Clandestine splendor. Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, pp....

Decorative Programs in theClandestine Churches of the Regular Clergy

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From the latter half of the seventeenth century onwards, many regular cler-ics erected large buildings that could compete with the most beautiful clan-destine churches of their secular brothers. De Krijtberg (Jesuits), De Sterand “’t Hart” (Augustinians), the Moses and Aaron Church (Franciscans)and the Roman Catholic French church (Carmelites), all of which were inAmsterdam, and the Jesuit church in Catharijnesteeg, Utrecht, are the bestdocumented examples. They lend themselves well to a description of thepaintings’ iconography in the context of the other decorations in the interi-or.

In contrast to the previous chapter, which described a number of churchinteriors commissioned by a well-defined group of clerics overseen by aboard, this chapter will be more kaleidoscopic in nature, since significantdifferences existed between the orders named above. Still, there is amplereason to discuss them here together en bloc, as counterparts to the seculars.

One thing that distinguished clerics working in the Dutch Mission fromthe majority of seculars was their attitude to the tradition of the CatholicChurch in the Northern Netherlands. Regular clerics saw themselves purelyas missionaries, not as parish priests. That the Dutch Mission was a mis-sionary district, with none of the old ecclesiastical hierarchy, was a simplefact of life to them. While this rather simplified their relationship withRome, it placed their position vis-à-vis the secular authorities on distinctlyshaky foundations. Another distinction is that the regulars – especially theJesuits and the Franciscans – are generally described as having been moreflexible in the administration of the sacraments and the particulars of pri-vate worship.1

The Jesuits were initially most prominent, in terms of both absolutenumbers and the decoration of their churches, but in the eighteenth centu-ry they were overtaken by the Franciscans. The Old Dutch Clergy’s prob-lems with Rome prompted a substantial exodus of believers, the secular

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risks the saint was incurring, but he prevailed thanks to his powers of per-suasion and his ability to perform miracles. In accordance with tradition,Willibrord wears a bishop’s robes and has his staff near at hand – it is heldby a seated assistant on his right. In the background we can also see hisattribute of a church, integrated into the background as in Bijlert, but inthis case – tellingly – it is not the cathedral of Utrecht but a little villagechurch. The subject may also have evoked associations with the Iconoclasmthat had raged less than a hundred years before. An Amsterdam Catholicpondering those events would undoubtedly have focused on the contrastbetween Willibrord’s righteous Iconoclasm, in which he destroyed the hea-thens’ images in accordance with God’s will, and the godless mayhemwrought by the Protestants in 1566.

Boniface Preaching (fig. 108), which displays compositional similarities toRembrandt’s John the Baptist Preaching and the Hundred Guilder Print, is anequally eloquent painting of conversion. Amid dark surroundings, Boniface,bathed in light, gestures vehemently with his right hand. Those closest tohim are listening with bated breath, but he appears to be addressing the fig-ures to his left who are walking away from him – one can scarcely imagine a

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clerics not attached to the Old Dutch Clergy were more or less rudderless,and in 1708 the Jesuits, whom the authorities blamed for the religious dis-cord, were banished from Holland. Many Catholics who thus found them-selves homeless sought refuge with the Franciscans, boosting the order’sfinancial position.2

Jesuits in Amsterdam and UtrechtThe earliest known paintings made for a Jesuit mission station are two pen-dants attributed to Jacob Backer depicting the Jesuit saints Francis Borgiaand Aloysius Gonzaga, which may be dated to around 1640 and come fromthe estate of De Krijtberg mission station on Singel, Amsterdam. Thesehalf-figures may have flanked a modest-sized altar, but they may equallywell have hung in the home of the parish priest. Just as in De Krijtberg, theorder’s saints and its characteristic forms of worship played an importantrole in this interior, though without ever distracting from essentials.Ignatius, Francis Xavier and Francis Borgia might be permitted to flank thealtar, and even to play a role in the altarpiece, but only in visions leadingultimately to Christ. Perhaps this is precisely where the Jesuits differed fromthe seculars – their use of appealing role models made it easier to achieve anemotional relationship with Jesus Christ, whereas the Old Dutch Clergyincreasingly expected churchgoers to make do with the Bible and the litur-gy of the Mass. It is no coincidence that the last time Willibrord and Boni-face, the most prominent saints in the seculars’ clandestine churches, weredisplayed in a visionary context was in Jan van Bijlert’s painting of around1626-30, when the seculars were worshipping in ways far more similar tothose of the Jesuits.

Two large paintings (113 x 156 cm) unquestionably made for a church set-ting, by Johan Colaert (c. 1623/4-1656) – a Catholic follower of Rembrandt– are Willibrord Destroying an Idol (fig. 107) and Boniface Preaching (fig.108). They too come from De Krijtberg. Here, as indeed everywhere theywent, the Jesuits sought to incorporate local forms of worship into their ser-vices – they too were bound by the Council of Trent’s decree on promotingthe veneration of national saints. The Amsterdam Jesuit Augustinus vanTeijlingen, who wrote several volumes of hymns, included many featuringWillibrord and Boniface. The emphasis in his work is not on their activitiesas founders of the bishopric, which secular authors tended to highlight, butpurely on their missionary work.3

The destruction of idols was an episode from Willibrord’s life that hadnever before been depicted in a painting, but it provided a splendid illustra-tion of his intrepid determination in converting those about him to Chris-tianity. The menacing presence of soldiers in the background recalls the

C L A N D E S T I N E S P L E N D O R T H E R E G U L A R C L E R G Y

107. Johan Colaert, Willibrord

destroying an idol, 1656.

Amsterdam, private

collection

173

Baesdonck also purchased altar silver and various items made of silk,flowers, and wood, for a total of 1,250 guilders, a communion bench withwoodcarving for 260 guilders, a chandelier for 90 guilders, and additionalmass vestments and wooden ornaments totaling 380 guilders. All thisexpenditure exceeded the mission station’s annual income, and Baesdonckduly noted that the church had received several extra gifts from parish-ioners, besides which it had drawn on some of the capital built up in theprevious years.4 None of these purchases can be traced today, but paintingsdepicting Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier have been handed downfrom a mission station in Culemborg. These measure 217 x 136 cm and ful-filled functions similar to the paintings of Willibrord and Boniface in secu-lar mission stations.5

The omnipresence of order saints is underscored by a drawing made in1788 of the choir section of De Krijtberg in Amsterdam (fig. 75), a subjectbroached in the previous chapter in connection with the rotating altarpiecesmade by Cossiers, Quellijn, Jordaens and P.N. Bosch in the period 1656-57(figs. 76-78). In spite of the substantial investments made at this time –Father Petrus Laurensz was called to account for the exorbitant construc-tion costs in 1654 – the church underwent a further wave of radical renova-tion two decades later. It was in 1677 that it acquired the monumentalappearance recorded by Lelie, with double galleries and a raised roof abovelarge windows.

In 1708 the church was officially closed, the Jesuits having been banishedfrom Holland on account of discord with the secular clergy. The upshot wasthat services continued there “in the profoundest secrecy,” creating a clan-destine church in the superlative! In 1788 services resumed on a more “offi-cial” basis, presided over by the former Jesuit Adam Beckers, who isdepicted in the drawing entering the choir. In the nineteenth century thebuilding was demolished to make way for a neo-Gothic church, whosespindly towers now dominate the skyline of Singel near Spui.6

While the altarpieces of Bosch, Cossiers and Quellinus date from theperiod shortly after the building’s purchase (1656-57), the altar frame cannothave been built until after the major renovation work of 1677, as is clearfrom the format of the sculptures and reliefs and their iconography; the lat-ter accords a prominent role to Francis Borgia, who was canonized in 1671.

In terms of design, the entire structure of altar and side altars, with themassive, architecturally articulated frames and sculptures, recalls the choirsection of the church of St. Ignatius in Antwerp (fig. 67), nowadays theCarolus Borromeus Church, dating from around 1620, a design in whichRubens played a role – an effect that the Amsterdam Jesuits undoubtedlypursued quite deliberately.

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clearer appeal to the believers of Colaert’s days. It is also striking that thesepaintings too, in view of their large size, must have been intended to deco-rate the walls, like their Utrecht counterparts with The Calling of Matthewand The Incredulity of St. Thomas. Both of these paintings by Colaert havethe same dimensions, and as such they are among the first tangible evidenceof the late seventeenth-century trend of using monumental ensembles ratherthan individual paintings to decorate clandestine churches.

Colaert’s 1653 paintings of Willibrord and Boniface were unquestionablyintended to decorate the side walls of the church De Krijtberg, which wascompleted that year. But however important these works may have been,Willibrord and Boniface were not ubiquitous in the Jesuits’ churches, as inthose of the seculars; the primary saints here were Ignatius of Loyola andFrancis Xavier, who were constantly depicted in sculptures and paintings, aswell as on altar silver and liturgical vestments. Thus, we know from theannual report of Father Baesdonck, who lived and worked in Gorinchem,that in 1661 he had purchased for his new church, in addition to an “aramajor cum pictura” (a high altar with a picture) for 370 guilders and an EcceHomo and Flagellation for 25 guilders apiece, two paintings of Ignatius ofLoyola and Francis Xavier, for which he had paid 100 guilders each.


108. Johan Colaert, Boniface

preaching, 1656.

Amsterdam, private

collection

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gyric at the heart of which was Borgia’s renunciation of worldly possessionsand old ties:

“ … Borgia, so fleet of ardour,Sees his flesh and blood no more,From his babes and duchy he turns aside,Nor in his realm nor Catalan will he bide,But sage-like does he gladly chooseA life of poverty to pursue,Obedience and chastity,Going where Jesus leads the way …”10

Juxtaposing in our minds the sculpted frame with the church’s rotatingaltarpieces (see chapter V), such as P.N. Bosch’s Vision of La Storta, which isvisible in the drawing, or Erasmus Quellinus’s Appearance of Mary to FrancisXavier, we see that all the elements form a single cohesive whole. The pointof departure is the painting of the saint’s original religious inspiration,which could also serve as an example to believers attending mass. The sur-rounding sculptural work represented the strength and continuity of theorder that sprang from that inspiration, while the crowning element withthe pelican piercing its belly to feed its young with its own blood, as a sym-bol of Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of mankind, and above it the Holy Ghostin the form of a dove, place the saints and events associated with the orderin the general context of salvation.

When Cossiers’ Adoration of the Shepherds or Jordaens’ Carrying of theCross was used as the altarpiece, it made for a rather less cohesive pictorialnarrative of the order, but this was offset by a clearer link to the Sacramentof the Altar. The trussed lamb in the foreground of Cossiers’ painting is aclear allusion to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and hence to the sacrifice con-stantly repeated on the altar.

The side altars formed an optical whole with the main altar – they wereplaced against the ends of the galleries, which extended rather less to therear than the choir. The painting on the left depicts a Holy Trinity with theVirgin Mary, while the one on the right shows Joseph with Christ. Bothscenes went with forms of worship that played an important role during theCounter-Reformation – we may recall that Van Neercassel too promotedthe veneration of Joseph and Mary, and that their statues stood above thedoors on either side of the altar in Van Heussen’s Hooigracht church in Lei-den. The date of the paintings by Barend Graat above the side altars hasbeen read as 1670, which means that they too were made before the renova-tion.11

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At the center is the statue group above the altarpiece featuring two men,one standing and one kneeling, representing the first meeting betweenIgnatius and Francis Borgia.7 Borgia was duke of Gandia and governor ofCatalonia. After his wife’s death he decided to join the Society of Jesus. Hewrote to Ignatius notifying him of his decision; Ignatius was very pleasedthough not surprised, since it had been prophesied to him that Borgiawould one day follow in his footsteps as general of the order. Borgia com-pleted his studies of the liberal arts and theology in Spain before leaving forRome, with a retinue including his second son, who was still a boy. Uponarrival in Rome he renounced all his worldly possessions and presentedhimself to Ignatius. Ribadeneira describes the meeting as follows:

“When the duke saw him [Ignatius] / he fell down at his feet / desir-ing his hand and benediction / as from his father and Superior / andfrom a man so illustrious in the world.”8

In the statue group above the Amsterdam altar, Ignatius indeed extends hishand to Borgia. The boy on the right, a standard feature of all scenes depict-ing this episode, is his little son.9 Lying on the ground are military attribut-es, symbolizing the worldly dealings that the nobleman has renounced. Thefigures balancing on the left and right of the altar’s crowning structure, wholight up the events below with torches and are adorned with ducal attribut-es such as a hat and a bow and arrow, represent others in his retinue.

After arriving in Rome, Borgia would remain unconditionally loyal to theorder, refusing even to accept an appointment as cardinal – and he didindeed go on to become general of the society. Thus, the statue group showsus a crucial moment in the order’s early history. The protagonists are alsoimmortalized in statues flanking the altar. To the left stands Ignatius, partlyobscured by the pulpit but nonetheless identifiable by his book of theorder’s rules with the emblem “IHS,” the first three letters of Jesus’ name inGreek letters, which is one of the order’s most important symbols. Inscribedon a banderole above his head is the Jesuit motto “Ad maiorem dei glori-am”; on the right is another representation of Francis Borgia, in his handthe crowned skull symbolizing his contempt for worldly goods and abovehis head a festoon with two other attributes, the rejected cardinal’s hat and ashield displaying an ox; he had relinquished both a high-ranking position inthe hierarchy of the Church and his claim to nobility.

These noble deeds, naturally combined with the requisite miracles, even-tually prompted Pope Clement X to canonize Borgia in 1671, an event thatdid not pass unnoticed among Amsterdam’s Jesuits. Vondel, who had closeties with this community, commemorated the canonization with a pane-


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Thus, when looked at more closely, the altar wall in the drawing of DeKrijtberg appears to be a combination of elements from different periods.The altarpieces date from 1656-1657, shortly after the church was first used,the side altar paintings from 1670, and the altar with sculptures fromaround 1677, after the second renovation. Even so, attempts were clearlymade to make them into a harmonious visual whole.

In a later clandestine church, an ensemble of this kind was in fact pro-duced as a single project, as is clear from the design for the altar structurefor St. Catherine’s Jesuit mission station in Utrecht by the Antwerp sculptorand architect Hendrik Frans Verbrugghen (fig. 109). The drawing displays amarked cohesiveness of architecture, sculpture, reliefs and paintings. Itbears the inscription: “1701 Dit hebbe ick gemaekt in mijn broeders kerk totuytrecht” (“1701. I made this in my brother’s church in Utrecht”). Thisbrother, a Jesuit whose first name was Hubert, did indeed lead the missionstation at the time. By revealing a portion of the ceiling and side walls, thedesign hints at the two brothers’ ambition for a monumental interior. Thespace, furnished along the longer sides with galleries supported by columns,is covered over by a vaulted coffered ceiling, beneath which rises an impres-sive sculpted altar.12

All the iconographical details that can be inferred from the drawing aretypically Jesuit. In the illusionist ceiling painting, which suggests a glimpseof heaven, we can just make out the letters IHS. This is a glorification of theName of Jesus, a form of worship cherished by the order, which was also thesubject of the ceiling painting in its main church in Rome, Il Gesu. Andjust as in Il Gesu, the aim was to create a seamless whole between the paint-ing on the ceiling and the relief in the curvature of the ceiling, in which wesee the Holy Ghost amid clouds (undoubtedly conceived in stucco)descending above a banderole with the inscription “Ad Maiorem Dei Glori-am,” the Jesuit motto.

The avalanche of clouds also transects the tympanum framing the altar,and hovering at precisely this height is the Virgin Mary with the ChristChild, who appears in a vision to Ignatius of Loyola, the order’s founder –depicted kneeling at a lectern in a relief that does remain confined within itsframe. Medallions depicting Aloysius Gonzaga and Stanislaus Kostka flankthis section in the spandrels, while on either side of the altarpiece the designenvisages free-standing statues of Francis Xavier (with the cross) and FrancisBorgia (with a skull), the order’s other saints.

Just how crucial to this design was the achievement of a spatial illusion isclear from a separate preliminary study for the upper section of the altarpartition, depicting the Holy Virgin appearing to Ignatius. The sheet con-


109. Henricus Franciscus

Verbrugghen, Design for

the interior of St.

Catharine's Church in

Utrecht, 1702.

Antwerpen, Stedelijk

Prentenkabinet

179

commission despite his relative lack of experience in this area. The paint-ings themselves, though damaged, have survived to this day, and hang inthe church of St. Augustine in the north district of Amsterdam.14

Their horizontal format suggests that they were made to hang above thepaneling below the galleries. In the interior of “Het Hert,” which hasscarcely changed over the centuries and is now a museum (“Ons’ Lieve HeerOp Solder”), they could easily be fitted in the same places once again, andin De Ster on the street known as Rusland, the clandestine church in whichthe mission station finally made its permanent home in 1698, they alsohung below the galleries (fig. 110).15

In the church of St. Augustine, they are nowadays known as “rosarypaintings” and they are indeed used to support the rosary prayer. In this

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tains notes by Verbrugghen, indicating the way in which the cornice mustbe truncated and the correct optical relationship to Ignatius. With its archi-tectural concept of the interior and its characteristic ornaments, this designcorresponds to the French style of Louis XIV, and looks very different fromthe interior of De Krijtberg. In terms of iconographical concepts, however,in which order saints and visions play a crucial role, there is little change.

In this design, the intended site of the altarpiece was still a blank space.As was fairly common, the architect/sculptor/designer confined himself tomatters of architecture and sculpture. An inventory of the church datingfrom 1768 lists a painting of the Resurrection above the altar, while elsewherein the building are two altarpieces with the Birth of Christ and Christ on theCross, which may have been used alternately.

The clandestine church was demolished around 1840, but some of itsarchitectural features can be traced in the building at no. 49, NieuweGracht. We know that most of Verbrugghen’s design was executed, becausethe altar section corresponding exactly to the design (including a Resurrec-tion as altarpiece) can be seen in an 1843 painting of a service held in St.Catherine’s church a little further down the road, where the congregationthat had worshiped in Catharijnesteegje until 1840 had found new premis-es.13

The Augustinians and the PassionWhile the discussion of Jesuit churches has focused primarily on the altarand its surroundings, when we turn to the Augustinian clandestine church“’t Hart,” we find an important extant ensemble of paintings made for theside walls. The church was founded by Petrus Parmentier, discussed abovein connection with the altarpieces in his church. The iconography of thealtarpieces was strongly Marian, besides which it included several Augustin-ian saints, such as Augustine himself, his mother Monica, and William ofAquitaine.

There was no lack of images of Christ, however. According to the admin-istrative records of Uutten Eeckhout, Parmentier’s assistant, in 1664, thespiritual virgin Sybilla Fonteyn donated five paintings with “mysteries ofthe Passion.” These were executed by Adriaen van de Velde, who receivedfifty guilders apiece for them. Van de Velde, who, as is known, was mainly alandscape painter, did not receive commissions like this every day, whichexplains his eclectic incorporation of examples from artistic tradition. Hebased some of his work (the Lamentation and Gethsemane) on Flemishexamples, whereas his Flagellation and Crowning with Thorns are more Car-avaggesque in their inspiration. It was probably his association with Par-mentier, whose church he attended, that prompted him to accept the


110. P.A. Beretta, Interior of

"De Ster", lithography,

before 1848

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cil of Trent. The Passion loomed large in devotional literature and countlessprint series. A series of twenty-four engravings, starting with the Nativityand ending with the Ascension, engraved by Hieronymus Wierickx afterdesigns by Maerten de Vos, bears the title Dominicae passionis mysteria.16

Worshipping the Passion was also a form of devotion intimately boundup with the liturgy, and it is not impossible that the subjects were chosenpartly to correspond to the celebration of mass. In the booklet De Misse.Haere korte uytlegginghe, published in 1651 by the Amsterdam priest Andreasvan der Kruyssen, a member of the Amsterdam chapter and a confidant ofRovenius, all the main actions of the mass are elucidated. For each stage anengraving shows the priest performing the relevant action, beside which is atext explaining which element of Christ’s Passion believers should be con-templating at that particular time.17

Van der Kruyssen linked the Christ in Gethsemane to the moment atwhich the priest enters, the Flagellation to the consecration of the host, theCrowning with Thorns to the covering of the chalice after the consecration,Christ's Meeting with Veronica to the moment when the priest grasps thechalice, and the Lamentation to communion.18 There is no reason to assumethat Van der Kruyssen was instrumental in forging such connections. Hemerely explained to the laity points that would have been clear to mostpriests.

Jacob de Wit and the Moses and Aaron ChurchHowever beautifully the churches of the Jesuits and the Augustinians mayhave been furnished, they could not compete in scale or luster with theFranciscan clandestine church dedicated to Anthony of Padua, which wascompleted in 1687, and which is inextricably linked to the name of Jacob deWit.

At fifteen years of age, De Wit (Amsterdam 1695-1754), who had startedout as an apprentice painter at the age of nine, moved to Antwerp, wherehis uncle Jacomo took him under his wing. After several years’ trainingunder various artists, in the course of which he studied and copied exhaus-tively the art of Rubens and other great masters of the Southern Nether-lands, he returned to Amsterdam in late 1715 or early 1716, where he soaredto fame as a history painter, producing works for the homes of Amsterdam’selite as well as for public buildings and clandestine churches.

As a Catholic and an artist, he had close ties with the clandestine Francis-can church dedicated to Anthony of Padua, which became known popular-ly as the “Moses and Aaron” after the stone tablets in the façades of thehouses on Breestraat behind which it was constructed. In his childhood, thefamily had attended church in “’t Vrededuifje” on Kerkstraat – that was

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prayer, a total of fifteen “mysteries” from the life and Passion of Christ arecontemplated, five of which are joyful, five sorrowful, and five triumphant.This series supposedly depicts the five “sorrowful mysteries of the VirginMary”: Christ in Gethsemane, The Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns (fig.111), Christ Carrying the Cross, and Christ Dying on the Cross.

Reciting the rosary is a form of worship propagated mainly by theDominicans, but it achieved general popularity in the Catholic Church inthe seventeenth century, so there is nothing strange about finding a series of“rosary paintings” in an Augustinian church. Still, certain problems attachto this reading: first, a real rosary series should consist of fifteen paintings,as in the case of a famous series in the Dominican church of St. Paul inAntwerp, by artists including Rubens, Van Dijck, and Jordaens. Second,the fifth painting should depict the Crucifixion, whereas here it shows theLamentation. Another objection is that Uutten Eeckhout makes no men-tion of the rosary: he merely refers to “mysteries of the Passion” (“mysteriapassionis.”)

So a rather more general interpretation would probably be appropriate.Contemplating moments related to the Passion of Christ had been wide-spread within the Catholic Church since the Late Middle Ages, and thiswas one of the forms of worship that gained in importance after the Coun-


111. Adriaen van de Velde,

The Crowning with

Thorns, 1665.

Amsterdam, Roman

Catholic Church of St.

Augustine

183

Origins and Iconography of the Moses and Aaron ChurchThe Franciscans, foremost among them Father Ab Ischa, had started work-ing in the city as mission priests soon after the confiscation of their Amster-dam monastery in 1578. Yet it was not until 1649 that they were able to setup a permanent clandestine church in the Moses house on Jodenbreestraat,led by Father Boelensz. He had purchased the house in 1641 with the aid ofseveral prominent Amsterdam Catholics, including the Italian Tensinibrothers. To hang above the altar, paintings measuring 250 x 179 cm wereavailable – a Deposition by Caspar de Crayer, and a work that was attributedin the nineteenth century to Rubens, Saint (St. Anthony?) in Ecstasy beforethe Altar.24 Van Heel and Knipping suspect that the interior and furnishingsof this church must have been relatively “primitive and shabby,”25 whichseems to me an odd hypothesis, if only because of the presence of the paint-ings mentioned above. However, the church was soon bursting at the seamswith the growing numbers of Catholics who wanted to worship with theFranciscans. Following what was by then standard practice, the neighboringbuildings had been bought up, to make a buffer around the clandestinechurch and to create scope for expansion in the future. In 1682, FatherVroom also came into the possession of Aaron house, adjoining Moseshouse on Jodenbreestraat, clearing the way for a major expansion.26 Workstarted in the mid-1680s and was completed in 1687, but the city govern-ment moved to stop the space being used, since Vroom had failed to applyfor a building permit and the regents regarded the church’s dimensions –25.5 x 14.2 meters – as excessive.

The Franciscans were finally able to use their new church in 1691, thanksto the diplomatic flair of Vroom’s successor, Aegidius de Glabbais, a Brus-sels-born priest who took charge of the mission station in 1687. AlthoughDe Glabbais’s arrival in Amsterdam coincided with a difficult period for theregular clerics – the city council was considering a draft resolution seekingto banish them – he nonetheless managed to forge cordial ties with theauthorities; so cordial, in fact, that he was asked to represent the city inBrussels to help resolve a legal problem in which Amsterdam had becomeembroiled.27

He was also much loved by the congregation. After Rome suspended thevicar apostolic Codde in 1702, precipitating a major exodus from the OldDutch Clergy, and in 1707/1708 the Jesuits too were banished from theRepublic, the Franciscan mission station in Amsterdam bounded fromstrength to strength. In the year 1742, the combined revenue (as estimatedfor tax purposes) of the Moses and Aaron Church and Het Boompje, thesecond Franciscan mission station in Amsterdam, led the field at 8,000

guilders, twice as much as that of the Begijnhof Church and De Lelie, the

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where Jacob and his seven brothers and sisters were baptized, and where hisfather remarried in 1705. When he returned to Amsterdam, De Wit proba-bly joined the Moses and Aaron mission station, where his marriage wasconsecrated on November 21, 1716, to Cornelia Eleonora van Neck, whohad been a confessant there for many years. He also acted frequently as awitness at wedding services.19

Aegidius de Glabbais, the church’s priest from 1687 to 1722, recognizedDe Wit’s potential straight away. Soon after the artist’s return fromAntwerp, he gave him important commissions for the church and pres-bytery. The contact between the two men probably predated De Wit’sdeparture for Antwerp, since two signed panel paintings by De Wit dated1710, depicting the figures of Moses and Aaron, hung in the presbytery. In1710, De Wit had been a youth of fifteen.

De Wit’s commitment to the Catholic Church was clear not only fromhis active participation in religious life and his creative contributions to thechurch, but also from the fact that he often sold his work for a pittance. Inexchange for a large ceiling piece in the Moses and Aaron Church, hereceived in 1720 or 1721 an inexpensive ivory crucifix, and in 1722, when hemade an altarpiece for the Franciscan Church in Roermond, he asked for70 guilders, but indicated that he would also be happy to accept anotherivory crucifix, larger and better than the one he had been given in Amster-dam.20 The Carmelites in the French Roman Catholic Church, for whomhe produced fourteen paintings around 1733-1736, also received them “for amodest price” – besides which De Wit threw in the altarpiece and two over-door paintings with Mary and Joseph for free.21 Still, he did not make ahabit of giving his work away – for altarpieces made for churches in Alk-maar and Delft, he received 500 and 525 guilders, respectively.22

Dudok van Heel has already noted that Jacob de Wit’s arrival must havebeen a godsend for the Amsterdam clergy – scarcely any altarpieces hadbeen ordered between 1700 and 1715, since few good painters remained toexecute them. All the main artists active in the last quarter of the seven-teenth century (Weenix, Voorhout, Roosendael, Graat) had died, emigrat-ed, or given up painting.23

Jacob de Wit’s availability and – more importantly – his artistic qualitywere viewed by patrons and clients as presenting an unmissable opportuni-ty. But the temporary upsurge in painting commissions attributable entirelyto De Wit could not hide the fact that painting for clandestine churcheswas in decline. That almost nothing else happened in this area in Amster-dam after De Wit’s death emphasizes again the importance of the quality ofsupply to the creation of demand.


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Aaron Church was so large that it could even accommodate a procession(fig. 112).31 The church was pulled down in 1838 and replaced by the nowfamiliar neo-classical building at Waterlooplein. Many of the original choirdecorations were preserved in the new building, including elements of thepaneling as well as statues and altarpieces; even the reliefs from beneath thegalleries were given a place in this conglomerate (fig. 115). And since a fewdetailed prints exist of the old interior (figs. 113 and 114), we can form agood picture of the setting in which Catholic life was lived in the eighteenthcentury.

The first engraving, which shows the entire altar wall and the side walls ofthe choir, is highly informative about the place of the paintings in the archi-tecture and their relationship to their surrounding furniture, the reliefs andthe sculptures. The accompanying print shows the back wall with the organand gives an impression of the monumentality of the space, with the barrelvault and the double galleries beneath it. The area is bathed in light, thanksto the large windows in the rear wall and on both the gallery floors. On theground floor, displayed along the extensive walls beneath the gallery, areoval relief medallions with the heads of the apostles – equivalent to theseries of apostle heads on the choir pillars of the churches in Flanders andBrabant, and also to the figures of the apostles in the ceiling paintings in St.Gertrude’s Church, Utrecht.

Above the doors near the altar rail, two smaller medallions were attached.What they depicted is not entirely clear from the prints, but they probablycorresponded to the medallions depicting Willibrord and Boniface that arestill to be found in the present-day church and that were placed above thedoors in the side walls after the church was rebuilt in the nineteenth centu-ry. Right at the back, above the steps leading up to the galleries, a paintingcan be seen on either side, the subject matter of which is impossible to makeout.

It has previously been wrongly believed that the interior, and mostnotably the altar wall, as depicted in these prints, took on its final appear-ance in the course of the eighteenth century. This misconception can betraced to a comment by Van Heel and Knipping, whose major monographon the Moses and Aaron Church, Van schuilkerk tot zuilkerk, was publishedin 1941. They were so impressed by De Wit’s outstanding qualities as anartist that they attributed the entire choir to him:

“The painter, who may already have been known then as the‘Rubens of his age’, gladly agreed to lend his services, since he couldnow surpass his brilliant exemplar – albeit in smaller dimensions –by designing an entire altar, structure, sculptures and all! The pièce

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wealthiest secular mission stations, and the French Roman Catholic churchof the Carmelites. Wagenaar wrote in 1765 that Moses and Aaron had “interms of membership the largest numbers” of any church in Amsterdam(approximately 7,000 communicants). This made it the largest Catholicchurch in the Northern Netherlands.28

Nowhere were celebrations accompanied by such splendor – particularlyfamous was the Franciscans’ feast of the Portiuncula on August 2, in whichthe worship of the Virgin Mary was linked movingly to the veneration ofFrancis. Believers could traditionally earn themselves a plenary indulgenceby making a pilgrimage to the chapel of the Virgin Mary in Portiuncula,near Assisi, which St. Francis himself had restored – a privilege that was lat-er extended to all the churches of the Friars Minor and all parish churches.On August 3 of each year, De Glabbais asked permission to bring in addi-tional assistant priests, sometimes as many as ten, to receive the large num-bers of confessants who converged upon his church from far and wide.29

Music was an important part of the church’s appeal. With the founding ofthe music college Zelus Pro Domo Dei in 1691, the Moses and Aaron becamea major center of Amsterdam’s musical life. One of the highlights was theappearance, on May 7, 1747, of “Mr. Beethoven, musician of the Elector ofCologne” (and grandfather of Ludwig van Beethoven), who sang a motet,accompanied by two French horns, that sent those present into raptures.30

All outward show still had to be confined indoors. But the Moses and


112. J.L. van Beek after A.

Hulk, A procession in the

Moses and Aaron Church,

engraving, 1784

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de resistance – the large central painting – would be by his hand!Like Rubens’s altar in Antwerp, his own in the city on the river Ams-tel would be an apotheosis of the Virgin Mary!”32

Now we know that Rubens did indeed concern himself with designs forarchitecture and ornaments, but for De Wit to have designed an entire altarstructure, including all its sculptural elements, would have been anunprecedented feat, leaving aside the fact that the style of the altar case inthe print of the choir section (fig. 113) was no longer in vogue in his day.The ornamental work of the altar and its surroundings clearly derives fromthe seventeenth-century Antwerp baroque, as seen in the Carolus Bor-romeus Church (fig. 67), for instance, which remained popular for much ofthe seventeenth century, with its broken pediments, bold scrolls, andobtuse-angled niches, generally executed in white marble and black stone(which in Amsterdam is suggested by painted wood).

As we have seen, this ornamental style was also used in De Krijtberg, theinterior of which dates from 1677. But in the Moses and Aaron a muchmore integrated concept was applied, for which the services of a designerfrom Antwerp were undoubtedly enlisted. The entire choir is conceived as asculpted whole, with the high altar as projecting element at the center. A


113. Anonymous, Interior of

the Moses and Aaron

Church; view towards the

altar, engraving

114. Anonymous, Interior of

the Moses and Aaron

Church; view towards the

organ, engraving

115. View towards the altar of

the Moses and Aaron

Church (current

situation)

189

an altarpiece with the Resurrection, sunk deep into its frame, which casts ashadow on it. The composition of the Resurrection as seen in the engravingis not identical to that of the altarpiece with the same subject that is pre-served in the church (fig. 115), possibly because the painting was not yet fin-ished when the print was made, while the subject was already known. It isnot sure who eventually painted the Resurrection, but it’s eclectic style withclassicizing features and dark palette place it securely in Amsterdam in thefinal decades of the seventeenth century. It must have been finished by thetime the newly built church was put into use in 1691. In 1725, De Wit'sCrucifixion was added, an altarpiece of the same size, and in 1732, hisAnnunciation (fig. 116). From then on, it was possible to rotate the altar-pieces.

The upper contour of the Resurrection matches the original design of thepermanent altarpiece frame that appears in the print (fig. 113), as does thecontour of De Wit's Crucifixion of 1725. In the print of the procession byVan Beek after Van Hulk (1784, fig. 112) the frame still appears as it wasoriginally designed, and the Resurrection functions as an altarpiece. Thecontour of De Wit's Annunciation (1732) was tampered with though, andmatches the current frame, that must have obtained its somewhat simpli-fied form during the rebuilding activities of 1838 when the altar architecturewas made to fit the new building. The idea must have been to stop rotatingthe paintings and keep the best De Wit as the permanent altarpiece. TheAnnunciation is indeed seen as such on a photograph of 1940. Later on inthe twentieth century, it was taken out and moved to the opposite wall,together with the Crucifixion. The Resurrection was then again placed abovethe altar, where it remains today.33

The prints of the interior (figs. 113 and 114) are obviously key to under-standing the intention of the original program. Wooden statues above thealtarpiece depict the Crowning of the Virgin Mary, flanked by figures ofPeter and Paul, kneeling on the scrolls of the pediment. In addition, at thetop of the vault, above God the Father and Christ, appear Moses and Aaronon either side of the Copper Serpent. This infused the whole with typologi-cal overtones: Moses and Aaron are the guardians of the Old Covenant, andPeter and Paul of the New Covenant, while the cruciform staff aroundwhich the serpent is coiled obviously presages the Cross, which Christ, seat-ed nearby, holds in his hands.

For the rest, statues of the four evangelists stand in niches at the four cor-ners of the choir, their pedestals adorned with oval relief medallions of theChurch Fathers. The whole provides a concise summary of the story of sal-vation, according a prominent role to Mary as well as Christ. It also places a

188

few tentative indications are included of the gradually emerging Louis XIVstyle, as in the series of little arches and bends along the upper edge of theframe of the altarpiece. This style would blossom fully in the 1702 designfor the Jesuits’ clandestine church in Utrecht, drawn by the Antwerp artistHendrik Frans Verbrugghen (fig. 109), but the designer of the Moses andAaron Church was still some steps away from reaching this stage.

So stylistically speaking there is every reason to date the decoration of thechoir of the Moses and Aaron close to the period in which the church wasbuilt, in 1685-1687. This date also dispenses with a number of problems thatwould need to be resolved if the date were set around 1725, as has been cus-tomary since Van Heel and Knipping. To start with, it explains why Aegid-ius de Glabbais set Jacob de Wit to work immediately after he returnedfrom Antwerp in 1716 in the presbytery rather than in the church, while thefirst commission that was eventually given to De Wit for the church itself,in 1720, was for a rather unusual place – the ceilings under the galleries onthe altar side. It was only in 1725 that he painted the first altarpiece for thechurch, The Crucifixion, followed in 1732 by an Annunciation.

In the print of the altar wall (fig. 113), there is no sign of De Wit’s 1720

ceiling pieces, even though the ceilings against which they would be placedare prominently in view. The simple explanation is that the print was pro-duced before the ceilings were painted. This raises the question of who mayhave commissioned the prints, which were clearly intended to present animpression of the opulence of the interior, and on what occasion. It seemsto me that the most logical moment to draw attention to a building in thisway would be when it was nearing completion, in other words around 1687.Perhaps they were intended as a gift for the financiers who had made theconstruction work possible, or alternatively as a fund-raising aid.

Among the paintings to be included in the new paneling were the formeraltarpieces from the “old” clandestine church by De Crayer (the Deposition)and Rubens (the Saint in Ecstasy before the Altar). These can be seen in theprint on the left (the Gospel side), flanking a Mater Dolorosa statue in aniche. This “triptych” is supported by a frieze with diminutive paintingsdepicting the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, while a relief of St. Francishas been added to the pedestal of the Mater Dolorosa. On the other side,beneath the organ, were undoubtedly depicted the Seven Joys of the VirginMary (only six can be seen on either side, but we can assume that the earli-est scenes are hidden from view by pillars). Above this frieze stands a smallorgan, beneath an arched recess in the wall that affords a view of a clearlyilluminated room beyond for an orchestra and choir.

In a predella above the altar table are depicted the instruments of Christ’sPassion, which were greatly venerated by the Franciscans. Above this we see


191190

heavy, typically Counter-Reformational, emphasis on those who preachedand helped to spread the faith, especially since medallions of the twelveapostles (fig. 114) and of Willibrord and Boniface were added to the imagesof the evangelists and Church Fathers in the side aisles.

In the side altars, the order’s saints were also included in the narrative. Tothe left is the altar dedicated to St. Francis, with a small altarpiece represent-ing St. Clara Taking the Habit (Clara being the most important female saintto the Franciscans) and above this a statue of St. Francis in an octagonalniche; to the right is the altar of St. Anthony, with an altarpiece depictingThe Ecstasy of St. Anthony during the Celebration of Mass beneath a statue ofSt. Anthony, holding the Christ Child on his arm.

While the important role accorded to Moses and Aaron in this ensemblecan certainly be accounted for theologically, prominent typologies such asdepicted here are almost non-existent in other clandestine churches of theNorthern Netherlands. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the chanceacquisition by Amsterdam’s Franciscans of two houses with stone tablets ofMoses and Aaron, respectively, in their façades, played an important role inthe conception of this decorative program. It is striking that the names ofthese houses were better known than the church’s official name, a disparitythat evidently influenced the decorations. St. Anthony of Padua, to whomthe “Moses and Aaron” was dedicated, looked down from a side altar, whilethe statues of the Old Testament protagonists took pride of place.

In 1720, Jacob de Wit was commissioned to paint the flat ceilings on theleft and right in the altar space. The piece on the side facing the singers inthe choir depicted, appropriately enough, Sacred Music, with a dramaticallyforeshortened image of St. Cecilia, based on a study by Rubens for a ceilingpiece in the Jesuits’ church in Antwerp, while the other one depicted theLast Judgment, with the comforting of those who have been saved and thedriving of the devil from heaven, also with Rubensian foreshortening. Thelarge paintings do not immediately appear to link up with the rest of theprogram, but seem to be more in the nature of incidental additions. Theywill certainly not have looked out of place, and they would have enhancedthe festive and devotional nature of the interior, but as already noted, itseems that the Franciscans’ primary concern was to find a good place in thechurch for their good friend De Wit to display his talents to best advantage,ceiling paintings being his specialism.

Typology in the PresbyteryThe above paragraphs show that Jacob de Wit’s contribution to the interiorof the Moses and Aaron was far more modest than previously assumed. Hisarrival was seized on by Aegidius de Glabbais and his successors primarily to


116. Jacob de Wit, The

Annunciation, 1732.

Amsterdam, Mozes and

Aaron Church

retoucheCS116

193192

transform the presbytery into a tasteful complex. De Wit started decoratingthe library as early as 1716. The main item was a large painted wall hanging,taking up an entire wall, depicting the main authors of the Old Testament,including most of the prophets, Job, and the kings David and Solomon, inan illusionist architectural setting.

The preliminary drawing (fig. 117) leaves space for a door and a bookcase.In the same year, De Wit made six wide rectangular paintings: The ThreeYouths in the Furnace; The Annunciation with Moses and Aaron (New Testa-ment); The Four Latin Church Fathers and the Holy Church Fathers ThomasAquinas and Bonaventure; The Pope, Bishops and Cardinals; the Saints of theFranciscan Order: Anthony of Padua, Francis with Brother Leo, Bernard ofSiena and John of Capistrano; and Dutch saints/early preachers of the faith:Boniface, Willibrord, Suitbert and Odulphus.

According to Vercauteren and Nachbahr, the subjects are related to themost important categories used in the library: books of sermons and theBible, the Church Fathers, Council decisions, the works of the great Fran-ciscan saints, and historical works. So while the Franciscans – like theJesuits – understandably emphasized their own saints, it is striking that theyalso attached importance to the history of the country of their mission. Oficonographic interest is the combination of the Annunciation with the fig-ures of Moses and Aaron, echoing the altar’s typological program.34

This series did not conclude De Wit’s work for the library; in 1729 he also


117. Jacob de Wit, Design for

a Wall Decoration at the

Presbytery of the Moses

and Aaron Church, 1716.

Amsterdam, Rijks-

museum, print room

118. Jacob de Wit, Aegidius de Glabbais' Golden Jubilee, 1717. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent

195

In contrast to Moses and Aaron, here Jacob de Wit was involved in thechurch’s decoration from the outset, and the interior was designed entirelyto harmonize with his paintings. In 1736 he executed the altarpiece with theResurrection of Christ, almost four meters high, and five years later he madea four-and-a-half meter wide painting above the altar structure depictingAngels and Cherubim Beholding the Holy Ghost. A stucco relief with angelsworshipping the Lamb was displayed between these two works, while stat-ues of Peter and Paul, the saints to whom the church was dedicated, stoodin niches beside the altar. These dated from about the same time as thealtarpiece and came from the Antwerp studio of Michiel van de Voort theElder. Today they are exhibited in Museum Amstelkring, which occupiesthe former clandestine church “’t Hart.”38

As in the Augustinians’ church, horizontal paintings were placed belowthe galleries, executed by De Wit in brunaille. Wagenaar described them asfollows: “Around the Church are ten splendid bas-reliefs in rosy gray hues,or limewood color, painted by the famous De Wit, representing the Evan-gelists and the Church Fathers.”39 We do indeed see, in the ten grisailles exe-cuted in reddish brown, the Church Fathers Ambrose, Augustine (fig. 120),

Gregory and Jerome and the EvangelistsMatthew, John, Mark and Luke. We also seethe figures of the apostles Judas Thaddeus andJames the Greater, whose inclusion is less easyto explain. As a whole, however, the seriesclearly reflects an interest in the earliest writ-ings of the Catholic Church, and the preach-ing of the gospel that characterized theCounter-Reformation. De Wit also paintedmedallions with Joseph and Mary to be placedabove the entrances by the altar.40

The current whereabouts of De Wit’s altar-piece with the Resurrection (fig. 119) areunknown, nor do any good photographs existof it. We do have a preliminary drawing andan oil sketch, however,41 which show a compo-sition that from a distance recalls Rubens, withan athletic, muscular, triumphant Christ. Ayear earlier, De Wit had made a similar, slight-ly larger Resurrection (425 x 220 cm) for thesecular mission station of St. Matthew in Alk-maar, which was then undergoing a radical,expensive facelift.42

194

decorated the ceiling, with six rectangular paintings between the beams,depicting the four Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure.The paintings of Gregory and Ambrose include two grisaille medallions ofthe four evangelists (one depicting Matthew and Luke, the other with Johnand Mark). Nachbahr and Vercauteren list several other paintings by DeWit that may have been destined for this space.35 Besides the largest andmost richly decorated clandestine churches in the Northern Netherlands,the Franciscans now also had the most beautiful library.

Superlatives also come to mind in relation to Jacob de Wit’s monumentalgroup portrait made to mark the 50th anniversary, in 1717, of the day thatAegidius de Glabbais had entered monastic life (fig. 118). Depicted fulllength and life-sized, the sixty-year-old man stands at the altar while hisassistant Peter van Veghel holds the “evergreen crown of celestial victory”(“onverwelkbare kroon der hemelse overwinning”) above his head, and histwo younger assistants offer him the “stick of old age” and a decorated waxcandle. De Glabbais’s pose is based on the figure of Ignatius of Loyola inRubens’s altarpiece for the church of St. Ignatius in Antwerp, thus endow-ing this portrait too with an unusual monumentality.36 There is not a singleportrait of a priest in the entire seventeenth century that might have pre-pared us for this painting, and the work would remain unique in its kindthroughout the eighteenth century.

Exactly where the portrait hung is unknown, but the likeliest place wouldhave been in the Great Hall of the presbytery. In 1734, by which time themission station was led by P.J. Rademaker, De Wit decorated a wall – prob-ably for this same room – with five vertical paintings placed betweenpilasters, the iconography of which was closely linked to that of the altar inthe church. At the center stood the Resurrected Christ with the Cross, onhis right were Peter and Paul, with Moses and Aaron depicted on the otherside. Here again we see how prominent the typological associations evokedby the names of the houses on Breestraat had become in the pictorial cul-ture of the Franciscan leaders of the Moses and Aaron Church.

The French Catholic ChurchThe French Catholic church on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, which was runby the Carmelite order, was given an extremely wide façade as part of therenovation work around 1733, as had previously been done with De Pool(1719) and “’t Boompje” (1732); the façade of the Moses and Aaron Churchwould undergo a similar metamorphosis in 1759. The French church wasdemolished in 1912, but fortunately we have photographs giving a goodimpression of its interior, which had remained intact until that time (fig.119).37


119. The Roman Catholic

French Church,

photograph, ca. 1910.

Amsterdam, Municipal

Archives

197

half of the eighteenth century than before. In fact at least thirty altarpieceswere commissioned in Amsterdam in the latter half of the seventeenth cen-tury,46 as opposed to twelve in De Wit’s time.47 So it would really be moreaccurate to speak of a sharp fall in numbers, at least if we leave out of con-sideration the large-scale decoration of the presbytery of the Moses andAaron Church. That is not to deny that De Wit raised the standard ofpainting for clandestine churches to such heights as to more or less maskthe quantitative decline.

This decline should be seen in the context of a general waning of thepainting profession. The Golden Age of painting in the United Provinceswas more or less over by about 1700, although there was still a small andselect group of artists producing work of superior quality.48 That fewer and fewer paintings were being sold was ascribable to various causes.Houbraken, who published his Groote Schouwburg in 1718-1721 in the fullknowledge that painting in his country had been going steadily downhillsince 1660, condemned the lethargy of art purchasers and potential clients,but he also blamed the economic malaise caused by the wars with Eng-land.49 The latter argument, in particular, has been corroborated by modernresearch. Recently, another significant economic factor in the collapse ofthe market for paintings has been identified: the vast numbers that hadbeen produced from the early seventeenth century onwards, giving rise inthe latter half of the century to a second-hand market so large that livingmasters could scarcely compete with it.50

Just as important as all these factors on the art market, however, were cer-tain new ideas about the art of the interior. In 1750, the artists’ biographerJohan van Gool discussed the lamentable consequences of the “French”fashion in interior decoration.51 It is quite true that the French-born notionof harmonious unity, especially in relation to the secular interior, in whicharchitecture and decoration were expected to form an integrated whole andthere was no room for classical easel paintings, had gained ground all overEurope since the end of the seventeenth century.52 The Huguenot DanielMarot, a prominent architect as well as a designer of interiors and printswho had fled from Paris to The Hague in 1686, played an important role inthe introduction of these new ideas.53

Aside from these general trends concerning interior decoration, a factor ofespecial relevance to clandestine churches was the Flemish-Italian fashion inthe embellishment of church interiors. When we look at the decoration ofCatholic churches in the Southern Netherlands, we see that there too, thepeak of ecclesiastical painting was in the first half of the seventeenth century.

After Rubens’s death in 1640, the subsequent generation of painters,including Jan Cossiers, Gaspard de Crayer and Erasmus Quellinus II, were

196

It is striking how little emphasis the Carmelites placed in this interior ontheir ‘own’ saints, in comparison to other orders. The Jesuits and Augustini-ans included their orders’ saints in their altarpieces, and in the Moses andAaron the Franciscan saints were prominently represented in statues besidethe altar and in the side altarpieces. The program of decorations in theFrench church, as far as can be reconstructed, seems to have been derivedentirely from the Bible and the Church Fathers. The figure of Elias, whoplays such an important role in the order’s history (the Carmelites contin-ued a tradition of hermits that according to legend had begun with theprophet Elias on Mount Carmel), and who featured prominently in theCounter-Reformational iconography in their other churches,43 was notincluded in the permanent decorations of the French church.

The Carmelites generally had a preference for the Transfiguration as theiraltarpiece scene, since Elias appears as a witness at this event, but in Amster-dam they chose instead the Resurrection, which implies that the main ele-ments of Catholic doctrine and the celebration of mass provided the basicframework for the decoration of the interior. St. Theresa, too – who hadbeen depicted so gloriously by Bernini for the Carmelites’ church in Rome,for instance – was absent from this stylishly executed, but iconographicallyalmost Spartan, interior.

Jacob de Wit and the Supposed Pinnacle of ClandestineChurch PaintingEver since the publication of Van Heel and Knipping’s Van schuilkerk totzuilkerk, in 1941,44 it has been thought that the decoration of clandestinechurches enjoyed an unprecedented boom in De Wit’s day. As recently as1993, Guus van den Hout wrote that in the eighteenth century, “attentionshifted from the building to the decoration” of clandestine churches, whichwas in part a reference to the work of Jacob de Wit.45

But it is certainly not true that more paintings were ordered in the first


120. Jacob de Wit, Design for

a grisaille with St.

Augustine, 1733.

Amsterdam, Municipal

Archives

199198

able to secure enough work for some time.54 The most attractive commis-sions now went increasingly to sculptors though, evidently because the spa-tial impact of sculpture answered more satisfactorily the desire (on the partof those ordering the work) to suggest the actual presence of miraculousevents in the church. The high altar of St. Rumbold’s Cathedral, the seat ofthe Archbishop of Mechelen, was not endowed with a painted altarpiece;instead, Lucas Fayd’herbe fashioned it, in 1666, in the form of a giganticreliquary surmounted with the sculpted figure of St. Rumbold, with at hisfeet two of the building laborers who had robbed and murdered him.55

The influence of Bernini, who introduced his theatrical ensembles intoItalian church interiors in the mid-seventeenth century, can scarcely be over-stated in this respect. In 1685, Artus Quellinus II and Willem Kerricxenhanced the choir of Antwerp’s wealthiest parish church, the church of St.James, with a monumental sculpted Apotheosis of St. James (fig. 121). Theecstasy of the protagonist and the architectural setting with twisted marblecolumns recall Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa in the Cornaro chapel of SantaMaria della Vittoria in Rome and the Baldacchino in St. Peter’s, respectively.56

In St. Augustine’s Church in Antwerp, Hendrik Frans Verbrugghen, anartist we have already encountered in the Jesuit church in Utrecht, executeda similar theatrical ensemble in 1699, but now with St. Augustine in theleading role. The same sculptor made the Apotheosis of St. Bavo for the mainaltar of St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent. The old altarpiece, Rubens’s Conver-sion of St. Bavo (fig. 3), was replaced by Verbrugghen’s marble and stoneensemble, and now hangs on the wall in the transept. The growing popular-ity of sculpture did not banish painting from the church, but it did shift itsomewhat towards the background.57

The most prestigious new clandestine churches built in the latter half ofthe eighteenth century, both of them Franciscan, recalled the French courtstyle as well as the Italian-Flemish baroque. The Franciscan church in Gou-da, completed in 1767, was designed by the architect Pieter de Swart, andSt. Rosalia’s in Rotterdam was built in 1778 by the Italian-born architectGiovanni Giudici. The floor plan and wall divisions of both were based onthe example of the court chapel of Versailles, built in 1698-1708 after designsby Jules Hardouin Mansart with the assistance of Robert de Cotte.58 Nei-ther still stands today – the Gouda church was replaced by a neo-Gothicstructure, and the one in Rotterdam was destroyed in the bombing of thecity on May 10, 1940.

Here as in the Old Catholic churches in The Hague and Delft, the deco-rations were dominated by monumental woodcarving and stucco, and con-tained no paintings aside from the altarpieces. St. Rosalia’s, in particular,was conspicuous for its exuberant sculptures around the altar and a spectac-


121. Artus Quellinus II and

Willem Kerrickx, The

Apotheosis of St. James

the Greater, 1685.

Antwerp, Church of

St. James

201200

ular pulpit with a representation of the Fall of Man below the canopy,which the Flemish sculptor Van Ursel had based on the pulpit in the churchof St. Goedele in Brussels.59

While these churches at least had painted altarpieces, by the latter half ofthe eighteenth century even these gave way in some clandestine churches toaltar structures consisting solely of architectural elements and stucco, as in theMaagdenhuis chapel, which was completely rebuilt in the period 1784-1787

under the supervision of the city architect Abraham van der Hart. A printdating from 1792 shows that the altar was surmounted by a massive tabernaclewith crucifix, above which was a stucco relief of the Holy Ghost (fig. 122).The interiors of De Liefde near Raampoort in Amsterdam, built between1784 and 1786, and De Hoop in Diemen, completed in 1787, were similarlyfurnished without any paintings at all.60

C L A N D E S T I N E S P L E N D O R

122. D. Vrijdag after

J. Bulthuis, Interior of the

Maagednhuis Chapel,

engraving, 1792

Summary and Final Remarks

The more one knows about paintings from the ageof clandestine churches, the harder it is to saywhether there is any such thing as “typically DutchCatholic art,” as Albert Blankert proposed in 1978.It is impossible to single out any specific stylisticfeatures, or even to describe a particular kind ofatmosphere, as being applicable to all the paintingsmade for clandestine churches in the churchprovince of Utrecht. That said, many paintings arenonetheless recognizably from Amsterdam, Haar-lem or Utrecht, since they were made by famousartists from these parts, each working in his ownunique style.

The paintings of Abraham Bloemaert, Jan vanBijlert, Pieter de Grebber, Salomon and Jan de Brayand Jacob de Wit all made an essential artistic con-tribution to the art of the Counter-Reformation,since they were produced expertly and with dedica-tion by fine artists.

It was Abraham Bloemaert who, familiar as hewas with contemporary Counter-Reformational artfrom Italy and the Southern Netherlands, was thefirst to supply clandestine churches with devotionalpaintings of superior quality. Soon afterwards, hewas joined by Van Honthorst and Van Bijlert, whodrew on the experience they had gained in Rome.This led to a marvelous upsurge of religious historypainting – it is no coincidence that the 1620s wasnot only the great decade of the Utrecht School,but also the period in which many clandestinechurches were finally established on a permanentbasis.

The crucial importance of these artists’ contribu-tion is clear, for instance, from the later develop-ment of painting for clandestine churches inUtrecht. When Hendrick Bloemaert took over hisfather’s studio, also inheriting the latter’s role as themain supplier of work for clandestine churches, theclose link with current ecclesiastical art was soon a

thing of the past. Instead of following the latesttrends in Roman art in the spirit of his father, hemerely reproduced the formulas his father haddevised.

A few years later than Abraham Bloemaert inUtrecht, Pieter de Grebber developed a distinctivetype of Catholic painting in Haarlem. He basedhimself a good deal on examples from Leiden aswell as on Rubens and Van Dijck, besides which hiswork also reflected the characteristic products ofHaarlem studios, which combined classical princi-ples of composition with the realistic rendering oftextures and individual portrayals of figures andfaces. The connection with the art of the Counter-Reformation was preserved above all by the use ofsimple devotional prints.

Although Salomon and Jan de Bray’s ties with theCatholic Church are less clearly defined, we can seethat they continued where De Grebber left off. Butin Haarlem, as in Utrecht, the upsurge lasted onlytwo generations. Inspiring commissions and inspiredpainters alike gradually became all too rare.

In the case of Amsterdam, clandestine churchesdo not present a definite pattern until about 1650,with the advent of Claes Cornelisz Moyaert, whosemix of the styles of Elsheimer (via Lastman) andRubens placed a certain individual stamp on hiswork. For years, Amsterdam’s painters were markedby eclecticism and a lack of individuality, fromAdriaen van de Velde in the 1660s up to and includ-ing Nicolaas Roosendael, Johannes Voorhout andJan Baptist Weenix in the final decade of the seven-teenth century. Not until the flowering of the art ofJacob de Wit, with his poetic conception of seven-teenth-century Flemish examples, did Amsterdammake a manifest contribution to the painting of theCounter-Reformation. This was also when paint-ings came to be seen, following internationaltrends, as part of an integrated total concept,involving architects such as Daniel Marot andsculptors like Jan Baptist Xaverij.

Clandestine splendor. Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, pp....

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