship. Perhaps, in this respect, the children who almost invariably inhabit the outskirts of the painted preekkerk would have served as a reminder

256 to the contemporary viewer-as-congregant to approach their faith, and their fellow congregants, with a child’s sincerity and acceptance.

The Permeability of the Calvinist Community The Reformed church in the seventeenth-century Netherlands was, from its inception, a fluid entity. Significantly, the first Calvinist sermon in the Netherlands was held in an open field, where the preacher’s voice was accessible to all within hearing distance.26 We may obtain a sense of the expansiveness of space and the crowds that attended such hedge sermons in Pieter Bruegel’s The Preaching of John the Baptist (figs. 81-82, 1566, Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts). Although a Biblical narrative with the forerunner of Christ standing amidst the horde gathered to witness his sermon, a number of the congregants wear contemporary clothing, and Bruegel includes a distant view of a church in the background. As the painting was executed in 1566, the same year that Protestant hedge preaching emerged in the Netherlands, it is possible Bruegel was inspired by one of these open-air events. Bruegel’s crowd of congregants (fig. 82), who variously cling to tree trunks, gape or gaze at the preacher, and engage in private conversations or even fortunetelling, anticipates the variety of listeners and loafers who later appear in Rembrandt’s John the Baptist, as well as De Witte’s sermon paintings. It is possible to discern from this motley assembly, which resembles the “group of unsavory-looking people” who purportedly composed initial congregations,27 the widespread appeal of such an informal sermon.

257 Perhaps even more significant was the lack of walls to contain the sounds of worship during the summer of hedge preaching; the Word of God, which for centuries had been largely confined to churches and monasteries, to the clergy and the elite, now freely circulated among the populace in the open air of the countryside, where anyone with open ears could listen. From the first, the Reformed sermon privileged the sense of sound as the means of attracting followers, who were invited, according to a contemporary Catholic observer, “to hear the ‘Word of God,’ as [the congregants] called it.”28 It is worth noting that the very use of the term “Word” to describe the sermon suggests spiritual enlightenment through the interrelated acts of speaking and listening. This section explores the permeability of the seventeenth-century Calvinist faith, which, like the incipient hedge sermons that introduced Reformed preaching to the Netherlands, was not confined to the arbitrary boundaries of the preekkerk, or even the walls of the physical church. We have already seen, for example, how the sounds of the service resonated within the home-as-kleyne kerck, where sermon paintings and speaking likenesses of popular preachers perhaps reinforced Biblical discussions and oral transmission of the Word within the domestic context. The church walls delimited the sphere of Reformed worship only insofar as they contained the preacher’s voice within them. The frequently open doors in De Witte’s paintings (figs. 18, 22, 28, 34) suggest that the sounds of worship easily extended through apertures in the walls to reach the ears of the community at

258 large. Likewise, the church organ and carillon penetrated the perimeter of the church and filled adjacent public squares with music.

Public Engagement and the Calvinist Church Calvin actively nurtured among his congregants a sense of community as a cornerstone of the Reformed faith, which stemmed from his belief that each congregant was set his own priestly task: “For we…in [Christ] being priests, offer ourselves and our all to God.”29 To this end, for example, Calvin emphasized the involvement of the congregation in the church service through congregational singing: in 1562, the Genevan Psalter, a collection of 150 metrical psalms (translated into Dutch in 1566 by Petrus Datheen), was completed under Calvin’s supervision.30 The Genevan Psalter was intended to make the psalms more accessible to the laity and incorporate their participation into the service.31 Calvinist theology reinforced the Reformed church community by extending it outside of the church service and into daily life. In contrast to Catholic belief, Calvin saw marriage not as a sacramental institution, but as a covenant that involved the entire religious community.32 God, represented by the community, was a third party to the marriage agreement of two individuals. In Dutch Reformed churches, the minister announced the betrothal of a couple from the pulpit for three consecutive Sundays to provide congregants opportunity either to sanction or object to the union.33 The couple’s parents, as “God’s lieutenants,” blessed the union; two witnesses served as “God’s priests to their peers”; the minister represented God’s spiritual power; and the

259 magistrate signified God’s temporal power.34 To exclude any party was to exclude God from the pact, which rendered the marriage null and void.35 Calvin also promoted charity as the moral responsibility of the Reformed community. Although charitable organizations designed to ameliorate rising levels of poverty existed throughout Europe prior to the spread of Protestantism, owing largely to the Catholic dogma of “good works” as prerequisite to salvation, the Protestant movement—and Calvinism, in particular—was responsible for the centralization of poor relief in many countries.36 Reformed churches provided financial assistance to the deserving poor of their congregation as a means of ensuring that these citizens would be exemplary members of church and community.37 By the time De Witte arrived in Amsterdam in 1651, Reformed Church councils required church membership for at least two years to receive poor relief.38 The charitable outreach of the Reformed church, which was limited to lidmaten, demonstrates both an attempt to draw the needy into the Calvinist fold and a genuine interest in caring for indigent members of the congregation as a means of fostering the Calvinist community. Just as the Reformed Church reached outward to strengthen local ties to the faith community, it also nurtured the communal bond though its provision of the physical church as a haven for citizens, regardless of their confessional allegiance.39 The building served as a shelter from inclement weather, a playground for children, a locus for gatherings, and a neighborhood cemetery. Since these functions were largely confined to the wandelkerk, scholars have assumed that this portion of the church, as opposed to the preekkerk,

260 functioned as a secular realm. However, it is possible that the contemporary Dutch community regarded the wandelkerk as an extension of the preekkerk, where daily activities were invested with spiritual significance by virtue of their location in the church. That such a physical and ideological division between wandelkerk and preekkerk—or even between the interior space of the church and the exterior civic community—did not necessarily exist in the early modern period may be demonstrated by the ties between seafaring and the Church, which were particularly important to the identity of Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk. The Oude Kerk, formerly dedicated to St. Nicolas, the patron saint of sailors, marked the junction between the Amstel and the IJ during the seventeenth-century; its tower, the tallest in Amsterdam, served as a lighthouse for seamen.40 The literal function of the Oude Kerk as a guide for ships was reinforced by the Church’s symbolic significance as a moral compass. Accordingly, sailors and their families prayed in the Oude Kerk for safe voyages, and renowned sea captains such as Jacob van Heemskerck (1567- 1607) and Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), both members of the Oude Kerk, were hailed as “sailors with God” (“schippers naast God”).41 In this context, we may refer again to the elegy that accompanies the portrait print of Amsterdam preacher Eleazar Swalmius, which asserts that “he stood as skillful steersman at the church’s helm / While he led the people on with a bright light.”42 Although the miniature ships that adorned the Oude Kerk’s ambulatory prior to the Reformation were removed in 1578, the close association between the Calvinist community and Amsterdam’s seafaring

261 enterprise still manifested in the physical church, which housed the tombs of naval heroes, steered vessels to safety, and even provided space for sailors to mend their nets and sails.43 The Church as a site of physical and spiritual refuge, as a beacon to attract endangered souls, is also indicated by the employment of organs during “walking concerts” (wandelconcerten), designed to keep strollers within the bounds of church walls.44 Leiden organist Cornelis Schuyt (1557-1616) was instructed to play “on the town organs in the churches…at such times and places…for the recreation and diversion of the congregation, and to keep the same as much as possible out of the inns and taverns during the middle of the day…he shall play every day after vespers…for one hour at a time.”45 The organ distracted parishioners who might otherwise engage in unsavory pastimes. The popularity of walking concerts points to the importance of promenading as a restorative activity. The three figures who walk down the aisle of the wandelkerk in De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon (fig. 69, nd, Dallas, Edsel Collection) may be considered strollers (wandelaars)46 who take in the sights and sounds of the service while exercising. Saenredam’s Interior of Saint Bavo, Haarlem (fig. 84, 1631, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art), which depicts strollers in the nave of the Bavokerk, suggests that walking in the church was prevalent outside of the service, as well. It is notable that walking for physical—and, at times, spiritual—health appealed to a broad European audience by the seventeenth century.47 Evidence of people strolling in Dutch churches during sermons and

262 walking concerts suggests that this activity was site- and sensory dependent; the gesturing burgher in Saenredam’s painting likewise indicates that wandelaars valued the visual experience of promenading in the church. Perhaps, then, we may view church walking not as a secular activity, but as one that restored the spirit.

Liefhebbers and Liminal Space The church doors were “open” to all who wanted to enter, regardless of their nationality, social status, or individual beliefs. We may extend this porosity between inside (the church, the home) and outside (the community), between public and private,48 to the fluidity of confessional allegiance, and the related experience of listening to the sermon from the threshold of the preekkerk. By examining several of De Witte’s painted congregants who dwell in the liminal space where preekkerk segues to wandelkerk, where sacred purportedly gives way to secular, we may arrive at an understanding of the pervasive religiosity of seventeenth-century life, and how this flexible confessional exchange was represented in De Witte’s paintings. A distinguishing feature of the seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed confession was its status as the public—but not the official—church. For Dutch citizens, this meant that the Church furnished a number of services, namely marriage and baptism, without regard for the confessional allegiance of those involved.49 Additionally, church attendance was not compulsory, nor was a formal profession of the Reformed faith.50 Consequently, less than one- quarter of the population in Amsterdam had declared formal affiliation with the Calvinist church by the latter half of the seventeenth-century.51

263 This did not, however, mean that only the minority of Dutch citizens attended sermons or considered themselves partial to the Reformed persuasion. A significant number of congregants were liefhebbers—sympathizers who participated in Reformed worship without officially committing themselves to membership.52 This distinction is apparent as early as 1557, when the elders and deacons of the Reformed church at Antwerp proposed, “as we live in a place where the people, in their blindness, speak ill of the way of God, there must be a separation between the children of God and those of the World.”53 The term “liefhebber,” which literally translates as “lover,” was employed after 1572 to distinguish a non-committal congregant from a lidmaat (member).54 Although liefhebbers were excluded from communion, typically administered three to four times a year, they were free to attend services without submitting to the discipline of the kerkeraad. Thus, for example, we may explain the censure of Hendrickje Stoffels, a professed member of the Reformed church, for extramarital intercourse with Rembrandt van Rijn,55 who was not called before the kerkeraad as he was not formally within their sphere of discipline.56 The extreme expectations for lidmaten of the Reformed church, subject to prerequisite examinations, home visitations from church elders as well as complaints from fellow members,57 may explain the high proportion of liefhebbers to confessional adherents. Although church membership carried a certain degree of status, as it was seen as a public assertion of one’s eerlijkheid (honor),58 it seems as though the majority of the Dutch population—including De Witte—felt more comfortable existing at the margins of the Reformed community. Even those who did choose to join the Church often did so only

264 later in life, which suggests that such a step represented a significant commitment. For example, the Dutch poet Jacob Cats (1577-1660), renowned for his moralizing emblem books, did not formally commit himself to the Reformed church until age 30.59 Frisian Farmer and diarist Dirck Janszoon (1578-1636), whose writings evidence his piety, nevertheless resisted confessionalization until 1624, when he joined the local Reformed congregation at the age of 46, just twelve years before his death.60 De Witte pays particular attention to those congregants who inhabit the periphery of the preekkerk, which is always located in the foreground of his paintings. It is likely that a number of these figures represent individuals who have simply not arrived in time to secure a choice location in the heart of the preekkerk, and earnestly strain to hear and see the preacher over the din of the crowd. In some cases, however, it is possible that De Witte suggests through their placement along the physical periphery of the preekkerk a corresponding ideological resistance to confessional commitment. These, perhaps, are the liefhebbers, the noncommittal congregants who choose to attend service but— for a variety of reasons—decline formal allegiance with the Church. It is notable that the word “liefhebber,” also used during this period to designate art connoisseurs and music aficionados, suggests that this type of congregant had sincere love for God. Whatever the behavior of congregants in De Witte’s paintings, and regardless of their formal ties to the Reformed church, one important fact must not be overlooked: De Witte represents congregants who choose to listen. It is true that some members of the community may have been motivated to attend sermons for the status their

265 affiliation imparted. However, it is likely that for the majority, their inner convictions compelled them to attend. 61 Although the sleeping congregant in the central foreground box seat of the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (fig. 32), for example, demonstrates “closed ears,” others—including the recurring figure with his back to the viewer (figs. 30, 62, 68) and the standing woman who peers over the baptismal enclosure at the preacher in the London Oude Kerk (figs. 18 and 21)—are evidently engaged in the sermon. The faithful represented in De Witte’s paintings are not the reluctant congregants of the Reformed service in the Palatinate, where mandatory attendance precipitated the widespread inattention of the conscripted, who tossed nutshells from the balcony onto those seated below.62 Nor are they all the docile sheep who uncritically receive the Word, such as we see in sermon paintings by Berckheyde, Coesermans, and Sibilla—although a number of the seated congregants who inhabit the preekkerk proper in De Witte’s paintings may be interpreted accordingly. De Witte stresses the identity of the foreground painted congregants with the Reformed community by emphasizing their individual actions and responses to the preacher—that is, whether and how they “listen.”

It is logical that those who have not officially joined the lidmaten would experience the service from the margins of the preekkerk, in part because the congregants who occupied pews and box seats (and often held reserved spaces in the church) had to pay a fee for the privilege. On the other hand, those who brought their own portable chairs or who stood during the service could do so gratis. Additionally, of course, it was much easier (and less

266 noticeable) to evacuate one’s position on the periphery, which would conceivably allow liefhebbers to depart at will—and perhaps escape the scrutiny of the preacher’s notice. Significant in this regard is De Witte’s regular inclusion of an open door in his paintings, sometimes with a congregant hovering at the doorway (for instance, fig. 34), which reinforces the concept of the Calvinist community as a fluid entity whose boundaries are permeable. However, it seems hasty to conclude that unwillingness to pledge membership to the Reformed church necessarily indicated irreconcilable differences between the liefhebber’s faith and Calvinist tenets. 63 Certainly, this was occasionally the case (as, no doubt, it also applied to lidmaten); but it is equally plausible to argue that those who inhabited margins of the Church simply had not chosen to join yet. Such hesitation suggests a discerning attitude that is very much in keeping with Calvin’s exhortation to evaluate the message of the preacher rather than accept it uncritically. It also reflects the mutability of denominational affiliation, as a number of Dutch citizens— perhaps including De Witte—switched back and forth between confessions, or even “sampled” various modes of Christian worship without ever committing to any given Church. Moreover, we might interpret liefhebber attendance at Reformed services as even more meaningful than that of the lidmaten, as the latter were subject to disciplinary action if their behavior was found wanting, whereas the former were under no obligation (implied or otherwise) to attend worship. Regardless of the individual’s confessional adherence, the periphery of the

267 preekkerk in De Witte’s paintings should be viewed not as a “contradictory space” juxtaposed to the heart of the nave,64 but as an extension of the community of worship—a liminal space wherein figures exercise their right to choose their faith and, perhaps, eventually accede to full membership. Among the constituents of this area in De Witte’s paintings, we may observe the greatest variety of activity, interaction, and poses. For instance, De Witte’s Kremer Oude Kerk features two boys huddled together in conversation in the center foreground (fig. 62). In this work as well as both versions of London’s Oude Kerk (figs. 18 and 21-22), a woman sits with her back to the preekkerk and intently studies her kerkboek. In his Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (fig. 28), De Witte juxtaposes the sleeping congregant next to one who appears engaged in his text (fig. 32), and just to the right of them includes a balding man who stands in shadow and looks out at the viewer with his brows drawn together in an expression of anxiety or uncertainty (fig. 33). Common to three of these paintings is a figure we have already met, whose repeated inclusion by De Witte merits further investigation in this section: the caped rückenfigur with a rigid, upright posture, feet planted perpendicular to each other on the ground, his back to the viewer as he directs his unwavering attention to the preacher. Our examination of the peripheral inhabitants of De Witte’s painted preekkerk begins with this well-dressed man who stands near the foreground and surveys the scene from the same vantage point as both the audience and the artist. Beverly Heisner, who attempts to assign iconographic significance to recurring figures in De Witte’s paintings, asserts that his contemplative pose

268 and often-pronounced isolation from surrounding figures evoke “the brevity of fame, and of life itself.”65 Her analysis, however, does not take into account the many instances of the cloaked figure’s painted participation in the Calvinist service, where he always focuses his unwavering attention on the preacher, seemingly oblivious to the distractions surrounding him. We might interpret this figure, possibly a surrogate for De Witte, as a means of enticing the viewer to immerse himself in the reality of the painted scene before him.66 An example of an artist portraying himself from the back may also be found in Jan Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (fig. 142, c. 1666, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches), where the artist, seen from behind and seated at his easel, has been convincingly identified as a self-portrait of Vermeer.67 Vermeer displayed this painting in his own house to showcase his talents to art lovers and potential clients, which indicates that Vermeer saw the work as representative of his oeuvre and suggests that his contemporary audience associated the artist in the painting with Vermeer.68 That Vermeer places the artist in his studio, a popular setting for contemporary self-portraits,69 and shows him painting the type of scene for which Vermeer was known (namely, an isolated female figure lit from the left) lends credence to his identification with this figure. Similarly, De Witte’s surrogate appears to observe intently the subject matter in which De Witte specialized. Just as Vermeer’s artist views his model for inspiration, De Witte’s caped man looks at and, presumably, listens to the service. Regardless of whether De Witte intended a connection between his identity and that of the caped man, the figure’s consistently liminal position in De Witte’s paintings of the Reformed service lends plausibility to his status

269 as liefhebber. In this context, his erect and standing pose, segregation from the surrounding congregants, and axial relationship with the preacher in the pulpit suggest that he carefully attends to the content of the sermon. We have noted the recurring appearance of the caped man not only in De Witte’s Calvinist church interiors, but also in his depictions of Jewish and, possibly, Catholic worship spaces. In his Interior of an Imaginary Catholic Church (fig. 38, 1668, Mauritshuis, The Hague), he appears to observe the humans and the Catholic accoutrements that populate the vast space of the invented church; unlike the figure’s depictions in Reformed churches, here he wears only a skullcap, having removed his hat in deference to Catholic custom. De Witte’s possible sympathy toward the Catholic faith adds significance to his identification with this individual, who engages with various faith communities represented by De Witte. The caped figure in De Witte’s Interior of the Portuguese Jewish Synagogue (figs. 64-65, 1680, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) is an outsider to the worship community, as he stands among other figures whose dress distinguishes them from those wearing tallitot, or prayer shawls, in the body of the congregation.70 The figure’s location in the liminal space of the composition suggests that he acts as a critical observer of the rabbi who leads the congregants in worship. The rückenfigur in the synagogue, in particular, speaks to the “interconfessional conviviality”71 that thrived in the Dutch Republic, where houses of faith were open to anyone willing to listen. Just as it is possible to view the rückenfigur in De Witte’s Calvinist churches as a judicious prospective lidmaat whose location on the threshold of

270 the preekkerk indicates his critical evaluation of both the preacher and the principles of the Reformed Church, we may also understand him to represent the modern cosmopolitan Diogenes who seeks truth in the various religious houses of Amsterdam. De Witte’s three depictions of the Portuguese Jewish Synagogue (one is housed in Jerusalem, the other was destroyed in 1945) reveal a timely knowledge of, curiosity about and openness toward the Sephardic house of worship and its faith community: De Witte painted his two extant pieces in 1680, just five years after the opening of the Esnoga in 1675, which reveals an intense interest in a marginalized and segregated religious group72 very much in keeping with a Diogenes-like perspective on organized religion. Another recurring type in De Witte’s works is that of the seated woman whose back is to the preekkerk as she studies a book on her lap. In at least three instances, the woman’s position in the composition is separated from the preacher by an architectural barrier such as a pier, box seat or baptismal enclosure, which indicates that she could not see the preacher even if she were to turn her chair around to face him (figs. 18, 22 and 58). It is conceivable that these women inhabit the margins of the preekkerk to attend to their children,73 who are too young to pay proper attention to the sermon and would otherwise distract those in the preekkerk proper from listening to the preacher. But it is also plausible that the women represent a means of receiving the scripture through individual study. In the Kremer Oude Kerk, it is notable that the reading woman in front of the left foreground pier is the caped man’s opposite: whereas she faces away

271 from the preacher and sits with her book, he stands facing the preacher (fig. 62). Both appear to consider the tenets of the Reformed faith seriously. It may be argued that the woman, who is not subject to the manual rhetoric of the preacher, is in a more qualified position to assess his message critically, with the aid of her kerkboek. In this sense, perhaps the book reinforces the aural means of internalizing the sermon; if, for example, the woman is reading the scripture that is simultaneously quoted and expounded by the preacher, the book may concretize the “heard” message in the congregant’s memory more effectively than the transient sound of the sermon alone. Alternatively, the woman’s absorption in her kerkboek is perhaps indicative of her freedom to read and interpret the Word directly, instead of depending on its dissemination by the preacher. We may also consider the recurrent appearance of the book in De Witte’s paintings as a means of drawing attention to the transmission of the Word, which, in the context of the sermon, is primarily oral. If we assume that the book material corresponds with the preacher’s message, and that congregants employ these texts to augment the sermon, the open books in sermon paintings demonstrate the active “listening” of those who study them.

In this light, perhaps the foreground inclusion of the book in Coesermans’ Nieuwe Zijds Chapel (fig. 137) is an invitation to the viewer-as-congregant to look and “listen.” The beholder plays an active role by imagining the contents of the book and “filling in” the blank pages with the Word “spoken” by the preacher. In Coesermans’ painting, the observer is able to view the book and

272 the dominee simultaneously, which suggests complementary modes of receiving the Word. As is the case with the painted book in Coesermans’ work, the text in De Witte’s painted books is not discernible, which leaves their identity open to interpretation.74 It seems, however, highly unlikely that those figures who read their open books in De Witte’s paintings are engaged in any material other than Protestant text. Although it is impossible to determine the precise content of any given book held or read by a painted congregant, we may surmise that these texts fall into the category of kerkboeken, which include scripture as well as catechisms, formularies, prayers, and songs that were intended to accompany the service.75 These books were typically owned by congregants, who carried them by attaching a cord to the ringed clasps to create a handle (visible, for example, in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk, fig. 21) that was alternatively worn around the neck.76 The covers of kerkboeken were often imprinted with the names of their owners; the elite even decorated them with gold and silver, indicating the high value congregants placed on them.77 As these books were so popular among those who could afford them (likely the same class of patrons who bought De Witte’s paintings), they would have been immediately recognizable to the informed contemporary viewer. Here it is worthwhile to emphasize that this faith-based community is formed on the foundation of the scripture itself rather than the Word’s interpretation by the preacher. As Calvin insisted that congregants critically evaluate the preacher’s message and follow along in the text rather than rely on the preacher’s accuracy in conveying the Word, the idea that only those in

273 accord constitute the community is at odds with a fundamental tenet of the Reformed faith, and suggests that the complacent and passive follower is more involved in the community than the active and critically engaged listener.78 The proliferation of religious books among liefhebbers and lidmaten alike would have promoted a “culture of listening,”79 as well as a culture of reading, that valued attentive, analytical discernment in parsing accurate from fallacious interpretation of scripture. One final figure is worthy of note in our investigation of faith on the margins of De Witte’s sermon paintings. The bald-headed man who dwells in shadow adjacent to the compound pier on the right of the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (figs. 28 and 33) is also a recurring figure in De Witte’s works; we have already encountered him seen from the back in De Witte’s London Oude Kerk (fig. 23).80 Unlike the caped rückenfigur at the left of the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk, this congregant turns away from the preacher and seems to hover indecisively on the extreme edge of the preekkerk. It is possible that the man’s removal of his hat indicates his lack of familiarity with the Reformed tradition, and perhaps even his former or current affiliation with the Catholic Church, since Calvin objected to doffing of hats as reminiscent of Catholic practice.81 Indeed, most of the men in De Witte’s representations of the Reformed service wear hats, although it is significant that at least two other men in the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk—one approaching from the background and the other entering at the right—carry their hats. More importantly, the individualized facial features of the family at the right raise the possibility that they may be portraits of the patron family; if

274 this is the case, they must be lidmaten on their way to the service. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the removal of the hat would necessarily signify ignorance of Calvinist practice. The families in the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk stride purposefully toward the preekkerk, which indicates a sense of comfort with and belonging to the faith community. On the other hand, especially when paired with the balding man’s facial expression of consternation, the manner in which he clings to his hat suggests uncertainty, and conveys the enormity of the individual’s choice: pledge confessional allegiance to the Reformed community, dwell on the outskirts as a liefhebber, or abandon the Church altogether. It is also possible to interpret the balding man’s lack of hat (and hair) as a mark of his sincerity—he came to the Church solely to hear the Word and to seek out a faith community with which he could identify, and has nothing to hide. As with the unhatted figure encountered earlier in the London Oude Kerk, it is perhaps significant that this man’s ears are visible; due to the removal of his hat, they are well and truly “open.” We may contrast the balding man in this respect to the “closed ears” of the seated congregant— likely a lidmaat, as he occupies a box seat—who disguises his apparent disinterest in the service by tilting his hat forward so that he naps unobserved (fig. 32). It is impossible to delineate the exact perimeter of the preekkerk in any of De Witte’s paintings, just as it undoubtedly was in the physical church. It is perhaps more appropriate to suggest that there was, in effect, no division between preekkerk and wandelkerk at all, particularly since the preacher’s

275 voice could be heard throughout the entirety of the church. In De Witte’s paintings, the liminal space is crossed by congregants on their way to the service (figs. 15 and 28) and even occasionally inhabited by seated lidmaten, as is likely the case with the family in the Kremer Oude Kerk (fig. 60). In the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk, the three who occupy the box seat adjacent to the balding man are presumably lidmaten (fig. 32). This integration of lidmaten and liefhebbers suggests a notion of community that encompasses the congregation at large, regardless of confessional alignment. Just as the preacher is defined by the attendance and attention of his congregants, so are the congregants circumscribed by their sensory perception of the preacher. One entity cannot exist without the other. It is this codependent relationship that characterizes the Reformed faith community, and their oral/aural interaction with each other that establishes the conceptual and the physical Church. In this sense, the contemporary Calvinist community was defined by the reach of sound—both its capacity to penetrate the minds of attentive listeners, and its effectiveness at lulling the eavesdropper or the casual hearer into the fold of the faithful.

Conclusion: A “Sound” Faith In multiple respects, we may characterize the seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed church—which rose from humble beginnings in the open fields of Flanders to its public presence in the northern Netherlands through the persuasiveness of the spoken Word—as a “sound” faith. Sound, as the defining feature of the Reformed church and its primary means of spreading its tenets, signifies community. The transmission of the Word from preacher to

276 congregation, and their absorption of it, depends primarily upon the aural, which De Witte expresses in his sermon paintings through the variety of listeners who indicate that the preacher’s voice is heard. My next chapter continues to examine De Witte’s evocation of sound, this time through his attention to the organ, which played an important role in building the Reformed community during the seventeenth-century. During this period, most public performances of music took place in the church. Towns owned and maintained not only the organs, but also the carillons, which were housed in the church towers that served as lookout posts against fire and other threats to town safety.82 Bells were a constant presence in the community, as they signaled the hours of the clock and the beginning and end of the workday.83 Like organs, bells rang as calls to worship: three bells signified the start of Sabbath service, and the preacher mounted the pulpit immediately following the toll of the last.84 However, as public music, both the carillon and the organ blurred the boundary between secular and sacred. Organs played an important role in each city’s cultural life. Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk organ, along with the new town hall’s carillon and instruments periodically played by musicians on the first floor of the civic structure,85 were intended to attract people and uplift their moods, as indicated in a passage by Vondel that describes the instruments’ combined power for the audience in Dam Square:

The town hall tower has its ingenious bells, rich In sound. Hemony plays heavenly bell music, So fast as a lute or Sweelinck’s organ pipes, And fast cymbal sound, grasped by the fingers. Here the slide trumpet and bent and straight flutes

277 Blow Orlando’s great spirit out of the gentlemen’s windows, In honor of the law, and promenading citizens, Refreshed by merry music, in anxious reports Of war or tempest.86

One can well imagine the aural appeal of the town square, which complemented the visual attraction of the newly reconstructed town hall and the Nieuwe Kerk after the buildings were inaugurated in 1655. In this context, the organ, in concert with other public instruments, would have functioned as an emblem of civic pride as well as a socially acceptable form of entertainment that undoubtedly drew citizens not only to the square, but also into the church. They lured crowds to the church and established a communal bond through music’s universal language.

278 ENDNOTES

1John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, trans. Ross Mackenzie, repr. edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995) 8:18.

2 Calvin, Commentary on Timothy, Titus, Philemon (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 209-211.

3R. Ward Holder, “Calvin’s Exegetical Understanding of the Office of Pastor,” in Calvin and the Company of Pastors: Papers Presented at the 14th Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 22-24, 2003, ed. David Foxgrover (Grand Rapids: CRC Product Services, 2004), 202-203.

4 Quoted in A.T. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland, tr. Maarten Ultee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 267. On the particular importance of the concept of community to Reformed faith in the Netherlands during its initial years in the late sixteenth-century, see Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands 1544-1569 (London: Cambridge, 1978), 117-124.

5 Van Deursen, 264.

6 Mia Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566-1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 158. See C.A. van Swigchem, T. Brouwer and W. van Os, Een huis voor het Woord: Het Protestantse kerkinterieur in Nederland tot 1900 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1984), 224 for an eighteenth-century floorplan (“plattegrond”) that designates prices ranging from one to five guilders for the Reformed church Den Burg in Texel.

7 Mochizuki, 158; D.L. Noorlander, “‘For the maintenance of the true religion’: Calvinism and the Directors of the Dutch West India Company,” Sixteenth Century Journal XLIV/1 (2013): passim.

8 Hillel Schwartz, “The Indefensible Ear. A History,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, eds. Michael Bull and Les Back (New York: Berg, 2003), 487.

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9 This is the sole sermon painting by Haarlemmer Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698), who is primarily known for his depictions of church exteriors and cityscapes. Cynthia Lawrence, Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (1638-1698): Haarlem Cityscape Painter (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1991), passim.

10 There is some question regarding the attribution of the painting to Geertgen, as it may have been painted by a member of his workshop after his death. However, the Rijksmuseum currently maintains its attribution to Geertgen on the basis of similarities in style to his other known works. For a discussion of this issue, see Arie Wallert, Gwen Tauber, and Lisa Murphy, The Holy Kinship: A medieval masterpiece (Zwolle: Waanders, 2001), 15-22.

11 Geertgen was affiliated with the Knights of St. John, and lived as a lay brother in the Janskerk monastery in Haarlem, where this painting was executed. Karel van Mander, Het schilder-boeck (Haarlem, 1604); repr. edn. (Utrecht: Davaco, 1969), fol. 206r; Gary Schwartz and Marten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: the painter and his time (New York: Abbeville, 1990), 228. It is possible that the Holy Kinship was painted for the monastery chapel. Wallert et al, 23-25. Perhaps Geertgen derived the architectural details in his Holy Kinship from the Janskerk, a space within which he lived and worked and with which he must have been intimately familiar. It is impossible to know for certain, as the interior of the Janskerk today has been largely restored and houses the North Holland Archives.

12 For example, seated in the foreground at the left, Anne piously studies her prayer book next to her daughter Mary, who holds the baby Jesus in her lap. James the Less, the apocryphal brother of Jesus who stands to the left of his grandmother Anne, holds a fuller’s club in reference to his subsequent martyrdom, but uses it as a walking stick in reference to the popular Medieval practice of pilgrimage; he faces away from his family members and looks out onto the surrounding countryside in anticipation of his role as Christ’s disciple. In the right foreground is Mary’s cousin Elizabeth with her son John the Baptist, who establishes his role as the forerunner of Christ by stretching out his hand in the direction of Jesus. The children in the middle ground, the one holding the chalice identifiable as John the Evangelist, enact the sacrament of the Eucharist; to reinforce this connection, they are seated in front of the altar, on which stands a polychromatic sculpture of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, an Old Testament prefiguration of God’s sacrifice of his own son. The child immediately in front of the altar lights the third candle surmounting the choir screen, which both signifies preparation for Mass and symbolizes the Trinity. Just as the activities enacted by Anne’s descendants recall rituals associated with the Medieval Christian church, the costumes of many of the figures (for example, the wimple worn by Anne and the chaperon with bourrelet and patte draped over the shoulders of Joseph), as well as the

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architecture, are more reminiscent of Geertgen’s time than they are of the Biblical period. Through the openings in the choir screen, choir stalls are visible, and above them, ribs spring from columns into Gothic groin vaults. Moreover, the view outside the church on the left shows a typically Dutch stepped façade in the distance.

13 Wallert et al, 7.

14 “seer vast en aerdigh gehandelt.” Van Mander, fol. 206r.

15 Katherine Crawford Luber, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Handbook of the Collections (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995), 173.

16 “slordigh en onplaysant.” Van Mander, fol. 237r.

17 Matthew 19:21 (NRSV).

18 Still, the painting fell victim to Iconoclastic fury in the late-sixteenth century, when the face of the priest and those of Anthony were damaged. Whether or not De Witte would have had access to this work is uncertain; it was likely commissioned for the altar of the Leiden guild of St. Anthony in the Pieterskerk, but presumably removed on or before the Pieterskerk’s conversion to Calvinist use in 1575 (in 1572, Catholic paraphernalia in Leiden, including surviving altarpieces such as Lucas van Leyden’s 1527 Triptych of the Last Judgment, were coopted by the state; today, objects from Leiden’s municipal collection are housed in the Lakenhal). Possibly, copies of the painting were extant in Leiden or even Amsterdam. It is known that Rembrandt owned several of Aertgen’s works, as evident from the 1656 inventory of his possessions, which means that examples of his painting were in Amsterdam during De Witte’s lifetime. Van Mander, as well, names a number of paintings by Aertgen in households in Leiden (fol. 237r.-237v.). Considering Aertgen’s apparent popularity during the seventeenth-century, it is conceivable that De Witte may have seen this painting or a copy of it.

19 As is commonly recognized in the literature on this print, Rembrandt innovatively combines several texts from Matthew 19. Matthew 19:2 references Christ’s curing of the sick, 19:3-12 discusses the Pharisees who reject Jesus, and 19:13-14 relates his blessing of the children.

20 For a recent discussion of these works, see Larry Silver and Shelley Perlove, “Rembrandt’s Jesus,” in Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, ed. Lloyd Dewitt (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2011), 88-94.

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21 Christopher Brown, Jan Kelch and Pieter van Thiel, “John the Baptist Preaching,” in Rembrandt: The Master and his Workshop: Paintings, ed. (Berlin: Staatliche Museen, 1991), 178.

22 See chapter five comparison of Jan van Noort’s print of Petrus Proëlius with De Witte’s Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk representation of the preacher in the pulpit.

23 For example, Van Thiel identifies Native Americans under the horse’s head just to the left of the center of the composition and in the shadows behind John the Baptist, an African immediately behind the preacher, and a Turk at the far right. “John the Baptist Preaching,” The Master and his Workshop, 178.

24 See Arie de Groot et al, Pieter Saenredam, The Utrecht Work: Paintings and Drawings by the 17th-century Master of Perspective, ed. Liesbeth Helmus (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 201; Beverly Heisner, “Mortality and Faith: The Figural Motifs within Emanuel de Witte’s Dutch Church Interiors,” Studies in Iconography 6 (1980): 110; Gary Schwartz and Maarten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and His Time (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 200, 204; Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 547-548.

25 NRSV.

26 On the phenomenon of hedge preaching, see Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands 1544-1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 5-10.

27 M. Van Vaernewijck, Troubles religieux en Flandre et dans les Pays-Bas au XVI siècle: Mémoires d’un patricien Gantois du XVI siècle, trans. H. van Duyse (Ghent: Maison d'éditions d’art, 1905) 1: 21, as quoted in Crew, 7.

28 Ibid., as quoted in Crew, 8.

29 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge, rev. ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 322.

30 Jan Luth, “The Music of the Dutch Reformed Church in Sweelinck’s Time,” in Sweelinck Studies: Proceedings of the International Sweelinck Symposium (Utrecht: Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 2002), 27.

31 Luth, 27-30.

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32 John Witte, From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 91.

33 Witte, 84.

34 Witte, 95.

35 Witte, 95.

36 Anne McCants, Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1997), 22-39; Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: an Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Random House, 1987), 576-577.

37 Charles Parker, The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572-1620 (Cambridge: University Press, 1998), 123-154.

38 Simon Groenveld, “‘For the Benefit of the Poor’: Social Assistance in Amsterdam,” in Rome/Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schulte (Amsterdam: University Press, 1997), 196.

39 Swigchem et al, 159.

40 Ileen Montijn, “De kerk en de zeeman,” speech given to mark the Christening of the procession boats in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, 7 November 2007.

41 Ibid. Michiel de Ruiter, as we have seen, was buried in the choir of the Nieuwe Kerk; Jacob van Heemskerck was laid to rest just outside of the choir in the Oude Kerk, where a commemorative tablet marks his plot.

42 Op cit chapter four n. 20.

43 “History of the Oude Kerk,” Oudekerk.nl, accessed 1 April 2014, http://www.oudekerk.nl/en/over/monument/history.

44 Swigchem et al, 159.

45 Stads-Dienaers-Aanneemboek (1532-1611), quoted in Peeters and Vente 114.

46 For the seventeenth-century use of this term as it applies to promenading, see my discussion in chapter seven.

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47 Frances Gage, “Exercise for Mind and Body: Giulio Mancini, Collecting, and the Beholding of Landscape Painting in the Seventeenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly 61, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 1167-1207. See esp. 1177-1183. Gage asserts that walking for exercise was such a widespread and common practice by the seventeenth century in England, France, and Italy that writing about it had become largely unnecessary.

48 The idea of peaceful religious coexistence in the Dutch Republic, which originated with Willem Frijhoff’s 1983 coinage of the term “omgangsoecumene,” or the ecumenicity of everyday life, is still current in the literature, and has recently generated extensive dialog regarding the extent to which representatives of different faith persuasions tolerated each other and even productively interacted, both on an institutional and individual basis. For bibliography on Frijhoff’s exploration of the irenic nature of Dutch confessionalism, see Frijhoff, “Religious toleration in the United Provinces: from ‘case’ to ‘model,’” in Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 35, n. 19. Also Frijhoff, “Katholieke toekomstverwachting ten tijde van de Republiek: structuur, en grondlijnen tot een interpretatie,” BMGN 48 (1983): 435. For more recent contributions by other authors to the question of permeable confessional boundaries, see Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith. Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) and Els Stronks, Negotiating Differences: Word, Image and Religion in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

49 Van Deursen, 263. Although only Calvinists were allowed to hold public office, this privilege extended to liefhebbers. Steven Mullaney, Angela Vanhaelen, and Joseph Ward, “Religion Inside Out: Dutch House Church3es and the Making of Publics in the Dutch Republic,” in Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms and Knowledge, eds. Bronwen Wilson, Paul Yachnin (New York: Routledge, 2010), 30.

50 Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007), 241.

51 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 472.

52 Van Deursen, 262; Willem Frijhoff, “Religious Toleration in the United Provinces,” 43; Judith Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565-1641) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 8; Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (New York: Hambledon and London, 2003), 291; Benjamin Kaplan, “Confessionalism and its Limits: Religion in Utrecht, 1600-1650,” in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the

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Golden Age, ed. Joaneath Spicer and Lynn Federle Orr (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 68. Kaplan additionally notes that Catholics maintained an analogous distinction: “devout” Catholics included klopjes (secular nuns), the hosts of so-called hidden churches (“schuilkerken”) where Catholics worshipped, and those who confessed and took communion monthly; “good” Catholics engaged in confession and communion at least at Easter; “nominal” Catholics visited the Church only to recognize births, marriages, and deaths. Ibid.

53 Brieven uit onderscheidene kerkelijke archieven, ed. H.Q. Janssen and J.J. van Toorenenbergen (Utrecht, 1877), 2: 71-72. Quoted in Alistair Duke, “The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism in the Netherlands, 1561-1618,” International Calvinism, 1541- 1715 (1985): 129.

54 Alistair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (New York: Hambledon, 2003), 291; Duke, “Ambivalent Face of Calvinism,” 130-131.

55 Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy: The Artist, His Patrons, and the Art Market in Seventeenth-Century Netherlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 42-43.

56 Sexual misconduct represented the most frequent offense reprimanded by Amsterdam’s kerkeraad, at 49% of cases. Benedict, 468.

57 In Amsterdam, the church had a bag in which members could drop reports of fellow members’ immoral behavior (Benedict 464). On discipline mandated by church elders, see Benedict, 457-458. Also Benjamin Kaplan, “Confessionalism and its Limits: Religion in Utrecht, 1600-1650,” in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age, ed. Joaneath Spicer and Lynn Federle Orr (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 68.

58 Pollmann, 197.

59 Van Deursen, 233.

60 W. Bergsma, “‘Slow to hear God’s Holy Word’? Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Friesland,” in Experiences and Explanations; historical and sociological essays on religion in everyday life, eds. L. Laeyendecker, Lammert Gosse Jansma, C.H.A. Verhaar (Ljouwert: Fryske Akademy, 1990), 66-68. Among numerous other references to God’s mercy and goodness, Dirck notes in his diary: “If property is lost, nothing is lost/If courage is lost, much is lost/If honor is lost, more is lost/If the soul is lost, all is lost.” Dirck Jansz, Het aantekeningenboek van Dirck Jansz, ed. P. Gerbenzon (Hilversum: Verloren, 1993). Quoted in and translated by Bergsma, 68.

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61 It is dismissive to assert, as does Angela Vanhaelen, that the “overall impression of the assembled group” in De Witte’s paintings “does not fully comprehend the seriousness of being in church and attending to the sermon.” The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 91.

62 Benedict, 500.

63 For this argument, see Vanhaelen, 92.

64 Ibid., 93.

65 Beverly Heisner, “Mortality and Faith: The Figural Motifs within Emanuel de Witte’s Dutch Church Interiors,” Studies in Iconography 6 (1980), 112.

66 Mariët Westermann notes that figures facing away from the viewer were commonly employed by Dutch artists of the period to signify the viewer or to provide a means of “entrance” into the scene. A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 77.

67 Walter Liedtke, Vermeer and the Delft School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 396.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 393-394.

70 The area of the synagogue De Witte depicts in the foreground was one specifically designated for visitors to the Jewish community. Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1991), 209.

71 To borrow a term from Frijhoff, “The Threshold of toleration: Interconfessional conviviality in Holland during the early modern period,” trans. Mary Robitaille, in Embodied belief: ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history, eds. J. van Eijnatten and F. van Lieburg (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2002), 39-65.

72 For the ostracism of the Jews by Calvinist ministers, see Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Random House, 1987), 591-593.

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73 The children of lidmaten are also described as liefhebbers. Alastair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 296.

74 Vanhaelen, 93. Based on this observation, Vanhaelen concludes that “it is impossible to see whether absorption in a book signifies an attentive or inattentive response to the sermon.”

75 Swigchem et al, 235.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., 234-235.

78 Vanhaelen asserts that widespread access to the Word among the populace via the ready availability of such texts may have precipitated “contradictory convictions” among liefhebbers, which, she implies, would signify segregation from the Reformed community. 93.

79 Frijhoff, “The Confessions and the Book in the Republic,” Zeitschrift Für Historische Forschung Frühneuzeitlichte Bildungsgeschichte Der Reformierten in Konfessionsvergleichenden Perspecktive: Schulwesen, Lesekultur Und Wissenschaft. Beihefte Der Zeitschrift Für Historische Forschung (2007): 205-206.

80 See, for example, De Witte’s Church Interior (1670, Chicago, Art Institute), where a balding man located in front of the pier that supports the pulpit seems to be in the process of removing his hat, as it is position in front of his face. This man is also visible in De Witte’s Rotterdam Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk (1656, Boijmans). Note, however, that the man in the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk does not appear to hold his hat in front of his face, and is facing the viewer.

81 Vanhaelen, 188 nr. 69.

82 Peeters and Vente, 110, 114; Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 49.

83 Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 49.

84 Kaplan, 48.

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85 Goossens, 155.

86 Vondel, Volledige Werken, 1655 (Amsterdam 1910), quoted in and translated by Eymert-Jan Goossens, “The Main Organ of the Nieuwe Kerk,” 155.

288 Chapter 7

GOD’S INSTRUMENT

In the Kremer Oude Kerk, De Witte makes the organ so imposing that it dwarfs the diminutive preacher and looms over the congregation (figs. 58, 63). At far left, a man standing on the outskirts of the preekkerk gazes up toward the magnificent instrument, which competes with the preacher in the pulpit for his attention. Poet and diplomat Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), a member of the Reformed faith, links the organ with the sermon, both being “concerned with the ear,” and thus both “helping me to hear God during prayer and psalm by moving my soul.”1 Just as Huygens compares the auditory power of the preacher with that of the organ, De Witte’s juxtaposition of the active, open organ and the preacher in the pulpit suggests an analogy between the two motifs as instruments of God, whose sounds not only glorify God’s Word but unite the congregation as a new Calvinist community. A comparison of De Witte’s painting to Jan Goeree’s drawing of 1700 (fig. 155) reveals that De Witte rearranged the layout of the Oude Kerk so that the main organ, instead of the smaller transept organ, occupies pride of place. Although the organ is actually at the west end of the church, beyond the left frame of the composition, De Witte places it in a nebulous realm over the heads of the congregation, in the heart of the preekkerk. De Witte likewise manipulates the architectural details of the organ, which he simplifies by omitting the rugpositief (the lower division of the organ visible in Goeree’s

289 drawing) and the shutter decoration. Instead, he focuses on the play of light and color as they delineate the pipes. In the Kremer Collection Oude Kerk, De Witte’s emphasis on the organ, its shutters open and its pipes activated by the light, points to its integral role in the Dutch Reformed community, particularly in the latter part of the seventeenth-century. Following the Reformation, the Dutch Republic witnessed a heated debate over the role of organ music in Calvinist church services. John Calvin’s condemnation of musical instruments as sinful precipitated the abolition of organ accompaniment to congregational singing. During the first half of the century throughout most of the Netherlands, the use of the organ during worship was limited to psalm-tunes at the beginning and end of service.2 By mid-century, it was acceptable in most Dutch cities for organs to play in tandem with psalm singing. However, at the time De Witte created his 1678 Kremer painting of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam remained a notable exception. It did not sanction ecclesiastical organ accompaniment until 1680—making it one of the last Dutch cities to do so, followed only by Utrecht in 1685.3 De Witte’s paintings regularly feature organs from the beginning of his time in Amsterdam through to his late works. De Witte’s focus on the organ, which often appears in tandem with depictions of the preacher delivering the sermon to the congregation, provides strong evidence that his paintings of Calvinist churches in Amsterdam visually promote organ music as an integral part of the service. Despite the recurring presence of the organ in church interior paintings by De Witte and his colleagues—notably Saenredam and

290 Anthonie de Lorme (1610-1673)—scholars have demonstrated reluctance to address these paintings as responses to the contemporary organ controversy.4 To date, only Gary Schwartz and Marten Jan Bok have devoted serious consideration to the issue, which they explore in the Haarlem context of Pieter Saenredam’s life and work.5 For the most part, scholars have declined to recognize the promotion of the organ by church interior painters, which acts as a visual counterpart to the organ’s textual propaganda in the Dutch Republic. This chapter places De Witte in the midst of the vibrant organ culture in the Netherlands, and demonstrates that as the only church interior painter to accord a repeatedly prominent role to the organ in the context of the service, he offers perhaps the most significant pictorial contribution to the organ’s advocacy in Amsterdam.

The Organ Controversy For much of the seventeenth-century, the organ was an issue of heated debate in the Netherlands. The tension between factions, known as orgelisten and contra-orgelisten, may ultimately be traced to Calvin’s anti-organ stance during the sixteenth century. Calvin’s opposition to musical instruments as “outward pomp” fit only for the spiritually weak had drastically altered the nature of the church service by shifting from an emphasis on sensory stimulation provided by incense, harps, cymbals, and notably organs to a reliance on the human voice as the expression of spirituality.6 Calvin objected to instruments as remnants of the “old order” of Catholicism, which Calvin compared to the worship of God in the Old Testament prior to the coming of Christ, signified by the “new order” of the Reformed church: “musical

291 instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law…The voice of man…assuredly excels all inanimate instruments of music.”7 Furthermore, Calvin recognized music’s potential to induce sensory impulses, and therefore restricted its employment in church services to unaccompanied singing of the psalms, asserting that “when the melody is with [the words of the song], it pierces the heart much more strongly, and enters into it; in a like manner as through a funnel, the wine is poured into the vessel; so also the venom and the corruption is distilled to the depths of the heart by the melody.”8 Calvin’s proscriptions against musical instruments were enforced in the Netherlands by the 1574 Synod of Dordrecht, which declared that organ playing in the church be “entirely abolished,” and added that the use of the organ to conclude services merely “helps people mostly to forget what they have just heard in the service…and it leads to lightheartedness.” Despite Church opposition, municipal control over organs, which had been established prior to the Reformation, ensured that few organs in the northern Netherlands were destroyed or dismantled.9 In fact, town councils sponsored the preservation and restoration of organs,10 as hour-long organ recitals, which followed morning and afternoon services, were popular attractions for music lovers. Additionally, Leiden required organists to play for an hour after the evening prayer and daily each morning from eleven to twelve o’clock during the winter. Delft mandated evening recitals during the winter on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from five to six o’clock.11

292 Astonishingly, the Rotterdam organist Johannes Crabbe (d. 1680?) was contractually obligated to play for six to seven hours every weekday from November to April.12 The lengthy and numerous organ recitals implemented by municipal authorities suggest the organ’s role in engendering community, which was central to Calvinism. These performances caused conflict between municipal and ecclesiastical authorities as early as 1589 in Arnhem, when ministers objected to the intrusion of the organ into the service. The town council responded that “the organ is not for the church, but is to be considered a civic affair.” Throughout the Dutch Republic, those who held political office were required to be lidmaten, which indicates support for the organ within the Reformed Church. Nevertheless, Arnhem magistrates, no doubt hoping to quell dissent among the clergy, clarified that “the organist was ordered to play several Psalms on the organ every day after the morning and afternoon church services, but to wait until the minister had left the pulpit, and not to play anything which would give offense.”13 Accordingly, organ music was highly regulated. In 1623, the organist of Culemborg (a province of Utrecht) was instructed to play, on Sunday mornings before service, the melody of the Ten

Commandments, a hymn from Datheen’s hymnal, and the first psalm to be sung during worship. He followed the service with the last psalm that had been sung by the congregation.14 Such restrictions were intended to appease strict Calvinists and to familiarize the public with the Genevan psalm-melodies.15 Despite the segregation of organ music from the heart of the service, organ use remained at issue for most of the seventeenth century. The most

293 vehement voice in opposition to the organ was Utrecht theologian and dominee Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676), who, in his 1634 inaugural address at the University of Utrecht, vociferously attacked even the presence of organs in churches, and argued that people had begun to consider organ recitals following services as important as the services themselves.16 The strength of Calvinist opposition to organ accompaniment in Utrecht may be explained, to some extent, by the city’s lingering sympathy toward Catholicism;17 in 1655, Voetius criticized Utrecht’s government officials as “more deformed than Reformed, [they] preferred to govern as beggars, but to die as papists.”18 Contra-orgelist sentiment was not limited to Utrecht, but flared throughout the northern Netherlands. The 1638 Synod of Delft, possibly seeking to diffuse this potentially schismatic issue, decreed, “Organ playing is held to be a neutral subject and as such is left to the freedom of the churches.” But it was the influential 1640 pamphlet written by Constantijn Huygens— renowned poet, diplomat, and secretary to stadholder Frederik Hendrik at court in The Hague—in response to the attack laid by Voetius that ensured the nation-wide reincorporation of the organ into the service. Huygens’ Use and Nonuse of the Organ in the Churches of the United

Netherlands (Gebruyck of Ongebruyck van ‘t Orgel in de Kercken der Vereenighde Nederlanden) was published in Leiden as a pamphlet four years following the city’s reintroduction of organ music into the service. In contrast to Calvin’s view of musical instruments as “lifeless,” Huygens asserts that he fights for the “living organ” as a “strong and unwavering instrument” that elevates the soul and unites the congregation as “one body whose members are

294 not to be distinguished from the whole.”19 Like Calvin, Huygens recognizes the potential for music to move human feeling, but Huygens argues that the organ, when properly incorporated during the service to guide psalm-melodies, promotes spirituality rather than profanity. However, Huygens condemns the contemporary practice of employing the organ without vocal accompaniment, particularly at the end of service when people are distracted, socializing, or intent on leaving:20

The organ is playing while the congregation leaves in throngs, while friends talk to each other…inquiries about health and news are made; new fashions are shown; tattle tales are told about the joys and sorrows of neighbors; one sets dates and hours for parties…Think of the kind of edification the organ tones bring into that crowd. They leave that multitude of people ‘stone cold,’ as the saying goes…I do not think that of the whole consistory anyone stays behind out of devotion to listen until the organ playing stops…only the sexton and a few cripples listen. In this way, the unchristian show ends. For Huygens, it is “vain” and “offensive” to relegate the playing of the sacred instrument to the moment when restless congregants who have endured a lengthy sermon are “longing for something new, for the street, for the sky,” and, considering their spiritual duties fulfilled, return their attention to the secular.21 He adds, “it is indeed ridiculous to begin part of the religious exercises of the church when one is going home,” and compares it to “setting the table again for guests who are taking their leave after having been well fed.”22 Instead, Huygens suggests that the Dutch Reformed service should:

Accompany the daily church-song of the congregation with the organ…after the announcement of the psalm, the organ [should] give a stately introduction of ten or twenty measures, this to prepare not only the voices of the congregation, but even their hearts to that modest and devoted attention which is required for the pronouncement of the holy words which are to follow.23

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He reasons that integration of the organ into the service, “alone or accompanied by the voice,”24 precipitates a sensory experience for the faithful, which emotionally moves them to proper contemplation of the divine. Moreover, Huygens criticizes the lack of musicality inherent to a congregation singing without organ accompaniment. The apparently poor vocal ability of congregants was a general concern. To this end, organists gave singing and instrumental lessons to children, who were then engaged to lead the singing during service. Additionally, Calvinist churches employed a cantor (often the church organist) to lead congregational singing; it was the cantor’s role to control the pitch and tempo and to “model” the song by singing more loudly than the congregation.25 Despite the cantor’s guidance, according to Huygens, unaccompanied congregational singing was abysmal:

We often sound as if we are howling and screaming rather than making use [of] the human voice…The tones sound as contrary as birds of different plumage. The meter is uneven like well-buckets, one rising as much as the other goes down. One yells at the top of his voice as if it were a matter of who can make the loudest noise and in this way would receive the highest honors…How would it become a municipality when appearing together…to make a request or to give thanks, and when it came to the expression of the common intention, a well-founded claim would be impeded by the careless, unmannered, confused, erring, botching, and contrary speech of the group?”26 Huygens’ implication that off-key congregational singing shames the municipality draws attention to the civic face of the Reformed church community, and reminds us that the audience for contemporary church music extended beyond the church walls and into the secular realm. His remark suggests that the congregation represents the community-at-large, and

296 mismatched voices signify division within that community. Conversely, well- tuned voices demonstrate cohesion. Huygens promotes the organ as an instrument of unity, harmony, and community that brings together individual voices in common worship of God. Huygens’ defense of the organ did not go unchallenged. One notable contra-orgelist, Reverend Jan Calckman of The Hague (1565-1642), launched a vituperative attack on Huygens’ pamphlet in his 1641 response, Antidote Against the Use or Nonuse of the Organ (Antidotum, Tegengift vant gebruyck of on-gebruyck van ‘t Orgel). Calckman accuses Huygens of “taking away and deafening the plain singing of the prosperous congregation by rattling the ears through the sound of the mute idols: namely the organ pipes.”27 He condemns organ usage as a “papist belief” (“Paeps-gesinde”)28 and asserts that the organ induces “carnal affection” (“vleeschelijcke affectie”).29 In response to Huygens’ concern about the deterioration of singing in the church, Calckman asserts, “See, Orgelist, you search for ways to take the plain singing from the congregation and introduce organ playing, about which the majority of the congregation understands as much as a cow in Flanders.”30 Calckman’s dispute with Huygens, at times, degenerates into slander. For instance, Calckman warns, “He cuts the throat of the pig and leaves it lying there to bleed.”31 Calckman compares Huygens to an inept sea captain, who wrecks the “Ship of the Church” (“Schip vande Kercken”) on “Roman cliffs” (“Roomsche klippen”).32 It would seem Calckman is prepared to blame Huygens not only for the reintroduction of the organ into the service, but also

297 for the inevitable destruction of the Reformed Church that would result from its incorporation. It is a testament to Huygens’ influence as well as the increasingly sympathetic stance on organs that Calckman was reprimanded by the elders and deacons of the church in The Hague for his attack on Huygens and forced to sign a confession of guilt, although no further action was taken against Calckman on account of his advanced age.33 Furthermore, following the 1638 Synod of Delft and Huygens’ suggestions for the proper use of organs during services, they were restored and gradually reincorporated into the fabric of Dutch Calvinist worship: Dordrecht and Maastricht reintroduced organ music in 1638, Haarlem temporarily in 1641 and permanently in 1648, Rotterdam in 1644, and Alkmaar in 1646.34 Even in Amsterdam, where organs were prohibited from ecclesiastical accompaniment until 1680, organs were still being rebuilt and decorated. The large organ in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk was completed in 1655, shortly before De Witte featured it in two of his paintings (figs. 12 and 13), Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam in San Diego’s Timken Museum (1657) and that in Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza (1658). The transept organ in De Witte’s

1661 Amsterdam Museum Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (figs. 28, 35) had recently been renovated in 1657. Given the time frame, it has been suggested that De Witte created these paintings in commemoration of each instrument’s restoration,35 either on his own initiative or at the behest of orgelist patrons, a view corroborated by the central placement of the organ in the works. Two re-publications of Huygens’s pamphlet in 1659 and 1660, both

298 in Amsterdam, also perhaps indicate the increasing orgelist sentiment in the city, and may have contributed to De Witte’s interest in depicting Amsterdam’s organs.

The Nieuwe Kerk Organ in Text and Image In January of 1645, prior to De Witte’s arrival in Amsterdam, fire consumed the city’s Nieuwe Kerk. The wooden roof caught flame when plumbers working beneath it neglected to extinguish their fire pan during lunch, and flames quickly spread through the church, demolishing the main organ and pulpit and cracking gravestones.36 The extent of the damage is apparent in an anonymous 1645 drawing, which reveals that the choir alone remained intact (fig. 130). The 1662 description of the event by Melchior Fokkens confirms that the fire completely gutted the church:

The wooden vaulting, which was dry, put flame to almost everything that was of wood, and because of the great height nobody could get to it to quench it…all the wooden vaulting and the roof, little tower, bells, organs, shores and all that was attached had collapsed into the church and burnt; only the facades and walls remained standing, and some old glass which still exists behind the choir.37 The 1645 fire is significant to our examination of the Dutch organ debate. The large-scale restoration of the organ, which began almost immediately, perhaps indicates that its destruction acted as a catalyst for Amsterdam orgelisten to rally in support of a cause that had already gained acceptance elsewhere in the Dutch Republic. Additionally, the grand new organ that replaced the instrument lost in the fire occasioned artistic response, evident in both the David cycle by Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst painted on its wings (figs. 131-132, 134-136) and in the representations of the organ by De Witte.

299 The Organ in Text A number of contemporary texts written in Amsterdam paid homage to the destroyed organ, which suggests the impact of its loss, at least in elite circles. In his 1655 poem “In Organa Exusta” (“On the Burnt Organ”), Caspar van Baerle elegizes:38

The organ that so often sung the praise of God, and with sacred songs Delighted so many of the faithful, falls in pieces to the ground. The uppermost parts damage the undermost, one part destroys the other. In a short instant everything is ruined. The pipework has been harmed by fire, the beautiful pipes have been lost in flames, The parts that sounded in their assigned position, are now silent. The rage of Vulcan flickers up to the wonderful pipes, And makes the mouths, which were apt for a hundred voices, melt. He mingles all the sounds and mixes them with barbarous sounds, He takes away the art from the material, the choleric one. Jubal, bring back the familiar songs, bring back the numerous tongues. Make the venerable metal sound again for us. Then God and the divine will please more in the churches. Sacred matters too require decent pleasures. Significantly, the elegy not only laments the loss of the organ, but also promotes it as a sacred instrument befitting incorporation into the service in the conclusion that “sacred matters too require decent pleasures.” Van Baerle recalls not the secular organ recitals, but the “sacred songs” played by the organ. He attributes the destruction of the Nieuwe Kerk organ to the pagan god Vulcan and appeals to Jubal, the biblical father of musicians,39 to restore the “numerous tongues” of the organ’s pipework. Van Baerle’s imagery of the desecrated organ falling to the ground as Vulcan rends “the art from the material” suggests that the fire expels the holy from the instrument by

300 deforming and silencing it. Considering the date of the poem, written just a few years after the publication of Huygens’s pamphlet, Van Baerle’s plea “to make the venerable metal sound again for us” so that “God and the divine will please more in the churches” can be interpreted as both a desire for the restoration of the Nieuwe Kerk organ and another voice in the campaign to reinstate ecclesiastical organ music in Dutch Calvinist services. Joost van den Vondel responds to the fire’s devastation by pleading to Mary and Catharine, the patron saints of the formerly Catholic church, to save the church from its destruction:40

Protectors, ah, protect your old institution, So that the sun may not shine here on ruins; While this church pledged to your name, Bears your titles, and was dedicated to God, In your name, two centuries ago, Such a poor town was rich in your delight, And offered you here incense, and prayers; Unfolded your strength and virtue, through prime tongues: The organ took delight in such a matter, So often his spirit drove through the pipes, And blew sounds in the angel-covered court, Seated high in the ear and choir of the Deity.

Both Vondel and Van Baerle characterize the organ as a divine instrument. Vondel, who converted to Catholicism in 1641, betrays in his poem a distinct longing for the ceremony and splendor of the pre-Reformation church, in which the organ played a prominent liturgical role. While Vondel’s elegy mourns the immediate devastation wrought by the fire, it also laments the demise of the Nieuwe Kerk’s Catholic identity, whose last vestiges dissolved with the burning of the physical church. And whereas the poem

301 ostensibly faults the fire for the collapse of the structure, there is also the underlying sense that the “fire” of Reformed zeal is to blame:

A fire cannot be extinguished, if God does not protect us. The Church is as (as violated, alas!) Some king’s bride, after the state was taken unawares, And she was robbed in her splendor Of gorgeous veils, stones, pearls and ring, And woefully maltreated, and violated.

Vondel’s impassioned description of the church’s violation, which he likens to the rape of a young bride, recalls Van Baerle’s evocation of the organ’s disfigurement at the hands of Vulcan. For Van Baerle, the organ is made base and material through the destruction of its physical and aural beauty; for Vondel, the trappings of the physical church are ultimately inconsequential:

In vain one hangs one’s heart on appearance. That which is bound with guys or copper, Bursts in the end; though it defies centuries. Do not gape at external wood or stone; The true church stands fast, and is enduring. Although Vondel writes from the point-of-view of an outsider to the Reformed church, his poem contains orgelist sentiments that must have resonated with the Amsterdam pro-organ faction. Furthermore, his influence and popularity were comparable to that of Huygens, and their humanist scholarship linked them to the same social circle of aristocratic citizens who espoused the Pythagorean principle of the harmony of the spheres: just as the movement of the heavens is synchronized in numeric harmony by the hand of God, so too does music, also governed by numeric ratios, reflect the heavenly realm.41 According to this philosophy, music was an audible demonstration of the celestial harmony, and therefore inherently religious.42

302 Consequently, humanists perceived the organ as a sacred instrument: the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601-1680), whose writing was known to the circle of Vondel and Huygens,43 dedicated the tenth book of his Musurgia Universalis (1650) to “‘The Organ with ten Pipes,’ in which is demonstrated that the nature of things stems from musical and harmonic proportions in all respects, and that the nature of the universe is nothing other than perfect music.”44 Kircher describes God as an organ-builder, and compares the world to the organ that He builds. This concept is illustrated in a print facing the title page of the tenth book, which depicts an organ with six stops. The stops in the image control six ranks of pipes, from which emerge roundels that represent each of the six days in which God created the world.45 Such a sympathetic stance on the organ, which stems in part from this humanist ideology, would have likely circulated among Amsterdam’s humanist circle and contributed to the rising orgelist spirit in Amsterdam.

The Organ Rebuilding Project Rebuilding of the Nieuwe Kerk commenced immediately after the fire, financed by the town council, which oversaw the decoration of the church and regulated its embellishment with memorials and coats-of-arms.46 The church was transformed during its rebuilding from a formerly-Catholic structure whose space had merely been appropriated by the Calvinist faith into a building modeled and furnished in the service of Calvinist ideology (though still confined to the longitudinal plan determined by the extant walls of the church). Accordingly, the enormous pulpit (1646-1664) designed by Albert Jansz. Vinckenbrinck overwhelms the narrow nave that serves as the

303 preekkerk; as the stage for the preacher, the pulpit was intended as a focal point of the newly renovated space. Oak stalls were simultaneously erected opposite the pulpit to accommodate the burgomasters during the sermon, and an enclosure was built around the pulpit and font to draw attention to the baptismal sacrament.47 The new main organ, which was unveiled in 1655 and enlarged in 1668, rivaled the pulpit as a focal point in the Nieuwe Kerk (figs. 131-132). The organ’s size and its very presence in the preekkerk suggest that it was important to the Calvinist community even before its incorporation into the service. Significantly, the Nieuwe Kerk’s restoration coincided with the construction of the new town hall, located adjacent to the church’s new main entrance on the Dam. This two-part construction enterprise transformed the heart of the city and underscored the interrelationship of sacred and secular authority in Amsterdam. Owing to the physical proximity of the church to the town hall, and the square (today’s Dam Square, known during the seventeenth- century as De Plaetse) framed by the two buildings,48 the Nieuwe Kerk was refashioned into a marker of the Calvinist community, uniting its dual functions as a site for worship and public gatherings.49

The fiery destruction of the Nieuwe Kerk organ proved to be as timely as it was disastrous. In 1645, nearby Haarlem was on the verge of formally incorporating organ music into the church service; Rotterdam had just done likewise in 1644, and Alkmaar was soon to follow in 1646. Amsterdam, on the other hand, was too mired in conservatism for Huygens’s tract or the actions of surrounding cities to stimulate speedy resolution of the organ debate. However,

304 the Nieuwe Kerk organ serves as a gauge for contemporary organ sentiment in Amsterdam; if the prevailing view had been anti-organ, the town council would not have expended money and effort to build a new instrument. Quite the contrary was apparently the case, as the organ unveiled in 1673 was the largest in the Netherlands, with three manuals, 43 stops, and 5,005 pipes, in addition to the vox humana, a reed stop on the organ named for its resemblance to the “human voice.”50 The organ project that began immediately following the fire turned into a twenty-seven year affair that involved multiple commissions, with the town council repeatedly seeking replacements for organ makers who died or moved on to other projects. Before the end of 1645, Amsterdam organ maker Germer van Hagerbeer was contracted to build a new organ “and having completed it to place it and fashion it, and make fitting according to the requirement of the art, and as quickly as possible.”51 The Van Hagerbeers were one of the most prominent and prolific families of organ makers working in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth-century; Huygens even arranged for Germer to build the organ for stadholder Frederik Hendrik’s court chapel in The Hague.52 When Van Hagerbeer died in April 1646, burgomasters sought a replacement, eventually commissioning Hans Wolff Schonat in 1650. By the time Schonat’s instrument was unveiled in 1655, the council had spent 10,000 guilders on the project. In 1668, Jacobus van Hagerbeer (brother of Germer) was enlisted to make further improvements to the organ for the sum of 10,000 guilders; after Jacobus’s death in 1670, his foreman Roelof Barentsz Duyschot finally completed the organ in 1673.

305 Artists recruited by the town council to build and decorate the town hall also garnered commissions for the Nieuwe Kerk organ. Architect Jacob van Campen (1596-1657) designed both the town hall and the Nieuwe Kerk’s main organ case according to the classical style favored by contemporary scholars such as Vondel and Huygens. Van Campen’s town hall was the largest structure in the Dutch Republic and heralded by citizens as the eighth wonder of the world. It demonstrates classical language in the symmetry of its plan and the ornamental restraint of its façade, which is decorated with Corinthian pilasters and crowned by a pediment. The dual commission of Van Campen to design both town hall and organ suggests that municipal authorities meant the latter to be comparably grand—an intention borne out in the intricate decoration and large size of the instrument. The organ’s case (figs. 131-132), with paintings by Jan Gerritsz. van Bronchorst (1602-1662) and sculptures by Artus Quellijn (1609-1668), both of whom also completed work for the town hall, resembles a classical temple front. The painting on the exterior of the uppermost section depicts an illusionistic view through a temple portico; its painted pillars, which are surmounted by three-dimensional capitals, appear to support the sculpted tympanum at the organ’s apex. The classical style of Van Campen’s designs reflects Neo-Platonic and Vitruvian ideals of symmetry and geometrically perfect forms.53 Such employment of classical theory and architecture imbues these structures with a similarly civic theme of pride, independence, and permanence, and emphasizes the influence of the local government in affairs of both state and church.54 The rational order and balance of the town hall’s

306 design, which derives from classical ideals, communicates a corresponding stability in Amsterdam’s government. At the same time, as Eymert-Jan Goossens points out, the concept of divinely-ordained measurements also boasts Biblical origins: Solomon attributes the proportions of the temple in Jerusalem to God’s divine plan.55 The physical proximity and aesthetic ties of the town hall and the Nieuwe Kerk visualize Amsterdam’s codependence of church and state, a relationship evidenced as well in the location and operation of the city-owned organ within the church’s sacred space. Rogér van Dijk suggests that the main organ’s enlargement was prompted by the growing pressure on Amsterdam authorities to permit organ accompaniment in services.56 Indeed, by 1668, Amsterdam and Utrecht were the only major Dutch cities that had not acceded to the organ’s inclusion in congregational psalm singing. Whereas the destruction wrought by the Beeldenstorm had in a few cases throughout the Netherlands prompted rioters to smash organs and run gleefully through the streets blowing stolen organ pipes,57 the devastation of the 1645 fire evoked a keen sense of loss expressed in the writings of Van Baerle and Vondel. Because the fire necessitated action on the part of Amsterdam burgomasters, it crystallized public opinion in

Amsterdam regarding the role of the organ in church services, and eventually (albeit inadvertently) led to the organ’s incorporation into Calvinist worship in Amsterdam.

The Organ in Image De Witte moved to Amsterdam in 1651, in the midst of the Nieuwe Kerk’s reconstruction, and created two paintings—his San Diego Interior of

307 the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (fig. 12) and the Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam in Madrid (figs. 13-14)—that feature the church’s main organ shortly after its initial 1655 completion, possibly in commemoration of the event. De Witte’s 1657 (San Diego) and 1658 (Madrid) renderings of the Nieuwe Kerk play an important role in promoting the newly-built organ as an emblem of civic pride and Calvinist identity. The works depict a view to the organ, which is located above the entrance to the church, at the west end of the preekkerk. In both paintings, the organ is framed by the arch and timber beam above the hoofdwerk, the compound pier in the foreground to the left, the wall with clerestory windows to the right, and the lintel of the door below the instrument. De Witte similarly employs lines in the triforium along the right wall of the church and in the graves (San Diego) and tiles (Madrid) that lead attention to the organ. As a result, although the organ is located in the background of both paintings, it is the dramatic focus of each work. De Witte painted his church interiors in two environments with radically different organ sentiments. 58 Delft was one of the first Dutch cities to reintroduce the organ into the church service; its 1634 accession to organ accompaniment, which predates the Synod of Delft’s 1638 declaration that organ use be determined by individual cities, suggests that the employment of organ music in Delft churches was relatively unopposed. In contrast, Amsterdam’s remarkably late incorporation of organ music indicates that Amsterdam orgelisten encountered fierce opposition in this conservative environment. De Witte does not begin to incorporate the organ into his paintings until his move to Amsterdam, perhaps because it was essentially a

308 non-issue by the time De Witte began painting Delft church interiors around 1650.59 Such a disinterest in organs during his time in Delft contrasts sharply with De Witte’s overwhelming attention to organs in Amsterdam churches. This discrepancy suggests that De Witte’s depictions of organs in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk were in many cases not merely occasioned by their actual presence in these churches; perhaps it reveals his burgeoning participation in Amsterdam’s organ debate.60 His San Diego and Madrid Nieuwe Kerken prominently feature the organ, wings open, for the first time in his paintings. If some of these were indeed made to order, it is possible that De Witte obtained these commissions by virtue of an affiliation with Amsterdam’s orgelist network. Whereas the San Diego Nieuwe Kerk depicts a strolling couple touring a relatively empty nave, an open grave attended by gravediggers in the left aisle, and a group of parishioners (perhaps a funeral party) processing down the right aisle, the Madrid Nieuwe Kerk features a nave crowded with congregants listening to the preacher’s sermon. When viewed together, the two paintings suggest the multifaceted role of the organ in the church: the San Diego painting possibly alludes to its sounding of a funeral dirge in association with the burial (as organs were played at funerals); conceivably, the Madrid work both refers to the organ’s employment in the prelude and postlude of the service and argues for the organ’s incorporation into psalm-singing during worship. The Madrid Nieuwe Kerk represents an experimental stage in De Witte’s treatment of the organ and the church service, which perhaps helps to

309 explain the qualitative difference between this and his later works. His Ottawa and Wallace paintings of the Oude Kerk in Delft (1651, figs. 2 and 4) demonstrate De Witte’s early interest in featuring the preacher near the foreground, separated from the congregants who stand close to the picture plane and outside of the preekkerk by the wall of the baptismal enclosure. De Witte returns to this compositional type in his much later renditions of the Oude Kerk in Delft, but in his depictions of Amsterdam services, he evidences a new interest in showing a crowd of congregants attending the sermon, with the preacher a tiny figure distinguished only by his placement in the pulpit and his emphatic gesture. De Witte demonstrates an early fascination with this configuration in his representations of the service in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk, evident in his Rotterdam composition from 1656 (figs. 11). Here, De Witte again isolates standing figures in the foreground, but he additionally employs pews and the baptismal enclosure to organize the composition into distinct spaces, each of which contains a group of congregants defined by their relative proximity to the preacher in the background. De Witte’s Madrid Nieuwe Kerk (fig. 13), which depicts the preaching church from the opposite point of view, employs no such devices to divide the faith community into separate spaces. As a result, the congregation appears as one unbroken human mass, extending from the women who occupy folding chairs near the foreground to the elevated figures who presumably inhabit pews in the background.61 De Witte also experiments with a radically different pulpit design in the Madrid Nieuwe Kerk. Whereas the pulpits in his other Nieuwe Kerk paintings

310 from roughly the same period (figs. 11 and 12) somewhat resemble the hexagonal pulpit and soundboard that would be installed in the church in 1668, the Madrid pulpit is narrower in depth, rectangular, with sloping sides and surmounted by a square soundboard. The variation in pulpit design between these four paintings, and their difference from the extant Nieuwe Kerk pulpit, can be explained in part by the fact that the new pulpit was not yet installed in the church in the 1650s, when these paintings were created. Additionally, as we have seen, it is not uncommon for De Witte to alter certain details of church interiors. Moreover, the drastically deviant pulpit in the Madrid painting, which is indicative of the work’s overall quality, may also be viewed as an experiment (not repeated and presumably failed) that accompanies De Witte’s early treatment of the service in his sermon paintings. It is significant that in both representations of the Nieuwe Kerk organ, De Witte illuminates the statue group surmounting the rugpositief case (fig. 133). Light from the clerestory windows spotlights the allegorical tableau that illustrates the classical principle of the harmony of the spheres advocated by Van Campen. As Goossens notes, Van Campen and Quellijn drew the iconography for these sculptures from Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, which was published in Dutch in 1644.62 The figure on the left, holding a lyre, flute, and music book, represents Musica, the art of singing. On the right is Harmonia, musical sound, who holds a viola da gamba and has a tambourine at her feet.63 Both personifications lean against a celestial globe decorated with a gilded zodiac. The birds that flank Musica and Harmonia are peacocks, which, according to Ripa, signify music’s ability to travel through the air.64 The

311 location of this sculpture on the organ suggests that Van Campen viewed the organ as a celestial instrument; furthermore, that De Witte illuminates the sculpture in both paintings possibly signifies his own orgelist sentiment. Scenes from the life of David such as those depicted by Jan Gerritz. van Bronchorst (1602-1662) on the interior and exterior panels of the Nieuwe Kerk organ were frequently included on organ shutters after the Reformation.65 In particular, David gained popularity as a representative of the laity whose psalms were incorporated into communal singing and worship.66 It is significant, therefore, that in his Madrid Nieuwe Kerk (fig. 14), De Witte summarily renders the paintings by Van Bronchorst that decorate the organ’s hoofdwerk (upper section). Although the scenes on the shutters in De Witte’s painting are not detailed enough for the viewer to discern individual figures, a contemporary beholder familiar with Van Bronchorst’s shutters would have recognized the reference. De Witte captures an impression of the scenes from the point-of-view of the faithful in the preekkerk. His painterly evocation of the David cycle intimates unavoidable awareness, perhaps in the congregant’s peripheral vision, of the organ’s looming presence, even as the preacher pontificates in the pulpit.

Even though De Witte’s paintings-within-the-painting are cursorily executed, their models are worth brief consideration as possible orgelist propaganda that helps to contextualize De Witte’s Amsterdam working environment. Van Bronchorst’s interior left shutter (figs. 132 and 134) depicts The Glorious Entry of Saul and David. Whereas Saul enters astride a white horse, David walks alongside him in shadow, dwarfed by both the king and the

312 giant head of Goliath that David holds aloft on his sword. Despite the unassuming presence of David, he captures the attention of the crowds, sparking jealousy and fear in Saul.67 Saul’s Attack on David is represented on the organ’s right interior shutter (figs. 132 and 135): as David kneels before the king with his harp, Saul takes aim at the harpist with his spear. If we understand David as an emblem of orgelist sentiment, it is plausible that these scenes and their larger narrative detailing the ascendance of David promote instrumental accompaniment as a valid form of Calvinist worship. Notably in this context, the subject that Van Bronchorst paints on the right pedal tower’s interior wing, David Asks God for Counsel (fig. 132 and 136), is unique in seventeenth-century painting. Following Saul’s death, David looks to God for direction; the priest Abiathar kneels before David and records God’s command that David travel to Hebron, where he will be crowned king. The painting establishes the superiority of worldly over clerical authority, for it is David, not the priest, who speaks to God.68 As it emphasizes direct access to God without priestly intercession, the subject may also be considered distinctly Protestant. Perhaps for this reason, the irony of featuring David, the shepherd boy-turned-king and Psalmist, on a contentious instrument owned by the municipality but sheltered in the church must have escaped clerics: the sermon delivered upon the unveiling of the town hall in 1655 extolled David as the herald of the new kingdom and the true faith.69 Possibly in reference to the tension between sacred and civic authorities fueled by the organ debate, De Witte’s Madrid Nieuwe Kerk wittily juxtaposes the organ and its scenes promoting municipal authority with the diminutive

313 preacher, whose presence is dwarfed by the ponderous soundboard. Although the preacher gesticulates emphatically to the congregation, it is the organ in the background that captures the attention of the viewer. It is not difficult to imagine the preacher in the painting criticizing the instrument whose very decoration belies the objections levied by ecclesiastical authorities. In fact, archival documents reveal tensions between burgomasters and clerics regarding the use of the newly built organ. The church council made repeated accusations in 1656 against Nicolaes Lossy (c. 1604-1664), organist in the Nieuwe Kerk from 1639 until his death, for purportedly playing “in a popish manner” during Saturday organ recitals and inciting people to sing along with the organ: “concerning the playing on the organ in the Nieuwe Kerk, it is said that last Saturday popish ditties were played and sung most offensively.” To a contemporary audience, the “popish manner” allegedly adopted by Lossy would have most likely signified his instrumental accompaniment of psalm singing, reviled among conservative Calvinists for its replication of Catholic practice. Church authorities, who viewed Lossy’s insubordination as a “seeping evil,” took their case to the town council, which eventually dismissed the charges due to lack of evidence.70 De Witte executed his San Diego and Madrid paintings of the Nieuwe Kerk organ immediately following the uneasy resolution of this conflict; perhaps he had this episode in mind when he featured the organ in the midst of the church service.

The Aural Appeal of De Witte’s Painted Organs Beginning in the 1660s, when De Witte regularly incorporates organs from Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk into his sermon paintings, he displays an

314 interest in combining views of the organ with more intense focus on members of the Oude Kerk’s congregation. In contrast to the mostly anonymous and cursorily rendered worshipers in his paintings of Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk, De Witte attends to many individual faces of the Calvinist community in his depictions of the Oude Kerk. Furthermore, De Witte invests the Oude Kerk, its congregants, and the organ with a sense of life through the light that pervades the preekkerk. In De Witte’s Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk (fig. 28), shafts of light create lines of focus leading to the center background, where light illuminates the lower portion of the transept organ (fig. 35). The position and features of the organ correspond closely to the extant organ in the Oude Kerk, which is visible, as in the painting, just beyond the pulpit from the point of view of the congregation. The shutters are open to expose the pipes, each characteristically delineated by De Witte, who applies paint to imitate the effect of light hitting the most prominent. The light delicately touches the organ pipes as if inducing the instrument to sound. Although the organ in this painting does not intrude into the preekkerk as it does in the Kremer Oude Kerk (fig. 58), it nevertheless occupies a prominent central position. Its location marks the axis that divides the preekkerk, which fills the left side of the composition, from the wandelkerk on the right. As in the Kremer work, the organ is adjacent to the preacher, recalling Huygens’s remarks on their shared sensory role in moving the soul. The organ’s prominence suggests that the two families that walk in the direction of the preekkerk—one coming forward from the background of the

315 composition just beneath the organ and the other from the right—as well as the individual who enters the door to the left of the organ (fig. 34), are drawn to the congregation by sound. If this painting was commissioned in honor of the organ’s restoration, his allusion to its role in the service suggests De Witte’s own orgelist sympathies, as well as the sentiments of his patron, whose family is possibly represented in the right foreground. In 1661, the organ in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk would have been employed only before and after the service. Given the position of the cantor, whose height in comparison to the seated man at the right of the baptismal enclosure intimates that he stands in preparation to lead the congregation in singing a psalm, it is possible that De Witte’s painting conveys multiple means by which the faithful “hear God.” The proximity of the organ to both preacher and cantor reiterates the significance of sound as a medium for the congregation’s access to the divine. De Witte’s Amsterdam Museum painting implies movement not only through the procession of latecomers to the preekkerk, but also through the temporal quality of light. Fingers of light stretch over the floor of the church, sweeping across the congregants and spanning the width of the nave. Its diagonal shafts seem to move across the floor with the passing minutes of the service. It highlights an empty seat on a bench next to a footwarmer in the left foreground, as though light itself is “attending” church. The suggestion of passing time created by the active character of light in the painting implies that De Witte depicts not a single moment in the service, but instead evokes the service in its entirety by incorporating the arrival and participation of the

316 congregation, the sermon itself, and the organ’s role as the framing element to the service that “bookends” the worship through prelude and postlude. In this reading of the painting, the gesticulation of the preacher delivering the sermon (fig. 29) does not preclude the active role of the organ. Rather, the delivery of the sermon by the preacher as God’s instrument gives voice to the organ, whose music likewise promotes spirituality. It is even possible that in alluding to the organ’s participation in the service, De Witte is advocating for organ accompaniment of singing during worship. Just as Huygens likens the power of the organ to make one unified voice out of many disparate voices with the Calvinist community of worshippers who come together in common worship of God, De Witte visualizes the organ as an instrument of unity that, in concert with the preacher, physically moves people to the service and figuratively moves their souls. De Witte thus incorporates the organ, whose open shutters in this painting can signify not only its employment in the service but also the metaphorical open arms of the Calvinist church, into the Calvinist aesthetic. That De Witte captures the essence of the service—its spirituality— rather than strictly imitating reality by depicting a specific moment is entirely in accord with Dutch naturalism. Dutch artists frequently incorporate multiple moments into paintings that appear to depict unmediated “truth.” For example, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann draws attention to Rembrandt’s combination of past and present in his famous group portrait The Nightwatch (1642, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), which depicts an Amsterdam militia company of musketeers.71 Although the portraits are contemporary, the figures wear

317 outmoded, sixteenth-century armor and weapons to reference the distinguished tradition of their company. Additionally, behind the two central figures, Rembrandt depicts three different steps of using a musket—loading, firing, and readying the weapon for reloading—as homage to their emblematic weapon. Similarly, Ludolf Backhuysen’s Ships Running Aground in a Storm (fig. 153, 1690s, Brussels, Musées Royaux) depicts three stages of shipwreck: whereas the ship at left remains afloat with sail billowing, the vessel at the right is floundering with a broken mast, and the rampaging waves swallow the battered ship in the middle.72 Dutch still life paintings such as Jan Davidz. de Heem’s Vase of Flowers (c. 1660, Washington, D.C., National Gallery), which combines flowers that bloom during different seasons of the year, likewise contain elements that belie their “realistic” appearance.73 This kind of artistic license is also apparent in Jan van der Heyden’s Architectural Fantasy with the Old Town Hall (nd, London, Wellington Museum), which combines Amsterdam’s former town hall, destroyed by fire in 1652, with the new town hall, completed in 1665.74 The painterly, lyrical quality of De Witte’s brushwork suggests the suffuse aural power of the organ’s music through the blending of forms and the animated light that fills his interiors. Just as the light in his Kremer Collection Oude Kerk appears to dissolve the architectural forms that it most brightly illuminates (figs. 58-59, 63), so does it remind the viewer of the pervasive nature of sound, which not only surrounds the figures that populate the Kremer and Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk, but penetrates their senses. The passages of light that stretch across the floor of the Amsterdam Museum Oude Kerk are,

318 like music, perceptible and experiential, yet intangible. De Witte’s paintings evoke a sense of the interaction between sources of sounds (namely, the preacher and the organ), the environment in which the sounds are produced (the church), and the hearing of the sounds via the ears of the congregants. In this respect, we may consider De Witte’s sermon paintings, to borrow a phrase from Richard Leppert, “sonoric landscapes.”75 Leppert applies the term to the vistas of landscape paintings, where winding roads and streams, rolling hills, alternating patches of light and shadow, and hazy forms on the distant horizon evoke “a sweep of sound as broad as the land itself.”76 It is also an apt description of the vast and largely uninterrupted acoustic space in De Witte’s church interior paintings. As Leppert notes, the sonoric landscape is “about the complex relations between sound and hearing as these are registered and as they mediate the entire experience of being…the result of mediations between the ear and the eye…It is external to the human subject yet internalized by its sight and sound.”77 The evocation of sound, and of music in particular, in De Witte’s paintings enhances their spirituality; like that intangible entity, music is an “embodied abstraction” that “fills space but cannot be measured.”78 As Huygens perceptively notes in his defense of the organ, music is anagogical in its capacity to transport the soul to the spiritual realm. The communication of sound through sight perhaps elucidated by De Witte is also evident in contemporary Dutch paintings that frequently feature musical instruments to articulate the connection between art and music, both of which employ harmony as means of persuasion.79 For instance, in Violin

319 Player (fig. 126, 1653, Vaduz, The Collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein), Gerrit Dou implies the sound of music not only through the bowing of the violin and accompanying music sheets, but also by the musician’s gaze at the birdcage, which suggests that he coaxes the bird to sing.80 We have already seen how Steen’s Self Portrait with a Lute (fig. 141) and Houbraken’s description of De Lairesse’s violin playing exemplify the notion that music inspires the painter. Similarly, Dou’s painting, which depicts a musician in the foreground niche and an artist grinding pigments at an easel in the background, is likely an allusion to music’s stimulating effect on artists.81 The notion that music inspires the painter is akin to Huygens’s idea that music moves the soul. In this context, De Witte’s painted organ music visibly unites the Calvinist community by implying uplifting aural—and, by extension, spiritual— experience.

De Witte’s Contemporaries and the Pictorial Promotion of the Organ Although De Witte is the only seventeenth-century Dutch artist who repeatedly incorporates the organ into depictions of Calvinist worship, his contemporaries Pieter Saenredam and Anthonie de Lorme also represent organs in the Reformed church. While neither pays significant attention to the church service, their treatment of the organ suggests that they, too, convey the moving power of organ music. A comparison with their approaches to the organ reveals that De Witte both responds to and expands upon a pictorial vocabulary for the organ’s promotion by visually incorporating the organ into the Calvinist community.

320 Pieter Saenredam and Haarlem’s Bavokerk Pieter Saenredam established the precedent for representing organs in Calvinist church interior paintings. His two paintings of the Great Organ in Haarlem’s Bavokerk, Interior of the Church of St. Bavo in Haarlem (figs. 85- 87, 1636, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and Interior of St. Bavo’s Church, Haarlem (fig. 91, 1648, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland), are significant for their promotion of the organ as a sacred instrument with a rightful role in the Calvinist church. The Bavokerk’s Great Organ, which was built in 1466 and renovated in 1535,82 dominates the Rijksmuseum painting; the smaller and older Northern Organ, built in 1412 and renovated in 1594,83 is visible above the entrance to the former chantry chapel. Significantly, the latter, whose open wings reiterate the active position of the Great Organ, bears Saenredam’s signature.84 The Great Organ in the Rijksmuseum Bavokerk (fig. 86), its pipes each demarcated with Saenredam’s characteristic meticulous attention to detail, is accompanied by a set of bourdoenen, or bass pipes, to the right of the painted shutter that illustrates Christ’s Resurrection. The organ’s booming voice, which would have resounded through the nave, and its participation in the spiritual function of the space are suggested by the open position of the organ wings as well as the inclusion of the bass pipes. Furthermore, the springing of the vaults from the pinnacle of the bass pipes and the organ gives visual form to the aural effect of sound permeating the interior and provides a direct connection between the instrument and the heavenly realm that inspires its music.

321 Gary Schwartz points out the timeliness of the Rijksmuseum painting, which Saenredam finished on 15 April 1636 amidst the heat of Haarlem’s organ debate.85 On 21 June 1634, forty-four musicians and sympathizers petitioned the town council to restore the Great Organ and to allow it to be played more frequently, “at least in the winter, when people, prevented by bad weather from walking outdoors, most often seek shelter in the church. It could then be played on weekdays before the sermon, and on mornings when there is no sermon at 11:30, a time when there are usually a lot of promenaders in the church.”86 Orgelisten campaigned for the organ’s inclusion in the service at the Bavokerk, and won a small victory, in January of 1641, when the organ unexpectedly sounded in the midst of psalm singing.87 Following this event, Haarlem briefly permitted organ accompaniment, only to abolish it again later that year.88 Saenredam’s Rijksmuseum Interior of the Church of St. Bavo in Haarlem (figs. 85-87) and De Witte’s Kremer Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Service (figs. 58, 63), each created just prior to their respective city’s introduction of organ accompaniment into the service, bear striking compositional similarities. Indeed, the placement and framing of the organ in De Witte’s work seem a mirror image of that in Saenredam’s painting. Like Saenredam, De Witte locates the organ so that it is partially hidden by a foreground pier, which creates suspense for the viewer as he is afforded his initial glimpse of the instrument that is soon to be unveiled in its entirety. Both artists also include a spectator whose captivated gaze upward models the awe that contemporary viewers must have experienced in each organ’s presence.

322 De Witte would have likely been cognizant of the circumstances surrounding the acceptance of liturgical organ accompaniment in Haarlem. The compositional similarities between these paintings, and particularly the significant placement of the open organ wing in each work, suggest that De Witte knew of this painting by Saenredam. In light of the organ’s brief reincorporation into the Haarlem church service just a few years after Saenredam’s painting was created, De Witte could have viewed his predecessor’s work as part of a successful campaign for the organ in Haarlem. De Witte may have chosen to emulate Saenredam in his own effort to promote the resurgence of organ accompaniment in Amsterdam, an event that occurred just two years after De Witte completed the Kremer painting. Although the two paintings exhibit similar compositions, De Witte makes a number of subtle alterations to Saenredam’s model, both to surpass his predecessor and to recast the organ’s role in the church. The bright colors of the Great Organ in Saenredam’s painting—the gold tracery and ornament, blue rugpositief shutter, and red robe of Christ—contrast starkly with the white wall of the church. Likewise, the bourdoenen and Northern Organ are both demarcated from the wall by painted black fields. Moreover, Saenredam’s fine brushwork crisply delineates the contours of the Bavokerk organs. Saenredam utilizes color and meticulous application of paint to set the Bavokerk organs apart from their surroundings. As a result, Saenredam’s organs, and particularly the Great Organ with its antiquated Resurrection (painted by Vrederick Hoon in 1465), seem like objects from another, pre-Reformation era. By contrasting the richly ornamented and brightly colored organ with the spare

323 white walls of the Calvinist church, Saenredam denotes it as a curiosity, a vestige of Catholic worship that is at odds with the tenets of the Reformed faith. In labeling the organ as “other,” Saenredam draws attention to its disuse in Calvinist worship. Indeed, the Haarlem musicians’ petition to the town council specifically states that the Great Organ, “because of its poor condition has been played but little, and only on Sundays.”89 On the other hand, De Witte effectively integrates the organ into the Calvinist community depicted in his Kremer Oude Kerk. The subtle tonalities of the organ are shades of the same colors found throughout his composition: the blue-silver of the pipes is reiterated in the sky visible through the windows, while the browns and yellows of the case and tracery also appear in the wooden furnishings and wall decorations of the church. Moreover, De Witte employs touches of blue and yellow mixed with white in the walls of the Oude Kerk, which incorporates the organ in his painting into the church interior. The artists’ handling of paint contribute to their differing approaches to the organ; whereas Saenredam’s fine brushwork crisply delineates the contours of the Bavokerk organs, De Witte’s loose brushwork blurs the Oude Kerk organ’s edges so that it melds with its environment. De Witte’s organ, in consequence, belongs in the Oude Kerk. Whereas Saenredam places the Haarlem organ just left of center to direct attention to the open right shutter panel of the Resurrection, De Witte’s organ is immediately right of the center of the painting, which lends focus to the open left shutter of the Amsterdam organ. Although the shutter in De Witte’s painting is imageless, it is light-filled. That De Witte replaces the

324 painting on the shutter with light must surely not be coincidence, given its prominent place in the composition. Scholars have attributed symbolic significance to the Resurrection scene in Saenredam’s painting, which holds a similarly important place in Saenredam’s composition.90 Given the organ’s important location in Saenredam’s work as well as the date of the painting at the height of Haarlem’s organ debate, Saenredam’s focus on the Resurrection panel may comment directly on the revival of organ accompaniment in the church. The organ, at this moment in Haarlem, is resurrected as a sacred instrument in the eyes and ears of Bavokerk congregants. It is characteristic of De Witte’s style that he opts to flood the organ wing in his Kremer Oude Kerk with light, which reinvents Saenredam’s figural shutter. Whereas Saenredam’s rendition of the Bavokerk panel illustrates the scene that was actually depicted there, De Witte employs light as the subject of the organ wing.91 In the Kremer work, light appears to move across the pipes of the organ and infiltrate the shutter panel as the preacher below delivers his sermon. In contrast, the light in Saenredam’s Rijksmuseum painting, evident mainly through the subtle contrast between light and shadow used to model the columns, and the shadow cast by the right shutter of the organ, takes on a much more static character, as it is employed by the artist primarily to create space. The Great Organ in Saenredam’s work glows not with light, but with the rich, deep colors and translucent effect of oil painting, which contribute to the organ’s segregation from its surroundings. The transitory quality of De Witte’s light, which bathes not only the organ but the surrounding architecture and congregation, unifies the instrument with its environment, and suggests that the

325 shutter will be filled with light just as the preacher approaches the climax of his delivery. Light in De Witte’s work signifies holy presence, whereas the Resurrected Christ on the shutter in Saenredam’s painting depicts it. We may also interpret Saenredam’s Resurrection panel as a comment on the contentious presence of religious art in the church; not only the organ, but also the image of the Resurrection, may be construed as overtly Catholic, and were perhaps seen as such by its contemporary audience. This would have appealed to the interfaith population of orgelisten, who may also have viewed Saenredam’s painting as a glorification of the organ. Possibly, as Schwartz and Bok suggest,92 the commission for the Rijkmuseum Bavokerk came from a Catholic, or someone intimately involved in the Haarlem organ campaign.93 Regardless, Saenredam painted the organ as it appeared in 1636. Even after the Alteratie, the Resurrection panel remained intact on the Great Organ—likely a problematic issue for the conservative faction, and perhaps one to which Saenredam desired to draw attention.94 It is perplexing that as a depiction of Christ, the interior wing was not removed during the Beeldenstorm. Such a “corporeal” representation was condemned by Calvin, as God’s “majesty…is far beyond the reach of any eye.”95 Mochizuki proposes that the wings may have been left intact due to the organ’s ownership by the city, or because the particularly controversial painting of Christ would not have been visible when the wings were closed.96 It is possible that these inscriptions also alleviated Calvinist objection to the extant figural scenes on the shutters; rather than remove the objectionable images of holy figures, the town council

326 ameliorated them through the addition of Biblical text that justified the organ’s liturgical use. 97 Although Saenredam’s Rijksmuseum Bavokerk focuses on the Resurrection panel, it is notable that the Biblical verses added during the 1630s are also legible in the painting (fig. 87). The upper wainscoting of the organ chest in Saenredam’s work, just above the small blue shutter, depicts the final words of Psalm 130:4, which reads in full “Praise Him with harp and organ” (“Looft hem met snarenspel ende orgel”).98 In omitting from view the initial section of the verse, which is hidden with the rest of the organ behind a foreground pier, Saenredam isolates “ende orgel psalm,” which emphasizes the promotion of the organ in the book of Psalms. The visible section of the lower wainscoting text, “[e]nde zangen en geestelycke liedekens” (“…and songs and spiritual melodies”), possibly alludes to one or two different Biblical sources: . Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God,”99 or Ephesians 5:19: “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”100 Considering the similarity in the wording of the two passages, perhaps the inscription was intended to reference both Biblical verses, and strengthen the orgelist position by alluding to multiple Biblical sanctions of music as a form of worship. We may interpret Saenredam’s incorporation of both text and image accordingly: whereas the image of the Resurrection classifies the organ as a pre-Reformation instrument of devotion, the accompanying inscriptions suggest its potential as a Calvinist instrument of worship. Saenredam’s

3 27 attention to the visual and the textual also notably highlights the two forms of orgelist propaganda that were to secure the imminent success of the organ campaign in Haarlem. Saenredam represented the Great Organ in a second painting of the Bavokerk in 1648 (fig. 91) based on a drawing of 1634-5. The Edinburgh painting shows the organ from the point of view of the choir, as if the viewer stands below and to the side of the instrument, which makes visible the inscription on the lower portion of the organ. Notably, Saenredam chooses in this painting to eliminate the upper right organ wing and its accompanying figural decoration. Here, the warm golden and brown tones of the Edinburgh organ match those Saenredam employs in the church vaults and furniture. Additionally, the perspective affords the spectator a view down the nave toward the preekkerk, which suggests the organ’s relevance to, rather than isolation from, the Reformed service. Saenredam’s Rijksmuseum and Edinburgh renderings of the Bavokerk’s Great Organ are so different in character that they are not readily recognizable as the same organ. We may attribute the relative cohesion of Saenredam’s Edinburgh Bavokerk, at least in part, to the overwhelmingly orgelist position that must have pervaded Haarlem by 1648, on the eve of its second and permanent admission to psalm accompaniment in January 1649. As we shall see, it is evident that Saenredam had a Calvinist audience in mind for this painting. Schwartz and Bok cite the Edinburgh Bavokerk as the work referenced in the only known letter written by Saenredam.101 The letter, dated 21 May 1648, is addressed to none other than Constantijn Huygens, and concerns the

328 proposed sale of a painting to Prince Willem II, negotiated by Huygens. Saenredam writes in part:

It pleases me very much to hear that His Highness has begun to take pleasure in paintings, that he indeed desired to see my recently completed great church, and that he wanted to have it shipped now, in which I foresee, on the basis of continuous experience, difficulties of such magnitude, too long to relate, that I do not dare ship it or take that risk. Nonetheless I cordially wished that His Highness saw the same with his own eyes, as has happened with you, My Lord. I have had this piece along with five more of the largest brought to Monsr Vroons…As for the price of the church, I trust that Your Excellency still recalls our oral discussion.

Although some uncertainty exists as to the identity of the painting mentioned in the letter, Schwartz and Bok argue convincingly that Saenredam’s reference to his “recently completed great church” concerns the Edinburgh work. The letter dates to less than three months after the 27 February completion of the painting, whereas Saenredam’s other Bavokerk paintings were created in the 1630s.102 Furthermore, Schwartz and Bok point out the significance of Saenredam’s mention of “five more of the largest,” since the Edinburgh painting is Saenredam’s largest extant panel.103 The painting’s large size could even indicate that Saenredam executed it with the aim of appealing to Willem II.104 Regardless of the painting’s identity, the letter shows that Saenredam and

Huygens were personally acquainted. Moreover, Huygens evidently favored Saenredam’s paintings, as he and his family owned at least seven.105 If the Edinburgh painting is indeed the work referenced in the letter, as evidence suggests, this provides support for the identity of Saenredam as an orgelist who both promoted the cause in his paintings and associated with fellow orgelisten such as Huygens.

329 It is even possible that Huygens, or at least his ideas, influenced the organ’s depiction, as Huygens’ pamphlet points to the significance of organ inscriptions: “Would it be unbecoming for us to join on special occasions, with our Te Deum, our new song, sung with the help of the organ, in our native tongue and with proper devotion? It is usually everywhere written in large letters on the organ, that they are meant, built, and paid for with that in mind. Why do we belie our inscriptions by abuse and nonuse?”106 Additionally, Huygens cites Ephesians 5, the verse possibly referenced on the Bavokerk organ and featured in Saenredam’s painting, as Biblical precedent for allowing congregants to praise God with hymns “of our own making.”107 Although the initial drawing for Saenredam’s composition was completed prior to the publication of Huygens’s pamphlet, it is conceivable that Saenredam and Huygens could have discussed their views on the organ in advance of its printing, and that Saenredam emphasized the organ in his painting to appeal to Huygens after reading the pamphlet, with its orgelist sentiment. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Haarlem kerkeraad acquiesced to the organ’s inclusion in the service on 12 January 1649, less than a year after the painting’s completion.

Although Willem II did not, in the end, purchase the painting, it did enter the collection of Amsterdam burgomaster Andries de Graeff (1611-1678) sometime between 1648 and 1660,108 which suggests that the work was favored by—and perhaps influenced—the very circle of regents who determined the fate of the organ in Amsterdam. The location of Saenredam’s painting in De Graeff’s collection during the 1650s is also significant because

330 it would have provided an opportunity for De Witte to encounter a work by Saenredam that prominently features an organ in its composition. Although there is no evidence that De Witte and De Graeff were personally acquainted or that De Graeff owned any paintings by De Witte, Liedtke points out that De Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 15, 1659, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) both includes the entrance to the De Graeff chapel in the left foreground and strongly resembles Saenredam’s compositions.109

Anthonie de Lorme and Rotterdam’s Laurenskerk Even if De Witte did look to Saenredam’s paintings as a model for emulation, they may not have been his only source of inspiration. The Rotterdam church interior painter Anthonie de Lorme turned from depicting invented church interiors to focusing on Rotterdam’s houses of worship around 1650, at about the same time that De Witte transferred his attention to representing churches in nearby Delft. French traveler and diarist Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665), who paid a visit to De Lorme’s studio in 1663, notes that he “made nothing but the Church of Rotterdam in diverse views, but he did them well.”110 Almost all of De Lorme’s paintings from the 1650s to the end of his career depict Rotterdam’s Laurenskerk;111 De Lorme evidenced a particular fascination with this church, which he reproduced with such fidelity that restorers employed his paintings as guides for reconstructing its interior after the church was bombed in World War II.112 Despite De Lorme’s skill in rendering Rotterdam’s churches, his paintings have received surprisingly little attention from art historians.113 When De Lorme is treated in scholarship, he is typically cast not as innovator,

331 but as follower. Although it is plausible that De Lorme drew inspiration from Saenredam as well as his Delft contemporaries, he also established his own contribution to the genre. In particular, De Lorme played a vital role in developing a prototype for pictorializing orgelist sentiment—one that may well have been adopted and adapted by De Witte, perhaps even in conversation or competition with De Lorme. Unlike De Witte and Saenredam, whose depictions of the organ in their respective cities, Amsterdam and Haarlem, mostly predate the instrument’s acceptance, De Lorme represents the organ following the Rotterdam Church’s 1644 reintroduction of organ accompaniment. His paintings of the Laurenskerk’s transept organ (figs. 115-118), which sometimes include figures gazing at the spectacularly lit instrument, may be interpreted as celebrations of the organ’s communal and spiritual role in the church. The transitory quality of De Lorme’s light apparent in his five paintings of the Interior of the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam that prominently feature the church’s sixteenth- century transept organ invites comparison with the lyrical, painterly brushwork so characteristic of De Witte’s oeuvre and fundamental to the sensory experience De Witte evokes in his works.114

By far the most frequently mentioned painting in the literature on De Lorme is his Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, View to the East (fig. 114, 1655, Rotterdam, Historical Museum),115 which depicts an unpopulated nave with a vacant pulpit in the right foreground. The sharp diagonal of the baptismal enclosure that surrounds the pulpit meets the perspectival lines of the gravestones at the vanishing point located on the right side of the choir screen.

332 To judge De Lorme’s style and aesthetic interests by this painting alone invites comparison with Saenredam, whose works evidence a similar interest in the meticulous rendering of largely unpopulated spaces. However, it is misleading to establish the character of De Lorme’s style based solely on his Rotterdam Historisch Museum Laurenskerk, which suggests that De Lorme’s primary preoccupations were recording Calvinist material culture—for example, the pulpit and the Biblical text painting that stands in place of the former Catholic altarpiece—rather than depicting the people who frequented the Laurenskerk or suggesting the beholder’s experience of its space. Although De Lorme, unlike De Witte, does not paint the service, many of his works do attend to the vitality and diversity of the people who populated the Laurenskerk. Three examples are his Interior of the St. Laurenskerk, Rotterdam in the Six Collection (fig. 115), that in Leipzig (figs. 116-117), and that in Lille (fig. 118). De Lorme’s treatment of light in his Six Collection, Lille, and Leipzig paintings differs greatly from that in his Rotterdam Historisch Museum work. It is in De Lorme’s handling of light and atmospheric effects in these paintings of the transept organ that we may detect hints of De Lorme’s proximity to

Delft, where he would have been exposed to the optical preoccupations of not only the church interior painters Houckgeest, De Witte, and Van Vliet, but also genre painters such as Carel Fabritius, Jan Vermeer, and Pieter de Hooch. The most notable light effects in De Lorme’s paintings of the Laurenskerk’s transept organ are the visible strokes of white paint that brush the organ wings, the wall behind it, and sections of the floor in the crossing. The filtered light,

333 which suggests ever-changing patterns depending on the time of day, creates the impression of movement. This kaleidoscopic effect evokes the passing of time and the temporality of sound, which enhances the immersive quality of De Lorme’s paintings. We see a hint of such naturalistic treatment of light in De Lorme’s Rotterdam Historisch Museum Laurenskerk, along the right transept wall on the far side of the pulpit, but in the Six, Lille, and Leipzig paintings light plays a much more prominent role: it transforms and enlivens the space. The painterly quality of De Lorme’s light exudes a sense of animation and spiritual life akin to that of De Witte, and particularly De Witte’s paintings beginning in the 1660s. De Witte, who is documented in Rotterdam in 1639- 1640,116 may have known De Lorme, whose first church interior dates to 1639. De Witte potentially emulated De Lorme’s treatment of light. Although, as discussed earlier, Saenredam’s compositional focus on the organs in Haarlem’s Bavokerk may have prompted De Witte to feature Amsterdam organs more prominently in his own works, it is possible De Witte looked elsewhere— perhaps to his Rotterdam contemporary De Lorme—for ways in which to enliven and activate the organ, to suggest its sound, through paint.

Alternatively, it is plausible that De Witte and De Lorme independently gravitated toward a more painterly treatment of light as an animating feature of the organ. De Lorme depicted the Laurenskerk’s transept organ for the first time in 1657 (fig. 115, Amsterdam, Six Collection), the same year that organist Joan Crabbe began his seventeen-year tenure as organist at the Laurenskerk. The

334 measure of Rotterdam’s acceptance and even reliance upon the organ as an integral aspect of the Laurenskerk’s faith community, thirteen years after its formal reintegration into the city’s Calvinist worship, is evident in Crabbe’s contract, which stipulates that Crabbe was required to accompany psalm- singing on Sundays as well as during the week, and to play for half an hour after the sermon. Additionally, Crabbe was obligated to conduct daily organ concerts from November to April, which were to last for six or seven hours. Crabbe’s responsibilities even extended to the maintenance and restoration of the organ.117 As Crabbe’s dates of employment correspond with De Lorme’s intense interest in the Laurenskerk’s transept organ, we may suppose that the artists knew each other, and perhaps even that De Lorme drew inspiration for his compositions from the music Crabbe played on the pipes. All of De Lorme’s later paintings that feature the transept organ are variants of the 1657 Six version. De Lorme experiments with slightly different perspectives in the paintings. For example, his 1669 Lille Laurenskerk (fig. 118) omits the left entrance, which places the organ more to the left of the composition than in his earlier version. In his 1658 Schwerin Laurenskerk, the compound pier that frames the left side of the organ in the other paintings partially obscures our view of the instrument. Still, all of these renditions have in common De Lorme’s fascination with the filtering of light through the monumental transept window and its dappled flurry across the organ and the wall of the church behind it. The light in De Lorme’s Six Collection Laurenskerk is saturated in comparison to the greater contrasts of light and shadow evident in his Leipzig

335 and Lille versions, which suggests that he based the former on observation of the organ when the light was at its brightest. We may imagine that music has attracted the audience gathered in twos and threes around the organ in the Six Laurenskerk, and that Crabbe plays the keys and pulls the stops behind the green drape that hides manual and organist from view. Like Saenredam and De Witte, De Lorme sometimes includes a figure gazing up at the organ. The Leipzig work depicts a solitary man with his back to the viewer, his attention directed to the transept organ. In the Six painting, a man in a yellow shirt appears distracted from his conversation with his companions as he turns his head to stare at the instrument, which suggests that he is drawn by both its sight and sound. Like De Witte, De Lorme employs light to evoke sound; in all three paintings, light cascades in a series of diagonal strokes over the organ and the transept wall on which it is surmounted. The individual patches of white paint in De Lorme’s work, visible on the organ wings as well as the blind clerestory windows above the instrument, seem to suggest the harmony of chords produced by the organ. The rhythmic pattern created by the series of descending flecks of light elucidates the crescendo of sound that emanates from the organ when multiple ranks of pipes intonate together. De Lorme’s use of light to signify sound finds a fitting counterpart in a 1659 poem by Joan Dullaert that incorporates light imagery to verbalize the musical skill of Laurenskerk organist Johannes Crabbe.118 Dullaert declares:

When your skillful hand springs measured and learned The Church, vault and choir is on fire, Through the fire that pushes out of the pipes; The Organ blazes with rare flame,

336 Chairs, Pews and Passages, Pillars, Tombstones, cold and clammy, The glow burns them all. Ironically, whereas Caspar van Baerle and Joost van den Vondel had characterized fire as a destructive force following the Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk’s fire in 1645, Dullaert describes it as evidence of Crabbe’s creativity. It is perhaps significant that the poem, which also repeatedly associates the organ with the natural light of the sun, dates to 1659, just two years after De Lorme painted his Six Collection Laurenskerk. As Dullaert, whose poem evidences his familiarity with the Laurenskerk and its organist, resided in Rotterdam, he very likely knew De Lorme and his work, as well. It is even possible that De Lorme’s depictions of the Laurenskerk organ, dazzlingly lit by the sun during Crabbe’s organ concerts, inspired Dullaert’s poem. For instance, the following passage evokes the complex aural qualities of Crabbe’s organ playing:

Whenever you draw the five and twenty pairs of stops in the Organ, Each in turn, before and after, to procure another sound for us; Then one hears harp, and viol, and lute, trombone, schawm, and trumpet, And lyre, and hole-pipe, cytter, flute and nightingale, cymbal, cornet And still many more sounds, artfully combining Like a bright summer’s day To refresh the sad heart of man.119 Dullaert verbalizes the visual analogy between music and light that De Lorme establishes in his paintings. Dullaert concludes the poem by asking the young organist, “Boast ye thus in your Dawn, / How then should your sun sparkle, When she is in Midday?”120 For both Dullaert and De Lorme, the sun is the dynamic force that cues the organ to sound.

337 In De Lorme’s Six, Leipzig, and Lille paintings, the brightly illuminated organ testifies both to the skill of the organist and the aesthetic and aural beauty of the organ, its importance reinforced by the framing elements of the foreground arch and the soundboard. It is possible to interpret the aisle arcade that leads from just behind the organ to the background of the painting as echoing the complex internal arrangement of pipes, most of which are hidden from the observer behind the foremost rank, but which contribute equally to the resonance of the organ; even the figures below the background windows must be able to hear its melody. Comparable to De Lorme’s treatment of light is De Witte’s Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with Motifs from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 44, 1669, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), painted the same year as De Lorme’s Lille Laurenskerk (fig. 118), the latter’s final extant painting that features the organ. De Witte’s Rijksmuseum painting does not depict the organ in the midst of a service; like De Lorme, De Witte integrates it into an image of Calvinist community. De Witte illuminates the organ in raking light, as does De Lorme. Both De Witte and De Lorme utilize the materiality of paint to suggest the lively quality of light as it highlights the metallic organ pipes. In drawing attention to the facture of the paintings through visible brushwork and tangible paint, the painterly style employed by De Lorme and De Witte conjures a sense of the organ’s manual activation by the musician who touches its keys and pulls its stops. At the same time, just as the viewer cannot see the artist who painted the image, so is the organist hidden from view. In this way,

338 both artists create the paradoxical impression that the light cast over the instrument, as well as the music it evokes, are of divine origin.121

The Organ as Sacred Instrument Remarking on his transcendent experience induced by singing psalms to organ accompaniment, Huygens effusively recounts, “During the singing of the psalm after an afternoon sermon, I was so moved by it that I would wish from the bottom of my heart that my soul might always be lifted so far from the earth and move up to heaven in such a rapid way.”122 Huygens views the organ as a conduit through which the soul is transmitted to the celestial realm; he declares that congregants “will tangibly experience that their well-shaped minds will be lifted up from the earth, by the proper accompaniment of the organ between psalms that are sung, and they shall feel a certain rapture.”123 His elucidation of the organ’s sensory role in exalting the soul toward knowledge of the divine finds visual expression in De Witte’s portrayal of the organ as a sacred instrument. Similarly (albeit from a Catholic perspective), Joost van den Vondel’s 1652 elegy, “Het Orgel in den Rouw” (“The Organ in Mourning”), which laments the death of organist and composer Dirck Janszoon Sweelinck (1591-1652), son of famous Oude Kerk organist Jan Sweelinck (1562-1621), praises the role of the pipes in transmitting the organist’s music to the celestial sphere: “The Son of Orpheus has departed / Now the ring of the organ tongues is silent, / Which pushed up through the pipes, / To which heavenly angels sang.”124 De Witte’s creamy, textured strokes, which convey the immateriality of sound through the materiality of paint, are an apt metaphor

339 for the tangible experience of spiritual ascent that for Huygens and Vondel is facilitated by the voice of the organ. In the Kremer Oude Kerk (figs. 58 and 63), the organ’s surrounding space and its physical support seem spatially implausible; the support does not appear to be attached to any architectural structure. Indeed, light surrounding the upper portion of the organ dissolves the architecture: whereas the left portion of the triforium arcade beneath the right clerestory window is clearly delineated, the rightmost section is so loosely painted that it seems to melt as it nears the light. Together with the unclear space inhabited by the organ, this creates the impression that the instrument is at once integrated into and set apart from the worship service. Freed from its architectural constraints, the organ appears to float, its spatial incongruity and the light that plays upon its features and dissipates its structural supports lending it an ethereal quality. The shadow cast by the soffit on the pillar behind the organ contributes to the impression that the instrument is not anchored to the architecture, but hovers in space. De Witte’s organ seems to exist simultaneously in the physical realm of the congregants and the heavenly realm of the God they worship, recalling Huygens’s description of the organ as an instrument of rapture.

De Witte illuminates the pipes of the organ with light filtered through the clerestory window, perhaps to signify the divine notes produced by the instrument. He paints the organ with his characteristic technique of loose, visible brushwork, which lyrically composes the swirls of the soffit and the gilded decoration, and delicately caresses the pipes with transient light. The wavering, tremulous contour lines of the pipes produce the sensation of metal

340 vibrating as though the instrument is activated by heavenly music. In this sense, the painted sonority of the organs in De Witte’s paintings visualizes the sentiments of both Huygens and Vondel. De Witte utilizes paint to communicate the organ’s uplifting aural effect on devout listeners. By portraying the organ as a spiritual instrument that elevates the souls of the faithful, De Witte reinvents the early Netherlandish visual tradition of depicting the organ as angelic accompaniment. For example, an unknown artist’s Scenes from the Life of the Virgin includes the earliest representation of a positive, or portable, organ in Netherlandish painting (fig. 70, early 15th century, Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten).125 In the scene of the Coronation of the Virgin, Christ blesses the Virgin as her arms extend in a gesture of devotion; their hands create an arch over the organ, which is played by a winged cherub while another peeks over the pipes. Perhaps the most famous early representation of an organ appears in the open view of Jan and Hubert Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (fig. 71, 1432, Ghent, Cathedral of St. Bavo), in which a richly robed angel strikes its keys as part of the angelic concert that flanks the central Dëesis group. Hans Memling’s Christ Surrounded by Singing and Playing Angels (fig. 77, 1487-1490, Antwerp,

Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten) also includes a portable organ played by an angel in an angelic choir.126 Vondel’s ode to Sweelinck reveals that the notion of the “heavenly” organ, expressed in these northern Renaissance paintings, survived the Reformation, despite Calvin’s objection to musical instruments as “papist” trappings. De Witte’s representations of organs suggest celestial involvement

341 through light and brushwork, which he employs to enliven the organ pipes— the “heavenly organ tongues” (“hemelsche orgeltongen”)127—and to suggest the tones that emanate from them. Whereas Van Eyck and Memling literally depict the angel-as-organist, De Witte implies celestial involvement through the metaphor of light, rendered through paint. He characterizes the organ as a sacred instrument in the tradition of early Netherlandish art, but in a naturalistic mode that evokes a Calvinist aesthetic.

Conclusion: Closing the Curtain The painting-within-a-painting displayed on the back wall of De Witte’s Portrait of a Family (fig. 56) includes an organ (fig. 57), which peeks from behind the right pier as it does in the Kremer Oude Kerk. De Witte’s Portrait of a Family brings not only the painted sermon into the home, but the painted organ as well, which invites the instrument to “sound” for the viewer. The curtain, which lends an element of theatricality to the painting-within-a- painting by creating the sense that the painted service is a performance, also suggests the aural appeal of the organ, enhanced by the opening of its wings. Lifting the curtain “initiates” the sights and sounds of the service; closing the curtain brings the worship to its conclusion. Just as the sound of the actual organ drew congregants to the physical church, the “sound” of the painted organ drew the viewer into the painted service within the domestic realm. Whereas the organ’s music in the church “moved the soul,” the painterly evocation of its sound reminded the contemporary viewer of the sensory experience of Calvinist worship. Persuaded by the painted sound that De Witte evokes, perhaps some viewers were inspired to play hymns on instruments

342 within the home. In this case, within the context of household worship, music would have contributed to the aural culture of the Reformed Church.

343 ENDNOTES

1 Constantijn Huygens, Gebruyck of ongebruyck van ‘t orgel inde Kercken der Vereenighde Nederlanden (Leiden, 1640); trans. and ed. Ericka E. Smit-Vanrotte, Use and nonuse of the organ in the churches of the United Netherlands (New York: Institute of Medieval Music, 1964), 69.

2 Flor Peeters and Maarten Albert Vente, The Organ and its Music in the Netherlands, 1500-1800 (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1971), 41, 111. Despite the Church’s formal opposition to organ accompaniment, the purchase and restoration of organs in northern provinces suggests that outlying villages were more tolerant of liturgical organ use. Additionally, in the years immediately following the Reformation, Utrecht services featured singing per intervalla, wherein the organist and the congregation would alternate singing psalm verses; this practice was abolished in 1608. J. Jongepier, Hans van Nieuwkoop and Willem Poot, Orgels in Noord-Holland: Historie, bouw, en gebruik van de Noordhollandse kerkorgels (Schoorl: Pirola, 1990), 34.

3 See J. Jongepier et al, 34-35, for a list of when fourteen Dutch cities allowed organ accompaniment in churches. Amsterdam is one of the last to permit its use, followed by Utrecht (1685). In contrast, Groningen, the first city to reintegrate the organ into the service, predates the Synod of Delft by allowing organ accompaniment in 1628. The dates of other significant cities are: Delft (1634), Leiden (1636), Dordrecht (1638), Maastricht (1638), Haarlem (1641 and 1648), Rotterdam (1644), and Alkmaar (1646). Although Jongepier lists 1648 as the second date for organ accession, it was not officially incorporated until 12 January 1649. Mia Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566-1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 218. Even still, the distance of the Great Organ from the preekkerk meant that its effective incorporation into the service was problematic; as a result, the kerkeraad again dispensed with accompaniment in 1655. Hans van Nieuwkoop, “Haarlemse orgelkunst van 1400 tot heden. Orgels, organisten en orgelgebruik in de Grote- of St Bavokerk te Haarlem” (Ph.D. diss., University of Utrecht, 1988), 464, 598-599.

4 Pieter Fischer’s study of music in painting of the Netherlands, which explores the emblematic significance of musical representations, neglects church interior paintings entirely. Music in Paintings of the Low Countries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1975). The exhibition catalog The

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Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in the Golden Age includes a single church interior painting by De Lorme, which represents the transept organ in Rotterdam’s St. Laurenskerk. Although the catalog entry discusses the organ debate as part of the context for De Lorme’s painting, it suggests that organs played no role in contemporary Dutch worship, as “organ music was not generally introduced into Dutch religious services until well into the eighteenth century.” Since the majority of leading Dutch cities—including Rotterdam—had incorporated organ music into their church services by the time of De Lorme’s painting in 1658, this statement is erroneous. Edwin Buijsen, “Anthony de Lorme: Interior of the St. Laurenskerk, Rotterdam,” in The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in the Golden Age (Zwolle: Waanders, 1994), 206-209. Roy Sonnema’s dissertation, “Representations of Music in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1990), dismisses organs in church interior paintings. Sonnema addresses the organ controversy in appendix B of his study. He explicitly refutes the possibility that church interior painters might have weighed in on the organ debate in a four-page “Excursus” to his Appendix. Sonnema states that representations of organs in church interior paintings are “visually non-problematic,” as, in his estimation, there is never any direct evidence that the organ is being played in these works, and the majority of Calvinists did not object to the mere presence of the organ in the church. Sonnema concludes that church interior paintings are “oblivious to the debate” because they “are not primarily pictures about religion or religious practices,” and because by the mid-seventeenth century, “the debate over the organs was no longer a serious issue.” Sonnema’s statement that the organ debate had largely resolved itself by the middle of the seventeenth-century is problematic; a number of Dutch cities—notably Haarlem— experienced the climax of the organ controversy at precisely this time, and the ecclesiastical organ’s role in Amsterdam was still decades away from resolution. 231, 244-245, 254.

5 Gary Schwartz and Marten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and His Time (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 124-128. See also Schwartz, “Saenredam, Huygens and the Utrecht Bull,” Simiolus 1, 2 (1966-67), 85-90.

6 John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, trans. James Anderson (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1845) I:513. Jan Luth, “The Music of the Dutch Reformed Church in Sweelinck’s Time,” in Sweelinck Studies: Proceedings of the International Sweelinck Sympasium Utrecht 1999 (Utrecht: Foundation for Historical Performance Practice, 2002), 34-35.

7 Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, I:513.

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8 Calvin, “Preface to the Genevan Psalter,” Christian Classics Ethereal Library, accessed 30 October 2013: available from http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ccel/eee/files/calvinps.htm. Geneva, 1543.

9 Henry Bruinsma, “The Organ Controversy in the Netherlands Reformation to 1640,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 7, no. 3 (Autumn, 1954): 206; Jongepier et al, 34. We may compare organs, in this respect, to altarpieces such as Maarten van Heemskerck’s St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (1532, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum), commissioned for Haarlem’s Bavokerk, and Lucas van Leyden’s Last Judgment (1527, Leiden, Lakenhal Museum), from Leiden’s Pieterskerk, which were saved from iconoclastic fury due to the interference of civic authorities. However, whereas these works escaped destruction through their removal from churches and placement in municipal collections during the Alteratie, organs— remarkably—remained in situ. For a discussion of the respectful removal of altarpieces during iconoclasm, see Mochizuki, 113-117.

10 Bruinsma, 208-9; Peeters and Vente, 110, 114; C.A. van Swigchem, T. Brouwer, W. van Os, Een huis voor het Woord: Het protestantse kerkinterieur in Nederland tot 1900 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1984), 239.

11 Bruinsma, 209.

12 As specified in his contract. Rotterdamsche historiebladen, 2nd ed. (Rotterdam: Nijgh and Van Ditmar, 1876) 1:785.

13 Gerard Van Hasselt, Chronijk der Stad Arnhem (Arnhem, 1790), 238.

14 Luth, 34-35.

15 Luth, 34.

16 Gisbertus Voetius, Politicae ecclesiasticae, (Amsterdam, 1663), 1:592.

17 For a discussion of Utrecht’s predominantly Catholic persuasion, as well as its brief return to Catholicism under French authority in 1672, see Angela Vanhaelen, The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 130-158.

18 Quoted in Willem Frijhoff, “The Threshold of Toleration: Interconfessional Conviviality in Holland during the Early Modern Period,” in Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2002), 153.

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19 Huygens, 51, 79, 81.

20 Ibid., 15.

21 Ibid., 15, 17.

22 Ibid., 25.

23 Ibid., 51, 53.

24 Ibid., 63.

25 Jongepier et al, 34.

26 Huygens, 77.

27 “eenvoudicheyt bant singhen inde welghestelde Ghemeynte gantsch wech te nemen en te verdooven door het gherammel inde ooren bant gheluydt der stomme Afgoden: namelijck de Orgel-pijpen.” Jan Calckman, Antidotum, Tegengift vant gebruyck of ongebruyck van ‘t Orgel, Antidote Against the Use or Nonuse of the Organ ('sGravenhage : Aert Meuris, 1641), 13.

28 Ibid., 56.

29 Ibid.

30 “Siet Orghelist aldus soeckt ghy het eenvoudich singen uyt de gemeynte wech te nemen en het Orgelspel in te voeren daer het meestendeel vande gemeynte so veel verstants van heeft als de Koe van Vlaenderlant.” 194

31 “Het Varcken de keel afgesteecken, en hy lafet leggen bloeden.” Calckman, 75.

32 Ibid.

33 Bruinsma, 212.

34 For dates of organ accession, see n. 3 of this chapter.

35 Norbert Middelkoop and Tom van der Molen, Amsterdam’s Glory: The Old Masters of the City of Amsterdam (Bussum: Thoth Publishers, 2009), 71.

36 Ernst Kurpershoek, The Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Stichting Winkel De Nieuwe Kerk, 1999), 21.

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37 Melchior Fokkens, Beschryvinge der wydt-vermaarde Koop-stadt Amstelredam (Amsterdam 1662), 202; Quoted in Rogér van Dijk, “The Organs of the Nieuwe Kerk and Their History,” in The Profusion of Heaven: the Organs of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, ed. Henk Verhoef (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2005), 12.

38 Caspar van Baerle, Poematvm pars II, elegiarvm et miscellanearvm carminvm (Amsterdam: Ioannem Blaev, 1655), 515. Quoted in Van Dijk, “The Organs of the Nieuwe Kerk and Their History,” 18. Translated from Latin by Van Dijk with the assistance of Dr. E. Rose.

39 Genesis 4:21.

40 Caspar Commelin, Beschryvinge van Amsterdam (Amsterdam 1693), 447.

41 Mieke Van Zanten, “The Story in Pictures on the Shutters,” in The Profusion of Heaven, 175-176.

42 Van Zanten, “The Story in Pictures,” 176.

43 Eymert-Jan Goossens, “The Main Organ of the Nieuwe Kerk: Harmony to the Ear and Symmetry to the Eye,” in The Profusion of Heaven, 150.

44 Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis (Rome 1650), 10: 364.

45 Ibid., 10: 365-366.

46 Van Dijk, 16.

47 Kurpershoek, 59-60.

48 De Plaetse was transformed from a marketplace into a civic square fitting for the decorum of the two buildings. Kurpershoek, 22.

49 Goossens, 143. The juxtaposition of the church to the town hall (later to become the royal palace) is also a reminder of the Nieuwe Kerk’s enduring civic role: it has been the site of investitures since 30 March 1814, when William I (1772-1843), first king of the Netherlands, acceded the throne. Most recently, King Willem-Alexander (b. 1967) was crowned at the Nieuwe Kerk on 30 April 2013.

50 Van Dijk, 37-38; Kurpershoek, 55.

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51 Quoted in Van Dijk 25. The smaller transept organ, which had fortuitously survived the fire due to its 1644 relocation to the organ maker Van Hagerbeer’s studio for restoration, was reinstalled in the Nieuwe Kerk sometime between 1645 and 1651. Kurpershoek, 57. Van Dijk suggests that the small organ was reinstalled as early as 1645, and may even have performed the duties later co-opted by the main organ, since the organist Nicolaes Lossy retained his position after the fire (but with a reduction in pay), which suggests that Lossy did indeed have an instrument to play while the main organ was being built. 23.

52 Peeters and Vente, 133-136.

53 Goossens, 145-147.

54 Kurpershoek, 23.

55 Goossens, 146; Wisd. of Sol. 11:20.

56 Van Dijk, 36.

57 Peeters and Vente, 110.

58 In January 1652, an Amsterdam notary records a debt to De Witte, although his earliest dated painting of an Amsterdam subject, Courtyard of the Amsterdam Exchange, is 1653. Liedtke places his move to Amsterdam sometime between 1651 and 1653. Walter Liedtke, Vermeer and the Delft School (New York: Metropolitan, 2001), 432. See also Liedtke, A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries (Zwolle: Waanders, 2000), 122.

59 The transept organ, wings closed, behind the preacher in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (fig. 8, 1654, The Hague, Mauritshuis) is perhaps the earliest appearance of the organ in De Witte’s oeuvre This is the earliest dated painting in Manke’s catalog that includes an organ. Ilse Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1616-1692 (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger and Co, 1963), fig. 19, cat. 59. Here the transept organ is an incidental detail of the church interior rather than a significant element in the painted service; as organs were played with shutters open, closed shutters signify that the organ in the Mauritshuis Oude Kerk is emphatically inactive. I am grateful to Amsterdam Oude Kerk organist Henk Verhoef for discussing this issue with me, and for demonstrating the difference in sound between an organ played with open vs. closed shutters.

60 It is also conceivable that De Witte’s fascination with Amsterdam’s organs was occasioned by his increased openness toward the Catholic faith. As the organ played a

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large role in Catholic worship within the “hidden” church of Amsterdam, De Witte’s interaction with Amsterdam’s Catholic community may have encouraged him to adopt a more sympathetic attitude toward the organ’s accompaniment of psalm-singing during the Reformed service. The earliest archival evidence of De Witte’s association with Catholicism occurs with the baptism of his daughter in 1659; De Witte’s marriage to the child’s mother in 1655 may have prompted a shift to the Catholic persuasion.

61 This treatment of the crowd is also evident in De Witte’s Cape Town Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam During a Sermon (1653, Michaelis Collection) and Interior of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (c. 1660-1665, Marblehead, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection).

62 Goossens, 145, 159.

63 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, of uytbeeldingen des Verstands (Amsterdam: Dirck Pietersz Pers, 1644), 336, 341.

64 Ibid, 267.

65 Van Zanten, “The Story in Pictures,” 170.

66 Ibid.

67 1 Sam. 18:6-9.

68 Van Zanten, “The Story in Pictures,” 187.

69 Goossens, 157.

70 Quoted in Van Dijk, 33.

71 Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Rembrandt: the Nightwatch (Princeton: University Press, 1982).

72 Mariët Westermann, A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 113, n. 83.

73 Arthur Wheelock, Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery, 1995), 103-106.

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74 Ariane van Suchtelen, “Jan van der Heyden, The Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal with the New Town Hall of Amsterdam, Seen from the South, c. 1668-1670,” in Ariane van Suchtelen and Arthur K. Wheelock, Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age (Washington: National Gallery, 2009), 120 and 227, n. 1.

75 Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 17-18.

76 In particular, Leppert discusses Abel Grimmer’s Spring (1607, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), which includes a musical party in the middle-ground. 18-32.

77 Leppert, 18.

78 Ibid., 22.

79 The harmony of music is evident not only in its appeal to the ear, but also in the scholarly concept of the harmony of the spheres discussed earlier in this chapter. The harmony of art is conveyed through felicitous formal qualities; in particular, it is evidenced in Dutch art in the technique of houding, which may succinctly be defined, in the words of Ernst van de Wetering, as “tonal unity” (150), or the “gradations” in color and tone (257). For Van de Wetering’s discussion of houding in Rembrandt’s art, see Rembrandt: The Painter at Work (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000), 149-152; 255-257. For an in-depth, theoretical discussion of houding, see Paul Taylor, “The Concept of Houding in Dutch Art Theory,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 (1992): 210-232.

80 Pieter Hecht, “Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does It Best of All: The Paragone Competition in Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken,” Simiolus 29 (2002): 191.

81 Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 116.

82 Mochizuki, 95, n. 80. As Mochizuki notes, the pipes were repurposed in the Müller organ (1735), although the chest and doors remained in situ until 1773.

83 Mochizuki, 95, n. 81. The Northern Organ was removed in 1765.

84 Schwartz and Bok, 125.

85 Schwartz, “Utrecht Bull,” 87-88. The painting is based on a drawing of November 1635.

351

86 “ten minsten by den wintertyd, wanneer de luyden door ongestuymigheyd des lochts weynich mogende buyten wandelen, meest haer toevlught na de kercke nemen, wat meerder moghte werden gespeelt het waare dan op werckdaaghen voor de predicatien ende als voor den middagh geen predicatie geschied, des middaghs ten half twaalven, wanneer in de kercke ordinaris oock veel wandelaars syn.” Gemeentearchief, Haarlem, Petitions to burgomasters, 1634, nr. 11. Transcribed in Emil Mohr, “Haarlems orgel,” in Bouwsteenen: Jaarboek der Vereeniging voor Nederlandsche Muziekgeschiedenis 1 (1869-72): 54-55. See Schwartz and Bok, 124 (for an English translation) and n. 30. Significantly, the petition included the signatures of influential Calvinists, including Amsterdam preacher Eleazar Swalmius Schwartz, n. 30; Mohr, 54-55.

87 Schwartz and Bok, 125.

88 Jan Jongepier, Hans van Nieuwkoop, Willem Poot, Orgels in Noord-Holland: Historie, bouw en gebruik van de Noordhollandse kerkorgels (Schoorl: Pirola, 1990), 34-35; Hans van Nieuwkoop, Haarlemse orgelkunst van 1400 tot heden. Orgels, organisten en orgelgebruik in de Grote- of St. Bavokerk te Haarlem (Ph.D. diss, University of Utrecht, 1988), 464, 598-599.

89 “…overmits syn onbequamheyd, weynigh ende niet dan op Sondagen werde gebruyckt…” 54.

90 Thomas Keyl, “Pieter Saenredam and the organ: a study of three images,” in Imago Musicae: International Yearbook of Musical Iconography 3 (1986), notes the significance of the shutter’s subject in light of the tenuous situation of organs in Calvinist churches; he asserts that the Resurrection signifies the organ as the bearer of Christian teaching. 61. Keyl, however, asserts that the organ in Saenredam’s painting “is presented as an object whose primary attributes are connected with craftsmanship and religion, yet the religious functions in which the instrument appears take second place to the building’s public functions,” therefore ultimately concluding that the painting speaks primarily to public space and only secondarily to its religious context.

91 A scene from the life of David, The Decapitation of Goliath, painted by Maarten van Heemskerck in 1545, decorated the shutters of the Great Organ. These are known only from description, as they were lost when the extant organ was built in 1724. Mieke van Zanten, Orelluiken: Traditie en iconografie: De Nederlandse beschilderde orgelluiken in Europees perspectief (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1999), 94; H. Janse, De Oude Kerk te Amsterdam: Bouwgeschiedenis en restauratie (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), 315; Irene van Thiel-Stroman, “Maerten Jacobsz van Heemskerk,” in Neeltje

352

Köhler and P. Biesboer, Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum (Ghent: Ludion Ghent, 2006), 197-201, n. 25.

92 This follows an earlier line of speculation by Keyl that the patron was Bavokerk Catholic organist Cornelis Helmbreker. For Keyl’s argument, see 66, n. 38.

93 Schwartz and Bok, 128.

94 The Great Organ’s wings included a scene of Judith’s Hymn to the Lord on the exterior.

95 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge, rev. ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 57.

96 Mochizuki, 244, n. 81.

97 Mochizuki, 218.

98 Ibid.

99 NRSV. This is according to Schwartz (“Huygens and the Utrecht Bull,” 89, n. 36), who quotes the Dutch Authorized Version of the Staten Bible (1619), which translates to: “teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” He suggests that it may be “phrased in some slightly different Haarlem way in some earlier translation.”

100 NRSV. Mochizuki, who puts forth this argument, asserts that this inscription, along with the verse on the upper wainscoting, must have been chosen to establish Biblical precedent for the acceptance of organ playing. 218.

101 Schwartz and Bok, 128, 206-208.

102 Schwartz and Bok, 328 n. 39.

103 Ibid.

104 Schwartz, “Utrecht Bull,” 79-81, n. 22.

105 Schwartz discusses the Mariakerk painting owned by Huygens in “Utrecht Bull,” 79-88. He and Bok address the works owned and/or commissioned by the Huygens family in A Painter and his Time. 149-154.

353

106 Huygens, 93. Schwartz points out Huygens’s reference to organ inscriptions as a means to bolster Huygens’s plea for organ use in worship (“Utrecht Bull,” 89).

107 Huygens, 85.

108 Schwartz and Bok, 128 and 208. National Gallery of Scotland, Dutch Church Painters: Saenredam’s Great Church at Haarlem in Context (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland,1984), 21.

109 Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft, 90. Liedtke also notes that an imaginary church interior by De Witte from the early 1660s (reproduced in Manke, fig. 62, cat. 101) includes a chapel in the background that is based on the De Graeff chapel. 90.

110 “ne fait que l’ église de Rotterdam en diverse veües, mais il les fait bien.” Balthasar de Monconys, Journal des Voyages de Monsieur de Monconys, Conseiller du Roi en ses Conseils d’Estat et Privé: Seconde Partie: Voyages d’Angleterre, Païs- Bas, Allemagne et Italie (Lyon: Horace Boisat and George Remeus, 1666), Quoted in Jeroen Giltaij and Guido Jansen, Perspectives: Saenredam and the architectural painters of the 17th century (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1991), 237. For an English translation, see Angela Vanhaelen, The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 3.

111 For an exception, see Perspectives, cat. 49, 238-239.

112 Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft, 69.

113 Typically, scholars omit De Lorme or mention him only in passing as an epigone of Saenredam or an acolyte of the so-called Delft school. See, for example, Liedtke’s discussion of De Lorme in the context of “The Influence of Architectural Painting in Delft,” in which he asserts that De Lorme was “clearly inspired” by Delft artists, although De Lorme’s treatment of light and space is “less convincing” than that of his contemporary Delft counterparts. Liedtke also suggests the impact of Saenredam’s compositions, particularly on De Lorme’s later works, which are frequently planar views across the church. Liedtke rather ambiguously concludes that these paintings “are as reminiscent of Saenredam as one could expect De Lorme and the Laurenskerk to be.” Architectural Painting in Delft, 69-71. Other sources characterize De Lorme as “the Saenredam of Rotterdam.” See Arie de Groot, Liesbeth Helmus, et al, Pieter Saenredam: The Utrecht Work: paintings and drawings by the 17th-century master of perspective (Los Angeles, Getty Museum, 2002), 210, and Giltaij, Perspectives, 241. Two exceptions to scholarly neglect of De Lorme are found in Vanhaelen and Mochizuki, both of whom briefly discuss De Lorme’s View of the Laurenskerk of

354

Rotterdam (1655, Rotterdam, Historical Museum). Mochizuki remarks in passing on De Lorme’s incorporation of text paintings into his image (261). Vanhaelen also treats the painting as a “text-filled space” characteristic of Calvinist interiors, and opines, based on this work, that “we can understand why Rotterdam’s main church might leave the art lover cold” (3-4).

114 De Lorme represents the organ in the following paintings: 1657, Amsterdam, Six Collection; 1658, The Hague, private collection; 1658, Schwerin, Staatliche Museen; 1661, Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste; 1669, Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

115 Vanhaelen, op cit; Mochizuki, op cit; Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft, 70- 71, Liedtke, Delft School, 152, Liedtke, View of Delft, 144-145.

116 Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare; urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1915-1922), 5:1829.

117 Rotterdamsche historiebladen, 1:785.

118 “Wanneer uw kunst-geleerde Hand / Op Maten en op Stekken springt / Staat Kerk, Gwelf en Koor in brand, / Door ‘t vuur dat uit de Pijpen dringt; / Het Orgelblaakt van enkle vlam, / Gesloelten, Bankken en Portaal, / Pilaren, Zarken, koud en klam, / Die gloeijen brandende altemaal.” In Bloemkrans van Verscheiden Gedichten: Door eenige Liefhebbers der Poezij bij een verzamelt (Amsterdam: Louwijs Spillebout, 1659), 541.

119 “Wanneer gij ‘t vijf en twintig paar / Registers uit het Orgel trekt, / Daar elk, bijbeurten, voor en naar, / Ons voor een andre toon verstrekt; / Dan hoort men Harp, en Veel, en Luit, / Bazuin, Schalmei, en Veld-trompet, / En Lier, en Hol-pijp, Cijtter, Fluit, / En Nachtegaal, Cimbaal, Kornet. / En noch veel andre toonen meer, / Die kunstig onder een gestrikt, / Gelijk een helder Zomer-weer, / Het dompig hert des menschs verquikt,” Ibid., 541.

120 “Brald gij dus in uw Dageraad, / Hoe zal dan glinstren uwe Zon, / Wanneer zij op den Middag staat?” Ibid., 543.

121 This line of thinking is indebted to Joseph Koerner’s discussion of prosopopeia and the archeiropoetic image in the context of Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait (1500, Munich, Alte Pinakothek) in The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), passim.

122 Huygens, 73.

355

123 Huygens, 71.

124 Joost van den Vondel, De Werken van J. van den Vondel (1652-1653), 16:7. Translated in Thijs Boers, “The case of the transept organ: an art historical description,” in The Profusion of Heaven, 123.

125 Peeters and Vente, 41.

126 For a discussion of the instruments in Memling’s Antwerp triptych, with a focus on the issue of their correspondence with actual instruments during the period, see Jeremy Montagu, “Musical instruments in Hans Memling’s paintings,” in Early Music 35, no. 4 (2007): 505-524.

127 Vondel, “Op Diedrick Zweling, Orgelist van Amsterdam,” in Werken (1648-1651), 15:183.

356 CONCLUSION:

THE IMAGE OF THE CHURCH

In the preceding chapters I have explored how Emanuel de Witte’s sermon paintings may be considered expressions of a Calvinist aesthetic founded on the sensory experience of Reformed worship. Traditional scholarship has typically secularized church interior paintings, despite their subject matter. The segregation of art and religion established by Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion precipitated centuries of thinking about church interior paintings as studies in optics and perspective. In response to the long-standing assumption that images are irreconcilable with a Word-based faith, this study has adopted a formal-sensory approach to De Witte’s art. De Witte’s sermon paintings draw attention to sight and sound as vehicles for receiving the Word. De Witte utilizes paint to evoke the experiences of looking and listening, which encourages the viewer-as-congregant to “attend” the painted service. De Witte’s many paintings of Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk, and his colorful and lively descriptions of its Calvinist community, suggest his intimate familiarity with the conduct of Reformed worship within its walls. His repeated and prominent inclusion of the rückenfigur, who witnesses the service from the periphery of the preekkerk, perhaps also testifies to De Witte’s place in the congregation. The identification of De Witte as rückenfigur, observer of humanity, is informed by Houbraken’s biography, which elucidates De Witte’s

357 nature, or perhaps his persona. Houbraken’s characterization of De Witte as outspoken and argumentative invites comparison with Cynic philosopher Diogenes, both of whom purportedly defied convention. De Witte’s sensitive descriptions of Amsterdam’s faith communities and his seemingly cynical approach to religion perhaps evidence his earnest pursuit of truth. In closing, it is worth considering this outlook as symptomatic of the shifting confessional landscape of the early modern period. The sweeping religious changes of the sixteenth century precipitated a period of flux during the seventeenth century, when the faith confessions of the northern Netherlands worked to define their identities, communities, beliefs, and boundaries. In the Dutch Republic, which boasted a certain degree of religious freedom, would-be faith adherents were likely keenly aware of their religious choices. This atmosphere of transition, in which new denominations were gaining footholds in the Netherlands while Catholicism struggled to reassert its legitimacy, must have prompted widespread spiritual self-reflection. The process of confessional establishment was perhaps most evident in the Calvinist Church due to its public presence. At the institutional level, for example, kerkeraden continuously revised laws set forth by Calvin to satisfy the needs of their constituents. We have seen this in the gradual reintroduction of the organ as accompaniment for psalm singing and the reluctance of conservative church leaders to allow a “papist” instrument into the Calvinist service.

358 Religious identities also shifted among individuals. The proliferation of liefhebbers in the Dutch Reformed Church stemmed in part from the seemingly conflicting desires of the Church. On the one hand, kerkeraden wanted to draw the faithful to the fold; on the other, their extremely high expectations of lidmaten made the cost of membership, for many, prohibitive. It is plausible that De Witte participated in this liefhebber culture by exploring the multiple sacred spaces of Amsterdam, where he and fellow “children of the world” occupied the margins of faith communities. Though the liefhebber population of the Calvinist church is often mentioned in scholarly texts, their place within the Reformed community remains largely unexamined. In suggesting that De Witte identified with Diogenes as truth seeker, and perhaps consciously positioned himself on the outskirts of Amsterdam’s faith establishments, this study draws attention to the contemporary awareness of religious communities and their boundaries. I have already touched on the similarities and differences between De Witte’s Rijksmuseum Portuguese Jewish Synagogue (figs. 67 and 68) and his depictions of Amsterdam’s Calvinist congregations. Still, there is much to be gained by a more extensive analysis of De Witte’s engagement with the Jewish population of Amsterdam.

His Rijksmuseum Synagogue depicts the segregation between Jews and Gentiles that is reinforced by the building’s layout, and foregrounds the outsiders to the service, including the ever-present rückenfigur, in a manner similar to his sermon paintings. De Witte’s interest in depicting the newly formed Jewish congregation in Amsterdam’s Esnoga may also be interpreted as a manifestation of liefhebber culture.

359 This dissertation fills a lacuna in the scholarship on Emanuel de Witte, whose oeuvre has not been the sole subject of study since Ilse Manke’s 1963 monograph. Whereas De Witte’s brief career in Delft has received attention in abundant literature on the Delft School, my focus on his Amsterdam sermon paintings enhances our understanding of Calvinist identity and worship in Amsterdam’s multiconfessional environment. Furthermore, the current study establishes De Witte’s significant stylistic and iconographic contributions to the development of church interior painting, which were likely precipitated by his relocation to Amsterdam. My exploration of the sensory appeal of De Witte’s paintings is relevant to the current scholarly interest in religion and the senses, and extends this connection to seventeenth-century Dutch painting, which recasts Calvinism in early modern Europe as a profoundly experiential faith that possessed its own visual and aural vocabulary. In light of the Calvinist Church’s mutability during the seventeenth century, it is possible to consider De Witte’s church interior paintings as not merely expressions of Reformed belief, but also as contributions to the formation of Dutch Calvinist identity that implicitly define Calvinist worship by picturing the Reformed congregation practicing their faith. De Witte’s paintings may be understood as a fundamentally new kind of religious art that depicts sacred spaces activated by the “living” communities within them. His painted “sermons” represent the Word made image.

360 FIGURES

Figure 1 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, c. 1650. Oil on panel, 48.3 x 38.6 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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