Lot 2059 Nα

Church interiors were extremely popular at the time this work was painted, but only very few artists, such as Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet, mastered the representation of light-flooded church interiors to such perfection. The birthplace of this new type of painting was Delft. It is therefore not surprising that numerous depictions of the interiors of the Oude and the Nieuwe Kerk exist. The light-filled basilica depicted here testifies to the "extraordinary clarity and delicacy of the painterly perspective and the highest charm of the chiaroscuro", with which Karl Woermann already praised van Vliet's oeuvre. "Architectural portraits" were nothing new at that time, but the way of depicting perspective was. As in the works of Gerard Houckgeest, the viewer is forced to look around the corner. Columns obstruct our view of the actual focus of the work, the tomb of William I of Orange. Since the burial of William of Orange in 1584, almost all the members of the House of Orange-Nassau have been laid to rest in the crypt of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. His tomb, which is of special art historical importance, was built between 1614 and 1622 by the architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621) on behalf of the General Councils. After his death, his son Pieter took over the completion of the tomb. As the "Father of the Fatherland", as he was called with honour, he deserved a particularly magnificent tomb, which consists of 850 individual parts and contains numerous symbolic meanings.
Comparable representations of the Oude Kerk and the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft by the hand of Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet can be found in large international collections, such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge/England and the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The majority of van Vliet's paintings are unsigned.