Pieter Jansz Saenredam Biography | Oil Paintings

In 1612 Pieter Jansz Saenredam, a short and hunchbacked young man moved permanently to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Frans de Grebber and two years later, by the age of seventeen, he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke.

Pieter Jansz Saenredam is noted for his surprisingly modern-looking paintings of church interiors. Saenredam achieved this look by using very even light, subtle shading, and by removing any detailed depiction of textures and church furniture, focusing more attention on the buildings and their architectural forms.

Pieter Jansz Saenredam's paintings frequently show medieval Gothic churches, but sometimes late Romanesque, which had been stripped bare of their original decorations after the iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformation. Although Utrecht was the center of the remaining Catholic population of the mainly Calvinist United Provinces, all the old churches were retained by the Protestants.

Saenredam wanted to record this time of change by documenting the nation's structures. Many artists before him had specialized in nonexistent and whimsical architecture, but Pieter Jansz Saenredam was one of the first to focus on existing real buildings.

Maybe his best-known works are a coordinating pair of oil canvases both titled Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht. In their simplicity and semi-abstract formalism, they anticipate more present-day works, for example, those of Mondrian and Feininger.

In 2012 a painting was entered in an auction sale, advertised as by a follower of Pieter Jansz Saenredam with an estimate of US$5,000, but it was withdrawn from sale, six months later, the same painting, a View of the Town Square of Assendelft was sold at auction for more than US$4,000,000.

Art Movement: Mannerism, Dutch Golden Age.
Artists Influencing Pieter Jansz Saenredam: Frans de Grebber.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.