Pieter Jansz. Saenredam: 9 works

'Saenredam based his work on careful on-the-spot studies, the painting combines two distinct views, one looking straight ahead and the other toward the chancel on the left.'

'His paintings of churches throughout the northern Netherlands are based on meticulous perspectival drawings, or cartoons, derived from sketches and measurements taken in situ.'

'The first painter to actually measure these buildings, he made detailed construction drawings which he further developed into paintings, sometimes many years later.'

'The town of 's--Hertogenbosch, near the Dutch--Flemish border, became part of the United Provinces, a group of northern Dutch states that were Protestant and seceded from the Catholic south in 1629, only three years before Saenredam visited it.'

'Jacob van Campen, the architect of the Palace on the Dam in Amsterdam, designed the classicist Church of St Anne (built 1646-49) for Haarlem. Van Campen's friend Pieter Saenredam devoted this work to it, as well as three other paintings and numerous drawings.'

'But art is never purely documentation, and sure enough not even Saenredam was always perfectly faithful to what he saw.'

'The solid, monumental quality of his work is conveyed through simple, bright architectural settings and the use of a palette of pale colours for lighting purposes.'