Clandestine Splendor. Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, pp. 86-167

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there. Then in 1629, a prominent cleric joined the family, when Pieter’s sis-ter Maria married Wouter de Wolff, the brother of Augustinus de Wolff.The latter was canon of the Haarlem chapter and priest of the parish ofSaints Pancratius and Gommarus in the town of Enkhuizen, which he pro-vided with a permanent clandestine church around 1631. Maria de Grebberwas herself a painter of no small merit, and her portrait of her brother-in-law Augustinus was hung in the chapter’s meeting-chamber.13

We can safely assume that the large altarpiece with the Deposition byPieter de Grebber, signed and dated 1633 (fig. 51), which the Church ofSaints Gommarus and Pancratius sold to the Rijksmuseum in 1907, wasalso commissioned by Augustinus.14 With its mixture of elements fromFlemish and Leiden art, it is typical of De Grebber’s work. The dramaticillumination and conspicuous repoussoir figure recalls early paintings byRembrandt, such as Simeon and Hannah in the Temple (c. 1627);15 the figureof St. John the Evangelist on the right, in profile, is reminiscent of headspainted in this period by Jan Lievens,16 while the figure of Mary derivesfrom Anthony van Dyck.17

The composition may be rather lacking in cohesiveness, but the paintingbrings the event depicted close to us, and the restrained grief of the mourn-ing women and the tenderness with which Nicodemus and Johannes han-dle Christ’s body invite empathy. The work must have made a greatimpression on Enkhuizen’s Catholics, to whom it must have seemed, whenthey first attended services at their renovated chapel with its new altarpiece,that their church had recovered beyond their expectations.

De Grebber’s Deposition is one of the earliest identified monumentalaltarpieces in the diocese; the 1630s were a productive period for the decora-tion of permanent clandestine churches. Other known works are CornelisEngelsz’s Adoration of the Magi (1632) and the Crowning with Thorns (fig.52) that Jan Miense Molenaar produced in 1639 for the clandestine churchof St. Odulphus in Assendelft.18

Engelsz’s mellifluously painted Adoration of the Magi comes from theHaarlem church of the Saints Mary and Anne, where it could still be seen asan altarpiece in 1819, as witnessed by a painting of that church’s interiormade that year by Cornelis Steffelaar.19 The work’s classical style is preciselywhat was expected of a history painting in Haarlem in this period.

Jan Miense Molenaer’s altarpiece, on the other hand, is quite exceptional.For one thing it is unique in his oeuvre – we know of no other monumentalhistory paintings by him. But there is also nothing comparable among theother altarpieces made for clandestine churches. Molenaer was probablyacquainted with the donor or the priest of Assendelft (only one priestworked there, a secular cleric) and agreed to make an altarpiece provided he

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

51. Pieter de Grebber, The

Deposition, 1633.

Amsterdam,

Rijksmuseum

CS51

8988

could choose a subject that suited his temperament. In any case, the Mock-ing of Christ afforded him ample opportunity to portray the near-caricaturalpeasant types who also populate his genre paintings. But the compositionaldemands of an altarpiece were very different, and it must be said that Mole-naer has succeeded in achieving a certain monumentality here, if onlythrough an almost textbook recourse to a symmetrical triangular composi-tion. It is above all Christ’s dignity and penetrating gaze that have saved thework from descending into farce.20

Priests, Spiritual Virgins, and LaityIncluded in a nineteenth-century inventory of St. Bernard’s clandestinechurch, mentioned above, is an Ecce Homo by Pieter de Grebber, dated1641, probably ordered by Boudewijn Cats or one of his parishioners.Boudewijn had succeeded his uncle Joost Cats as parish priest in 1640 andcommissioned a portrait of himself from De Grebber three years later. Thecurrent whereabouts of the Ecce Homo are unknown, but one might havebeen tempted to identify this work with the almost life-sized Christ at theColumn, which was purchased a few years ago by the Museum of Fine Artsin San Francisco, were it not that the latter work is dated 1632. Althoughthis painting does not depict the moment at which Christ is displayed tothe people by Pontius Pilate, scenes of the wounded Christ, sitting or stand-ing alone, were frequently inscribed “Ecce Homo.”

The painting in San Francisco has sometimes been called an altarpiece,but this use is incompatible with its narrow format (160 x 80.5 cm). 21 Itprobably hung on a different part of the wall of a private chapel or clandes-tine church; the dignity and solitude of the suffering Christ are also sugges-tive of a purely devotional rather than Eucharistic use. De Grebber’sLamentation (1640) in the Rijksmuseum must have had a similar function,given its horizontal format, although in this case it is not compelling soli-tude but precisely the archetypal images of mourning in the figures gath-ered around the body that are designed to inspire the viewer to meditate onChrist’s Passion.

A rare source that clarifies the use of works of this kind is the inventory ofthe clandestine church “Het Paradijs” (“The Paradise”), founded in 1647 byBernardus Hoogewerff. When the latter died in 1653, his maidservant Leun-tje Pietersdr drew up a list of the interior of the church, from the benchesranged along the walls and the chairs in the middle to the organ, the flutes,violins and music scores in the gallery, where the spiritual virgins’ ensemblewould play. On the walls of this gallery hung twelve paintings of the apos-tles: one large work depicting “The Virgin Mary and the Four Sinners,” twosmall paintings of Mary Magdalene, and a Nativity.22


52. Jan Miense Molenaer,

The Mocking of Christ,

1639. Assendelft, Roman

Catholic church of

St. Odulphus

91

form of sums of money to purchase houses or bonds, which bolstered thecapital of the mission station and enabled it to build a church. Amsterdamfamilies such as the Coddes, Coecks and Cromhouts financed poor relief,donated houses, and paid for renovation work needed for Catholic missionstations;30 in 1684 the Gouda silversmith Sybertus Kaen purchased a housethat enabled the priest of the mission station St. John the Baptist to enlargehis church.31 A little over a hundred years later, in 1787, the generous dona-tion of Johannes Abel paid for repairs to the roof of Gouda’s second missionstation, St. Willibrord’s, to the tune of 1,251 guilders; that same year Abelalso donated a new organ.32

The vicars apostolic were wary of dependency on rich patrons for thebuilding or sustaining of mission stations, since such donors might demanda certain influence in religious matters in return. They therefore preferredto appoint priests with sizeable fortunes of their own, which they would beexpected to use largely to boost their mission station’s finances. Several casesare known of priests who donated large sums of money to build and equip achurch. Some also gave financial support to indigent mission stations in thevicinity.33

One such benefactor was, as we saw, Bernardus Hoogewerff. He was acurate in the mission station De Oppert (Saints Lawrence and Mary Mag-dalene), for which the original building had been donated by his fatherHubrecht in 1637. After his father’s death in 1647, Bernardus set up the sis-ter mission station Het Paradijs in his parental home a few streets away.34

Since Hoogewerff had sufficient means to finance the entire church and itsfittings, he saved the mission station in advance from any potential disputesover ownership of the inventory. For besides the risk of donors claiminginfluence on religious affairs, the shaky legal basis of mission stations pre-sented a range of other problems; their lack of legal personality made it dif-ficult for them to claim ownership of property. A mission station couldsuddenly lose its altar silver if a major donor decided to switch to a differentconfessor and to take “his” silver with him.

Large sums were paid for altar silver, since the material itself was so pre-cious. We have already seen how much money might be involved in thepurchase of a single chalice. A silver monstrance, too, could easily cost over1,000 guilders, and a set of six candlesticks for the altar might cost twicethat sum.35

When the furnishing of the interior did involve gifts from private donors,mutual agreements were often drawn up. The Jesuit Henricus Beets, whileworking as a priest in Leiden, drafted a declaration to be signed by the sis-ters Elysabeth and Agatha van Schuylenburch. They had donated a silverlamp, four large brass candlesticks, an ivory and ebony tabernacle, and

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The church is no more, but the fact that it had a gallery that couldaccommodate an entire orchestra tells us that at least one ceiling must havebeen removed to create a large and impressive interior, however unassumingthe building may have looked from the outside. The altarpiece, a Depositionby an unnamed painter, was flanked by paintings depicting the saints Willi-brord and Boniface. Another ten paintings hung on the ground floor walls,most of them unattributed: Peter, The Adoration of the Shepherds, St. MaryMagdalene, St. Joseph, Mary, Mother of God, St. Lawrence, two works depict-ing the face of Jesus Christ, a Crowning with Thorns, and finally, close to thealtar, the only painting by a named artist: De Grebber’s Christ Carrying theCross, which was fitted with a purple curtain, indicating that the paintingwas displayed only at certain times.23

Hoogewerff paid for everything, from the paintings to the paraments andaltar silver. Some of the large store of silver has been preserved, including asilver ewer (which had a matching basin) made in 1652 by the Utrecht sil-versmith Michiel de Bruyn van Berendrecht, for the ritual washing of handsby the priest. Hoogewerff ’s coat of arms is inscribed in it (fig. 53). 24 Otherexamples are known of priests furnishing a mission station with altar silverout of their own purse and marking it with their family coat of arms, butmost “personalized” silver gifts came from women, in particular widowsand spiritual virgins.

The wealthiest spiritual virgins often gave indispensable financial supportto their mission stations and contributed not only self-made paraments butalso paintings and altar silver to the church. In the case of paintings, thedonor can generally be identified only if the name is recorded in thearchives (examples will be discussed in later chapters) but donations of sil-ver were frequently personal in nature, and reflect their origin in the formof inscriptions or family coats of arms. They also often exemplify thedonor’s personal cult of veneration in their iconography, which was mostoften related to the Virgin Mary.25 Theissing has observed that spiritual vir-gins tended to choose a feast day dedicated to the Virgin Mary for theirentrance into the community,26 frequently making large donations – at thetime or on later anniversaries – to mark the day.27

Male lay donors presented churches with silver less frequently thanpriests or spiritual virgins.28 Married couples occasionally had their patronsaints depicted on items they donated. For instance, Claes Frans Remmertsand Jantien Paulus made a gift of a ciborium in 1668, which they hadinscribed with their names as well as images of St. Nicholas and St. Johan-na.29

Male lay donors were certainly not unimportant in terms of making giftsto the church – quite the contrary – but their donations generally took the


53. Michiel de Bruyn van

Berendrecht, Silver jug,

1652. Rotterdam, Roman

Catholic church of

SS. Peter and Paul

93

The presence of a work by De Grebber in the church established byHoogewerff shows that his popularity as a painter of religious works (espe-cially scenes from the Passion of Christ), reached beyond the borders of hisown town. Other indications too bear this out. Around 1711, Jacoba Dae-men, a wealthy salt dealer from Amsterdam, wrote in her diary that she hadpurchased paintings by Rubens and De Grebber depicting a Flagellationand a Crucifixion (which of the two was responsible for which subject isunclear), and that she could not wait to install them in her private chapel.The works came from the estate of Laurens van der Hem, a member of awell-known Catholic family in Amsterdam. His father was described in 1651

as “one of the city’s most prominent papists,” and it must have been he whoinitially owned these paintings.38

De Grebber’s iconographically most interesting painting of the Passion,God Inviting Christ to Sit on the Throne at His Right Hand (fig. 54), wasfound in the church of “Sint Petrus Banden” (St. Peter’s Chains) in Roelo-farendsveen, near Leiden, a nineteenth-century building erected to replacea clandestine church that had been established in 1630. Its large size andhorizontal format (132 x 150 cm) suggest that it hung on one of the walls ofthe clandestine church as an object of veneration.

We see Christ kneeling on the Cross, displaying his wounds to God theFather. Strewn around the cross lie the instruments of the Passion, while theHoly Ghost hovers above. Graciously but peremptorily, God the Fatherassigns the seat to his Son, thus indicating the acceptance of Christ’s sacri-fice.39 The iconography was introduced in the Late Middle Ages. A Germanwoodcut from 1491 depicts the same moment: it presents heaven as a palacewith a throne beneath a Gothic canopy, with Christ kneeling beside thecross rather than on it, and his breast is not bared. For the rest, the action isidentical.40

Although the Counter-Reformational Catholic Church made worship ofthe Passion into the linchpin of its policy, this specific scene was seldomrepresented in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.41 This was proba-bly because of the stricter rules of decorum that had been introduced by theCouncil of Trent. It was no longer acceptable to depict Christ kneeling afterthe Ascension, because from that moment onwards his status was equal tothat of God the Father. For precisely this reason, a bitter controversy hadarisen around Abraham Bloemaert’s altarpiece for St John’s Cathedral inDen Bosch (fig. 10). This work too depicts Christ kneeling, to the indigna-tion of the new bishop Nicolaas Zoesius, who saw the altarpiece during avisitation in Den Bosch in 1615, when it had just been installed. The imageof a kneeling Christ did not correspond to Holy Scripture or to the writingsof the Church Fathers, wrote the archdeacon who accompanied him,42 and

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some linen and furniture. Below the list of objects was written the sentence:“To which said Goods neither we nor our descendants can lay a claim … ofany kind.”36

Sometimes the opposite provision was agreed – that is, that the goodsconcerned were to remain the property of the private individual concerned,who wished only to loan them to the mission station. Maria Knottert, thewidow of Adriaan Wittert, made available to this same Beets numerouschurch items, including four silver candlesticks and a number of para-ments. But everything was marked with the letters WK (Wittert-Knotter),in addition to which she drew up her own contractual agreement to accom-pany the transfer, which stated: “The following goods are loaned to MrBeets for use in the church, and may be reclaimed by me at any time.”37


54. Pieter de Grebber, God

Inviting Christ to Sit on

the Throne at his Right

Hand, Utrecht, Museum

Catharijneconvent

95

Descartes often visited Ban when he went to Haarlem, and the two menwould make music together. Sometimes they were joined by the Augustin-ian Alstenius Bloemaert, the founder of the clandestine church of St. Anne,a subsidiary of St. Bernard’s. 48 Bloemaert too belonged to De Grebber’sclientele. The probate inventory of his property drawn up after his death in1659 includes a “large painting by De Grebber.”49

Given the close relations between Ban and De Grebber, the Female Saintin Ecstasy is unlikely to have been the only painting he produced for thebeguinage. Dirkse has already argued that the artist’s Adoration of the Shep-herds from 1633, which turned up on the Amsterdam art market in 1816,may also have been made for Ban’s church. The music of the Gloria, whichcan be made out on the score carried by the angels, was an original, rather

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no irregular images were to be displayed in the church without the bishop’sapproval. The Cathedral chapter declined to capitulate, however and leftthe altarpiece where it was.43 The priest of the clandestine church in Roelo-farendsveen also took the view, it seems, that the scene possessed a valuethat outweighed any objections. The humility exemplified by Christ, whichDe Grebber had captured superbly, fostered an intense emotional responseon the part of the congregation.

Jan Albert Ban and the BeguinageAlthough De Grebber was receiving commissions for religious work fromfar and wide, the Haarlem chapter remained at the center of his professionallife. Jan Albert Ban was the canon with whom he had most dealings – thetwo men met frequently and were probably good friends. They had knowneach other at least since 1629, when Ban was a witness at the marriage ofMaria, Pieter’s sister. 44

Ban was appointed priest of the beguinage in 1630. Beguines, like spiritu-al virgins, were women who had taken only limited vows and did not entera convent, but the Beguines’ movement was far older and had a more highlydeveloped institutional structure. Haarlem’s beguinage, one of the three inthe United Provinces to have survived the Reformation (along with those ofDelft and Amsterdam), had fallen into decline, in terms of both numbers ofbeguines and spiritual intensity. Ban reorganized and revitalized it, partlyby basing it on a new, stricter rule. Four years later he changed this ruleagain, most notably tightening up the clothing regulations.

In 1635, De Grebber made a painting of a female saint in ecstasy (fig. 55).The work was found in 1869 in the attic of the nineteenth-century St.Joseph’s Church, which had replaced the clandestine church of thebeguinage.45 The saint’s few and rather non-specific attributes make her hardto identify, but she is clearly presented as an ideal role model, both in devo-tional terms and in terms of her attire, a visual affirmation of the new rule.46

Ban and De Grebber met almost daily in this period. The painter pur-chased a house at the beguinage, where he would live until his death. Banoften enlisted his aid as a witness at weddings and baptisms, sometimestwice on the same day. The priest and painter also shared a great love ofmusic. Ban was a serious composer, and corresponded about music theorywith René Descartes and Constantijn Huygens. De Grebber too was onfriendly terms with Huygens, who commissioned a variety of paintingsfrom him to decorate Frederik Hendrik’s palaces of Honselaarsdijk (1637),the Oude Hof (1646, now Noordeinde Palace), and Huis ten Bosch(1648).47 The painter occasionally composed musical pieces too, including asong of praise to Ban.


55. Pieter de Grebber, Female

Saint in Ecstacy, 1635.

Utrecht, Museum

Catharijneconvent

97

cathedral, St. Bavo was the most prominent saint of the diocese. In additionto Haarlem, he was also the patron saint of the Episcopal see of Ghent.Bavo was a seventh-century nobleman who had entered a Benedictinemonastery in Ghent after his conversion. His connection with Haarlem,where he was not venerated until the late Middle Ages, is far less clearlydefined. Still, Ban and his fellow canons saw the cult of St. Bavo as a meansof strengthening ties with the Ghent chapter, thus restoring their own posi-tion in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

The time-consuming work of drawing up a calendar of saints specificallyfor the diocese of Haarlem – a task that the bishops of Haarlem had leftundone in their brief and hectic period of administration – was at lengthcompleted in 1631, thanks to the efforts of Jan Albert Ban and JoannesBugge. Once it had been published, the canons felt that it was time to dis-seminate it among a wider public, by marketing a series of prints depictingthe 24 most important saints in the diocese.

The minutes of the chapter meeting of July 6, 1632 record that Bugge had

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clumsy composition, which bespeaks a particular interest in Monteverdi –an interest shared by Ban and De Grebber.50 Furthermore, the paintingexudes a warm, intimate atmosphere that would have been particularly wellsuited to a beguinage.

Ban, Cats and the Cult of St. BavoThe reform of the cult of St. Bavo was one of the primary goals that theHaarlem chapter set itself. The Council of Trent had decreed that the vener-ation of local saints should be promoted, and as the patron saint of the


56. Nicolaas van Lijnhoven

after Pieter de Grebber,

St. Bavo, engraving

57. Pieter de Grebber,

St. Bavo Blessed by

St. Amand, Haarlem

(Schoten), Roman

Catholic church of

St. Mary

99

It was not until 1635 that Ban journeyed to Ghent with the modifiedtexts. He arrived on October 1, St. Bavo’s feast day, and was invited to takehis place in the choir stalls among Ghent’s canons, clad in their official vest-ments, for the celebration of a solemn mass. The next day, the long-antici-pated exchange of views finally took place. Ghent’s canons were full ofpraise for the text of the mass and the accompanying music, which Ban hadevidently composed himself,56 and promised their visitor that they wouldhenceforth give serious thought to ways of invigorating the old ties.Although they evidently felt ill at ease with the situation, and scarcely knewwhat attitude to take with this bishopless sister chapter, Antonius van Tri-est, bishop of Ghent, finally issued a heavily sealed and meticulously cal-ligraphed document in 1637, formally confirming the renewed alliancebetween the two dioceses. 57

Those ordering works of art for Catholic clandestine churches tended tofavor scenes from the life and Passion of Christ, but paintings depictingcharacteristic scenes from saints’ lives were also popular. Given the enor-mous amount of energy that the chapter devoted to renewing the cult of St.Bavo, it is not surprising that the most important painting by Pieter deGrebber in the latter category was devoted to this saint (fig 57, color plateVI).58 It shows the moment at which Bavo is blessed by St. Amand, the trav-eling bishop who became his mentor after Bavo renounced his earthly pos-sessions and opted for life in a monastery. As we have seen conversionscenes of this kind abounded in Catholic clandestine churches in the firsthalf of the seventeenth century, when many people had not committedthemselves to a specific denomination and there was a need for attractiverole models persuading members of the congregation that they had come tothe right church. 59

In St. Bavo Blessed by St. Amand, Bavo is rendered kneeling as BishopAmand blesses him and offers up thanks to heaven. Standing beside thebishop are two assistants in liturgical robes and two bystanders who addressthemselves to the viewer. The shield-bearer kneeling behind Bavo is holdingup a precious metal dish, as a pars pro toto for the goods that the noblemanhas given to the church; soldiers standing in the background recall theworldly existence as an army general that Bavo has relinquished. The relief-like composition is closely related to Emperor Barbarossa and the Patriarchof Jerusalem Increasing Haarlem’s Coat of Arms, a work that De Grebbermade for the town hall in 1630, which could help us date the painting dis-cussed here, although the silvery tone suggests a somewhat later period.Since the literature of art history has paid little attention to problems ofchronology in De Grebber’s oeuvre, it is difficult to arrive at any well-founded conclusion in this regard.60

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handed over a list of saints, complete with descriptions of their appearanceand attributes. The small prints, each one measuring only 8 cm in height,would be executed by Jan van de Velde II, as Patron Saints of the Diocese ofHaarlem. The series was to be printed on three leaves, each one displayingeight saints’ images. The chapter went on to discuss the order in which theyshould appear, the main point being whether St. Bavo or St. Willibrordshould come first. Although the vicar apostolic Rovenius, who attended themeeting, probably favored Willibrord, as patron of the archdiocese ofUtrecht, the Haarlem canons held firm to their choice of St. Bavo, and itwas they who ultimately prevailed. Willibrord was accorded second place.51

The mild rivalry between Utrecht and Haarlem was emphasized by thepublication of two far larger prints (39.4 x 25.9 cm). These depicted St.Bavo and St. Willibrord, respectively, and were engraved by Nicolaas vanLijnhoven after designs by Pieter de Grebber (fig. 56). 52 They wereundoubtedly intended as a riposte to the majestic St. Willibrord and St.Boniface, the first patron saints of the Utrecht archdiocese, which had beenengraved around 1630 by Cornelis Bloemaert after paintings by his fatherAbraham.53

St. Bavo is depicted in the customary nobleman’s attire, with a sword inone hand and a falcon perching on the other; more remarkable is theinscription, which relates that the saint appeared in the sky above Haarlemaround 1250 to drive off the peasant rebels from Kennemerland who werelaying siege to the city. The next time this miracle is related is in the OfficiaPropria published in 1640 by the Utrecht archbishop, which includes, on St.Bavo’s feast day, a text supplied by the Haarlem canons. The source of thestory is unknown; the medieval chronicles of Haarlem allude to the siegebut not to an apparition. The story may originate from the period around1500, when the abbey of Ghent donated a relic of the saint’s arm to thechurch in Haarlem and a precious reliquary was placed on the altar there.54

The intensified veneration of St. Bavo may have added urgency to theperceived need for an appealing link between the city and its patron saint –a need that was felt at least equally strongly in the seventeenth century,when every opportunity was seized to strengthen the weakened diocese.From 1631 onwards, Haarlem’s canons tried ardently to reinvigorate theseties. Their first request for an exchange of ideas with Ghent regarding thevita and the officium, the sung service of St. Bavo, was not answered, butwhen the dean, Joost Cats, visited Ghent in person the next year, his visithad the desired effect. After Ghent had proposed several changes to theHaarlem concepts, a provisional agreement was reached and letters werewritten back and forth. In one of them, the Ghent canon Deensius express-es his thanks to Joost Cats of Haarlem for sending him prints of St. Bavo. 55


101100

St. Bavo blessed by St. Amand is currently in the possession of St. Mary’sparish in the Schoten quarter of Haarlem, which was founded in the earlynineteenth century and “inherited” several art treasures from defunct secu-lar clandestine churches. Which one this came from we do not know; Haar-lem’s secular clandestine churches all maintained close ties with the chapter.

The painting reflects the decrees of the Council of Trent, which pre-scribed that saints must be venerated above all for their exemplary livesrather than for the favors they conferred or the miracles they could perform.A sermon given by Joost Cats on St. Bavo’s feast day and written out by oneof the spiritual virgins contains a description of the saint that correspondsprecisely to the way he has been painted here.

After relating how Bavo’s conversion was urged on him by his daughter,Cats describes the nobleman’s humble submission to Amand in a way thatholds up the saint’s generosity as an example to the congregation: “Hearingthereafter of the worthy bishop Amand, he submitted unreservedly to thelatter’s authority, surrendering all his worldly goods … Following him inthis, we shall wholeheartedly defer to our superiors and dispose of ourworldly goods according to their counsel.” By “our superiors,” of course,Cats meant himself. After describing the saint’s later life as a monk and her-mit, he ended by delivering the following appeal to his congregation, calcu-lated to comfort them while also rousing them to action: “But although wecannot ourselves be such titans in perfection / let us at least seek a little, asmere grasshoppers, to strive towards it.” 61

Salomon and Jan De BraySalomon de Bray (1597-1664) was just as devout a Catholic as De Grebber.We know that he had an altar in his house and that a home-made “Hymnalfor Christian virgins” circulated in his family to which each of his children(including three sons who were painters) had contributed a hymn of his orher own.62 He was evidently on friendly terms with the Catholic clergy; hemade designs for church silver, and in 1633 he produced a portrait of thecanon Joannes Bugge.63

Where religious history paintings were concerned, from the 1620s to1640s he confined himself to small formats. Only a few of his paintings pro-duced after 1650 have a size and subject matter that are suggestive of a possi-ble function in a place of worship. This late start may have something to dowith a gap in the market that arose with the sharp decline in Pieter de Greb-ber’s output in the last years of his life (he died in late 1652 or early 1653).The first monumental religious painting by De Bray that is known to us is aTemptation of St. Anthony, 1.79 m. in height, signed and dated 1651. 64 Ithung in the same Huissen church as Jan van Bijlert’s Holy Trinity with Will-


58. Salomon de Bray, The

Martyrdom of St.

Lawrence, 1652. Los

Angeles, Los Angeles

County Museum of Art

103

roborate this theory. What is more, a width of about 170 rather than its cur-rent 125 cm would go far better with the painting’s original height of some-what over 2 meters.

Aside from the print after Elsheimer, De Bray also drew inspiration fromat least two other prestigious examples. The first of these was a print madeby Vorsterman after Rubens’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (fig. 60), whichaccords a more central role to the grill but is far closer to De Bray in its con-ception of the human figures, and also contains a figure with the fascesdirectly behind the saint. As for De Bray’s Lawrence, in spite of the similari-

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brord and Boniface (see chapter II) and was lost at the same time. The pres-ence of De Bray’s painting in Huissen may be explained, just as in the caseof Van Bijlert’s, from the fact that the vicar apostolic Van Neercassel was sta-tioned there in the 1670s. A more precise provenance cannot be given at thistime.

More contextual information is available for a signed and dated workmade in 1652, which depicts a semi-nude man kneeling on a stone whileseveral other men remove the remainder of his clothes. To the left kneels awoman with folded hands, dressed in seventeenth-century attire. A boy ishauling in a pile of a firewood from the right, while another carries ironchains (fig. 58, color plate VII). Standing in the background is an officerbearing the fasces, a sign that we are in Rome. Although no grill is shown,the protagonist is certainly St. Lawrence. The first known description of thepainting from a 1791 auction catalogue lists it as “The Martyrdom of St.Lawrence.” At that time the painting measured about 40 cm more inheight; the upper section, since lost, depicted an angel reaching out to givethe martyr a palm and a laurel wreath.65

The scene remains exceptional because our first association with the mar-tyrdom of St. Lawrence is that of a man being stretched out on a grill,whereas this painting appears to show the preparations for it. This momentwas first depicted by Elsheimer, in a tiny painting that was part of anAntwerp collection in the seventeenth century and was much copied.66

Although that work shows Lawrence standing, still fully clothed, there toomen are pulling off his clothes; standing on the right is Emperor Decius,who demanded that Lawrence renounce his Christian faith. Immediatelybehind the saint is a priest, who is urging him to worship a statue of Her-cules. In the right background, the fire under the grill is being stoked.

Although De Bray’s conception of human figures is different, he derivednot only his choice of this moment but also several details from this exam-ple. On closer inspection, we find that De Bray’s work too contains the six-teenth-century cap with slashes worn by the soldier on the left, for instance,although the soldier himself can now barely be made out. Elsheimer’sinvention was easily accessible in Haarlem, since Pieter Soutman, the Haar-lem pupil of Rubens, had made a print after it (fig. 59).

The most important discrepancy between the two works is the presencein Elsheimer of the section on the right depicting the grill and the statue.This suggests that De Bray’s painting was cropped not only along the upperedge, but (at an earlier stage) on the right as well. The sharply cut-off figureof the boy with the chains on the right, the direction in which the boy withthe firewood is walking, and the direction of view of the man in front of theofficer – which suggests that this painting too once included an idol – cor-


59. Pieter Soutman after

Adam Elsheimer,

The Martyrdom of

St. Lawrence, engraving

105104

ty between this heroic figure and the print after Rubens, a more precisesource can be identified here – namely, the classical Laocoon group (fig.61). The martyr’s twisted torso, the placing of his left leg and the angle of hisgaze are all clearly indebted to the Trojan prophet, in addition to which theposes of the woman on the left and the boy bringing in firewood on theright display at the very least interesting parallels with those of Laocoon’ssons.

Martyrdom scenes were rare in Dutch clandestine churches, but oneprominent example is known, strikingly enough featuring the same saint.Starting in 1698, the Rotterdam clandestine church De Oppert, dedicatedto Mary Magdalene and St. Lawrence, was enlarged and refurnished. Thesecular clergy regarded this mission station as the lawful successor to the oldRotterdam parish of St. Lawrence, whose church had been seized by theCalvinists in the Reformation.67 The new altarpiece with The Martyrdom of


60. Lucas Vorsterman

after P.P. Rubens,

The Martyrdom of

St. Lawrence, engraving

St. Lawrence (figs. 102 and 103) was painted by François Marot. As in DeBray’s case, it depicted the scene where the saint’s clothes are taken off,rather than the grilling itself.

It seems likely that De Bray’s work was the original altarpiece of DeOppert, and that it was removed around 1700 to make way for Marot’s larg-er work. The provenance of De Bray’s painting certainly points in thisdirection. J.A. Versijden van Varick, from whose estate the painting wasauctioned in Leiden at the end of the eighteenth century, was a directdescendant in the male line of the Rotterdam burgher Johan Versijden, whowas baptized in De Oppert on March 10, 1657.68 This Johan Versijden prob-ably came into possession of De Bray’s painting after its removal around1700. The female donor portrayed alone in the painting, a spiritual virginor a widow, may have been his aunt or great-aunt. The suggestion of involv-ing a Haarlem painter may have come from Bernardus Hoogewerff, whohad also engaged Pieter de Grebber in the decoration of Het Paradijsaround 1650.

Various possible answers can be suggested to the question of why themoment immediately before the martyrdom has been depicted here, ratherthan the martyrdom itself. The artist may have preferred this scene for rea-sons of dignity, and the client may have welcomed the shift of emphasisfrom the traditional cruel moment to Lawrence’s refusal to worship idols.That would make him a suitable role model for Rotterdam’s Catholics, sur-rounded as they were by a majority professing a different faith.

Salomon de Bray worked for clandestine churches only for a short spaceof time; his son Jan de Bray (1627-1697) soon became the main supplier ofCatholic history paintings in Haarlem, although fewer inspiring commis-sions were granted in his time than in the first half of the century. Thedeaths of Bugge, Ban and Cats respectively, in 1636, 1641 and 1644, sappedthe vitality of the Haarlem chapter. Although it managed to survive as aninstitute until 1853, when the Holy See reinstated the Episcopal hierarchy inthe Northern Netherlands, it no longer acted as a powerful organizationalforce or seedbed of ideas. Portraits of priests and ecclesiastical pieces wereneeded now and then, a need that Jan de Bray was ideally equipped to ful-fill. His tranquil, limpid style of painting did not differ greatly from that ofhis father and De Grebber; all three are ranked among Haarlem’s classi-cists.69

De Bray’s small Virgin Mary Receiving the Holy Communion from John theEvangelist from 1656 (fig. 62, color plate VIII) hung in St. Bernard’s missionstation. A list of paintings that were found in the church and presbytery in1784 describes it as “A small piece but very beautifully painted by De Bray,

fig 61breed 11 cm

107106

depicting a priest with a woman taking Communion.”70 An inscription onthe altar step reads: “MOEDER SIET UWEN SONE,” (“Mother BeholdYour Son”), leaving no room for doubt as to the identity of the figures. Thesmall format may suggest that the painting was intended for private devo-tion; there is no evidence that it hung in the church.

De Bray based his composition on a print produced around 1600 fromthe extraordinarily prolific Wierix studio, which had produced one or moreimages appropriate to every conceivable act of Catholic devotion (fig. 63).71

The generally plain, cheap engravings circulated throughout Europe, andwere popular among Roman painters too. Wierix’s engraving was evidentlyquite well known in Haarlem; it also served as an example for a devotionalpicture for a local spiritual virgin, which was made a year before De Bray’slittle painting.72

The worship of the Blessed Sacrament occupied a very important place inthe community of the Maechden in den Hoek, as is clear from the manydisquisitions on the Eucharist with which the priest Joost Cats regaled hiscongregation. Cats had studied in Leuven and had imbibed the influence of

theologians such as Baius and Jansenius,who adhered to fairly strict rules concern-ing the administration of the sacraments; itwas important for one’s heart to be com-pletely pure before taking Communion. SoCats devoted countless long sermons tothe subject of achieving the correct frameof mind.73 A better role model than theVirgin Mary was inconceivable in thisregard. Joost’s nephew and successorBoudewijn took the same line, and Jan deBray’s small painting must have beenordered during his term of office.

That De Bray worked for the Jesuitsas well as for the secular mission stationsaround the Haarlem chapter is clear fromhis St. Francis Xavier Healing the Sick from1666, which Von Moltke traced to thePavlovska Palace in St. Petersburg. Thecomposition is a simplified version ofRubens’s altarpiece with the same subject,made for the church of St. Ignatius inAntwerp. A painting by Jan de Bray thatcan probably be identified with the one in


63. Antonis Wierix III, The

Virgin Mary Receiving the

Holy Communion from

John the Evangelist,

engraving

62. Jan de Bray, The Virgin

Mary Receiving the Holy

Communion from John

the Evangelist,1656. The

Netherlands, private

collection

109

tant element of the saint’s hagiography. Emerging from a portal withCorinthian columns, dressed in regal robes and accompanied by a servantcarrying a dish of coins, Bavo descends a flight of steps and distributes almsto the paupers gathered around him. The prominent steps appear to derivefrom Rubens’s St. Bavo altarpiece in Ghent (fig. 3), but here Bavo is theabsolute focal point; neither the Maastricht bishop Amand nor the Ghentabbot Floribert is anywhere to be seen, so that Bavo’s Ghent origins aredownplayed. The work comes from St. Bavo’s secular mission station onAchterstraat, founded around the mid-seventeenth century.76

While the facial features of the beggars in the lower section of the compo-sition point indisputably to the hand of De Bray, the composition as awhole, with the rather stage-like figure of Bavo at its center, cannot bedeemed successful. It is clearly one of the feebler works from the finaldecade of his life. The work’s dismal appearance today is exacerbated by itspoor state of preservation and obvious instances of overpainting, forinstance in the protagonist’s face.

In his final years, which he spent in Amsterdam rather than Haarlem, DeBray produced a great deal of work for the Catholic Church: he receivedseveral large commissions from Amersfoort. In 1696 he made four morethan life-sized, one-figure grisailles of the Evangelists for its church of St.Willibrord, which must have made a stately impression as an ensemble.77

One year later – in the last year of De Bray’s life – St. George’s mission sta-tion, also in Amersfoort, was completely renovated thanks to the generosityof one of Father Steenoven’s parishioners, Frederik Benthon.78 It was in thecontext of this project that De Bray produced his final large painting, thealtarpiece with Adoration of the Shepherds, which measures three and a halfby two and a half meters. That a church in Amersfoort should have com-missioned an altarpiece from an artist in Haarlem was a break with tradi-tion. In the past, such works of art had always been ordered from Utrecht.But that city no longer possessed a history painter of any note. And after thedeath of Jan de Bray, the same could be said of Haarlem.

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St. Petersburg was sold at auction in Haarlem in 1776, a few years after thedisbanding of the Jesuit order in Haarlem in 1773.74 It may be assumed tohave come from the Jesuit mission station “In ’t Springende Paert.”75

A large altarpiece produced even later than this is Jan de Bray’s St. BavoDistributing Alms to the Poor (fig. 64). Like De Grebber’s earlier work, themotif depicts the renunciation of earthly possessions that is such an impor-


64. Jan de Bray, St. Bavo

distributing alms to the

poor, Haarlem, Cathedral

of St. Bavo

111

Amsterdam’s first monumental Catholic history paintings appeared laterthan in Utrecht and Haarlem. We do know a number of paintings by Ams-terdam artists dating from the first half of the seventeenth century thatmust have served a devotional purpose, but most are of a modest formatthat one would associate with a private chapel rather than with a permanentclandestine church.

Examples include two panel paintings depicting The Virgin Mary andJohn the Evangelist by Thomas de Keyser (fig. 65) made in 1630, identifiableas wings of a small altarpiece, two panel paintings with portraits of donorsdating from 1628, both measuring 66 x 29 cm, and a Crucifixion measuring81 x 69 cm dating from 1637.1 In addition, five works of a similar format byPieter Lastman have been preserved, also depicting the Crucifixion, made inthe period 1615-1627. The version from Museum Catharijneconvent, dated1625, measures 83.5 x 63 cm.2

Not until around 1650 did a steady stream of commissions develop formonumental altarpieces. Interestingly, churches generally had two or morealtarpieces for each high altar, exchanging them at set times. We occasional-ly find “rotating altarpieces” of this kind in Flanders and Germany, butnowhere was the phenomenon as ubiquitous as in the United Provinces,most notably in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam was the third bastion of Catholicism in the Dutch Mission,after Utrecht and Haarlem. At about 20,000, the city’s Catholic populationin the mid-seventeenth century was easily the largest in the country, and alarge body of priests was needed to tend to their spiritual needs. In 1656

there were thirty-nine priests working in the city: twenty-nine seculars,three Jesuits, two Franciscans, two Dominicans, two Augustinians, and aCarmelite.3 That year, sixty-six addresses were listed at which Catholics heldservices, but this number declined in the second half of the century totwenty-six relatively spacious, permanent churches, most of them with gal-

Rotating Altarpieces in Amsterdam

65. Thomas de Keyser, John

the Evangelist,

Amsterdam, Museum

Ons' Lieve Heer Op

Solder

IV

113112

leries (fig. 66). In addition, many wealthy Catholic fami-lies maintained their own private chapels in this periodwhere they could pray and celebrate mass as a family,besides which some almshouses and other social institu-tions as well as embassies of Catholic countries also hadchapels of their own.4

Dudok van Heel has emphasized in many publicationsthe importance of the activities of affluent Catholic fami-lies, which took the initiative after the Reformation whenit came to furnishing new places of worship for them-selves and fellow believers and to hiring priests, frequent-ly from their own family circle.5 In the first half of theseventeenth century, many of Amsterdam’s Catholic fam-ilies found priests willing to come into their homes andcelebrate mass in their private chapels. These clerics wereless well organized than those in Utrecht and Haarlem,partly because Amsterdam was not an old Episcopal see

and little remained of the former hierarchy, and partly because Amsterdam’scity council pursued a strict Counter-Remonstrant regime until 1622 thatgreatly impeded the Catholic clergy’s activities.6 This combination of fac-tors probably explains why it took longer for Amsterdam to acquire missionstations each with their own fixed status within the organization of theDutch Mission. Even after the situation had stabilized, Amsterdam familiescontinued to play an important role, among other things donating numer-ous altarpieces to the larger churches that were built from about 1650

onwards.

“Theatrum Sacrum”The practice of having different paintings of the same size to hang above thealtar, and rotating them, accorded with the Counter-Reformational view ofthe Church as a “theatrum sacrum” that should involve all the churchgoer’ssenses to the full. Rubens was the first to make rotating altarpieces, in thechurch of St. Ignatius in Antwerp (later dedicated to St. Charles Bor-romeus). Around 1616-1617 he produced two majestic paintings for the highaltar, each measuring over five meters in height, their central themes beingthe miracles performed by Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier (fig. 67).

The iconography of these works can undoubtedly be explained by theJesuits’ efforts to procure the canonization of these two luminaries of theirorder – efforts that soon bore fruit, in 1622.7 A few years later they werejoined by a Raising of the Cross by Gerard Seghers (c. 1624) and a Crowningof the Virgin Mary by Cornelis Schut (c. 1635). After the order was dissolved,

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

66. J.L. van Beek after

C. van Waardt, The

Flourishing of the

Roman Catholic church

in Amsterdam, etching

67. W.S. von Ehrenberg,

Interior of the former

Jesuit Church in Antwerp,

The Hague, ICN

Afb67ehrenberg.jpgbreed 70 mm

115

painting commissioned to mark the occasion. We do not know when VanLoon’s work was brought into the church (nor do we know its currentwhereabouts); the year of the artist’s death, 1660, serves in any case as a ter-minus ante quem.

Finally, the church of the Great Beguinage in Mechelen had an Assump-tion of the Virgin Mary by Lucas Franchoys and a Holy Virgin with SaintsCatherine and Alexius by Theodoor Boeyermans (both made in 1671) whichstill hang there today. According to Mensaert, they were placed above thealtarpiece alternately, “suivant les Saints ou Saintes du jour.”12 The machin-ery used to move them back and forth, which is still in good working order,does not use pulleys: the two paintings are riveted together, back to back,and fit into a sturdy framework that is attached to the permanent frameabove the altar on two small axles, one at the top of the arched upper edgeand the other at the center of the lower edge. It is therefore a fairly simplematter to swing the entire structure around on its central vertical axis.13

Quite soon after the introduction of this phenomenon in the SouthernNetherlands, it was also introduced in the Dutch Mission. The earliest dat-ed series was installed in Gouda’s clandestine church De Tol, whose priest,Willem de Swaen, we met earlier as the writer of a hymn collection, Densingenden Swaen. Given the great interest in Jesuit spirituality reflected bythese texts, which resound with tributes to Ignatius and Francis Xavier andhave the IHS symbol on their title page, De Swaen was undoubtedlyacquainted with the theatrical altar of St. Ignatius’ Church in Antwerp. Inthe period 1636-1646 he commissioned four altarpieces from the local mas-ter Jan Fransz. Verzijl, a pupil of Wouter Crabeth II, depicting The Adora-tion of the Shepherds, The Annunciation, The Visitation, and the Adoration ofthe Magi respectively.14

It is not impossible that rotating altarpieces made their entrance in theNorthern Netherlands earlier than this; one may assume that the priestsworking in the Dutch Mission, many of whom had studied in Leuven, werefamiliar with the church of St. Ignatius and Rubens’s paintings there, andthe same applies to artists such as Pieter de Grebber and Abraham Bloe-maert, who knew the Southern Netherlands well and admired Rubens’swork. The series from Utrecht (1645-1654) and Amersfoort (1649-1669) byHendrick Bloemaert and others have already been discussed in chapter II.

The largest number of series, however, is found in Amsterdam. In somecases the paintings are still present, while in others they are documented inwritten sources; frequently we find some combination of the two. The fol-lowing account will begin with a detailed description of the backgroundand composition of the three best documented series: those in the church ofthe beguinage or Begijnhof (secular), those in De Krijtberg (Jesuits) and

114

Rubens’s two altarpieces ended up in the imperial collection of paintings inVienna. The other two still hang in the Carolus Borromeus Church, andwere joined in the nineteenth century by an Assumption of the Virgin Maryby Gustave Wappers.

The ingenious system of pulleys used to switch the paintings, built intothe half-moon- shaped shaft that was left between the curved wall of theapse and the architectural structure of the altar, is still in use today. It is rem-iniscent of a stage tower, but one in which the scenery is installed not fromabove but from below. The paintings not on display are kept in hollowed-out channels behind the altar, which extend from the level of the churchfloor to the bottom edge of the painting frame above the altar. A paintingcan be lowered into one of these channels after use with a hoist, after whichone of the others can be hoisted up and inserted in the frame.8

When Descamps came to Antwerp for his Voyage pittoresque (1769), hefound both the works by Rubens still in their places and reported that thefour altarpieces were installed above the altar in a regular order dictated bythe feast days in the church calendar. He complained that the two mostinteresting paintings had not been given permanent places where everyonecould always see them; that would be better for traveling art lovers and forthe paintings themselves, which were damaged by all that moving about.9

Despite such objections, the idea of using more than one altarpiece wasadopted in various parts of the Southern Netherlands. Descamps and Men-saert mention examples in the Jesuit churches of Brussels and Ghent, and inthe church of the beguinage in Mechelen. The Brussels church initially had“only” the Adoration of the Magi by Abraham Bloemaert, dating from 1623,but by about the mid-seventeenth century it seems that this was no longerdeemed sufficient; in 1660 the altar was equipped with pulleys, evidentlywith a view to hanging the painting of the Miracles of St. Francis Xavier(1661) that had been commissioned from Johan Erasmus Quellinus. AnAdoration of the Shepherds by Jan Cossiers (1655) that already hung in thechurch was also incorporated into the series.10

Something similar happened in the Jesuits’ church in Ghent. It had aDeposition by Caspar de Crayer, a Martyrdom of St. Livinus by Rubens, andan Adoration of the Shepherds by Theodoor van Loon. It seems that DeCrayer’s Deposition is the earliest painting in the series; Vlieghe dates it toaround the time of the church’s consecration in 1621. It was probably stillthe sole altarpiece in 1623, since it is the only one mentioned in the detaileddescription of the church written that year by Sanderus. Rubens’s paintingof St. Livinus must date from 1633, when Ghent was busy celebrating thethousandth anniversary of this saint.11 The decision to expand the numberof altarpieces must have arisen from these celebrations and the important


117

dying man had vomited out after receiving the Sacrament of the Sick. It wastossed into the fire, but the next morning it was found completely intactamong the ashes. Marius wrote on the subject in his Amstelredams eer endeopcomen (1639), and Vondel too discussed it at length in his Altaergeheij-menissen.

Marius died in 1652 and was buried in the Westerkerk. So many peoplecame to watch the funeral procession that shop-owners along the routehired out places on their awnings to people wanting to catch a glimpse ofthe passing coffin.

116

those in “’t Hart” (Augustinians). This is followed by a brief overview of theother series, and a tentative explanation of the popularity of rotating altar-pieces in the United Provinces.

Saint John and the Virgin Mary at the Begijnhof: Two Generations of AltarpiecesThe relationship between Claes Cornelisz Moyaert (1591-1655) and Leonar-dus Marius, the priest who held sway over Amsterdam’s Begijnhof from1629 to 1652, can be compared to that between Bloemaert and the Utrechtclergy, and between De Grebber and the priests of Haarlem. Moyaert toowas a devout Catholic, and one has the impression that he did not paint forthe Church solely for financial gain, but also to support a cause that was hisown. Like De Grebber he painted the death portrait of a priest, SybrandSixtius, priest of the Begijnhof, who died in 1630. This portrait has a slightlylugubrious tinge to it, since the deceased has been depicted as if still alive,seated and gazing ahead rather ferociously. Marius was Sixtus’s successor,and his likeness too was recorded by Moyaert, who painted him severaltimes in life (fig. 68) and once after death, this time simply as a dead bodylying in state with eyes closed and folded hands.

The name “Marius” refers to his origins; it is Latin for “man of Zeeland.”He was born in the town of Goes. As a student at Alticollense (“High Hill”)in Cologne, which had been founded in 1602 by Sasbout Vosmeer to trainCatholic priests for the Northern Netherlands,15 Marius soon attractedattention for his perspicacity and erudition. Before long he was appointedto a teaching post at the college, and at length rose to be its president. In themeantime he started writing theological treatises. At the age of 33 he pub-lished a voluminous work on the first five books of the Old Testament,Commentarium in Pentateuchum.

In 1630 the vicar apostolic Rovenius brought Marius to Amsterdam tosucceed Sybrand Sixtius as vicar-general of the chapter of the diocese ofHaarlem.16 Notwithstanding his administrative duties, Marius still foundtime to write and to actively concern himself with the spiritual care of Ams-terdam’s Catholics. The vehemence of his sermons frequently brought himinto conflict with the city’s authorities. In Moyaert’s painted portrait ofhim, we can clearly see in the bookcase behind him the collected works ofthe Doctor of the Church and exemplary preacher John Chrysostom(“mouth of gold”) – no idle attribute. All this made him popular among theCatholic elite; witness the two eulogies that Vondel devoted to him.17

The priest and the writer who had converted to Catholicism both exertedthemselves to promote the cult surrounding the fourteenth-century Miracleof Amsterdam. This miracle revolved around a consecrated host that a


68. Nicolaes Moyaert,

Leonardus Marius, 1647.

Utrecht, Museum

Catharijneconvent

119

When this building too had to be vacated, in 1635, the women wereforced to worship in chapels in the houses in the beguinage grounds, whichhad existed for many years and were used alongside the sacristy. After a fewyears, the situation stabilized somewhat: a permanent clandestine churchwas established in the house immediately opposite the entrance of the oldchurch. Records were kept of the donations made to the church, enablingus to follow in detail the way in which the painting collection was built up.Furthermore, almost all the paintings listed in these records are still present– or their whereabouts can be ascertained. The book of donations (vereer-ingsboek aan de kerck) was started in 1652, but the first item it lists is a dona-tion made shortly before then: “donated to the high altar, two paintings,one depicting the Crucifixion and the other St. Ursula.”20

A Crucifixion by Claes Moyaert, dated 1650 (fig. 69),21 still hangs in thechurch, but the St. Ursula has disappeared. The series also includes twoaltarpieces of the same size by the same painter, an Adoration of the Shep-herds (fig. 70) and an Assumption of the Virgin Mary, dated 1649 (fig. 71, col-or plate IX). The latter two works do not appear on the list of donations,undoubtedly because of their earlier date. All three of the extant paintingsmeasure c. 239 x 138 cm; the Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Shepherdshave long been in use as side altarpieces, while the Assumption of the VirginMary was sold at the beginning of the twentieth century and bought backwhen it was put up for auction again at the end of the century.

In 1671 Marius’s successor, David van der Mije, decided it was time toexpand the church, and hired the services of the Catholic architect Philip

118

The Begijnhof was one of the places in Amsterdam where the continuityof the Catholic faith was scarcely interrupted by the Reformation, althoughit was several decades before the future of Catholic worship there was totallysecure. Fortunately, since many of the beguines were well connected withthe local administrative elite, they succeeded in keeping the beguinageintact: it was the only Catholic institution in Amsterdam to survive theReformation.18 The small central church was officially closed by the citycouncil in 1580, but the beguines continued to hold services there until 1607

with the authorities’ tacit consent. Then, however, the building came intothe possession of English-speaking Presbyterians, after which the beguineshad to celebrate mass in the former sacristy. A Crucifixion by Isaac Isaacsz(1627), which still hangs in the presbytery as an overmantel piece, is the old-est painting in the Begijnhof that may have been ordered as a new altarpieceafter the Reformation.19


69. Nicolaes Moyaert, The

Crucifixion, Amsterdam,

Begijnhof Church of SS.

Mary and Ursula


Adoration of the

Shepherds, Amsterdam,

Begijnhof church of SS.

Mary and Ursula

74. W. Kok, Interior of the

Begijnhof Church of SS.

Mary and Ursula,

engraving, 1792.

vrijstaand makenvrijstaand maken

CS 74 nog scannen110 mm

121120

Vingboons.22 The new space called for larger altarpieces. Five in all, eachabout three meters in height, were eventually ordered within the space offorty years: another Assumption of the Virgin Mary (probably by Jan Weenix,donated by “verscheyden maechden” (“several spiritual virgins”) in 1675), apainting for Christmastide (an Adoration of the Magi by Jan Weenix, donat-ed by Mr. Berckman de Wael in 1686), two paintings for Eastertide (Christat the Column by Nicolaes Roosendael (fig. 72), donated by Father Van derMije in 1677) and a Resurrection (fig. 73) by Johannes Voorhout, made in1696, donated by the “crowned virgins,” that is, those who had passed theirtwenty-fifth anniversary as beguines, and one for Whitsuntide, The Descentof the Holy Ghost (artist unknown, donated in 1715 by the beguine Mar-garetha van Raey). Margaretha later left after a quarrel and took this paint-ing with her; as we have seen (chapter III), conflicts of this kind often revealthat spiritual virgins and beguines were permitted to regard the objects theyhad donated as their own property.23

Interestingly, a print of the interior, made in 1792 (fig. 74) still includes apainting of a Pentecostal scene – presumably one made to replace the workthat had been taken away. It also shows that two of Moyaert’s old rotatingaltarpieces were being re-used for the side altars – a use that has persisteddown to the present day.24

The artists who have been mentioned here – Roosendael, Voorhout andWeenix – were certainly not leading figures in the Amsterdam art world.They were men who produced markedly eclectic history paintings in



Assumption of the Virgin

Mary, 1649 Amsterdam,

Begijnhof church of

SS. Mary and Ursula

72. Nicolaas Roosendael,

Christ at the Column,

1677. Utrecht, Museum

Catharijneconvent

73. Johannes Voorhout,

The Resurrection,

1696. Amsterdam,

Begijnhof church of

SS. Mary and

Ursula

123

following ten years the couple had five children baptized in the beguinage.Two of their daughters actually went to live there: Maria Voorhout in 1684,and her sister Anna, who would eventually become “Grand Mistress,” in1701. The altarpiece with the Resurrection (1696, fig. 73) in the church of thebeguinage is the most ambitious work by Voorhout that we know;31 for therest, Wagenaar informs us that he painted an altarpiece with the Crucifixionfor the church “’t Vrede-duifje,”32 besides which Museum Amstelkring pos-sesses his Entombment with a horizontal format, painted around 1675.33 Hiswork exhibits the same sort of eclecticism as Roosendael’s, but is far lessappealing in its use of color and brushwork.

Jan Weenix, the third painter who contributed to the Begijnhof series,did provide for himself by selling his art; like his father, he specialized main-ly in animal paintings. He had his children baptized in the Jesuit church onVerwersgracht (now Raamgracht 6-8), but as far as is known he did notwork for it. The Adoration of the Magi from the beguinage (now in the Fran-ciscan abbey in Weert)34 shows that he too struggled with the large formatand the grouping of figures.

De Krijtberg, the Main Jesuit Church in AmsterdamBeautiful though the clandestine church at the Begijnhof may have been, inAmsterdam the seculars did not dominate the landscape of clandestinechurches as much as they did in Haarlem and Utrecht. The Jesuits wereprominent in the flurry of activity that succeeded the Treaty of Münster,building and decorating clandestine churches such as De Krijtberg, built in1654 at the cost of some 30,000 guilders and embellished with extensive deco-rations two decades later. The Jesuit Petrus Laurentius, from French-speakingFlanders, can be regarded as the founder of the mission station. He settled inAmsterdam around 1628 and became the driving force behind the purchase ofthree adjoining houses on Koningsgracht (the canal now known as Singel),the middle one of the three being transformed into a clandestine church.

It did not escape the attention of the Reformed Church council that “DeCrytbergh” was being used openly as a “papist meeting place” by a growinghost of believers, including illustrious townspeople such as the painter andarchitect Jacob van Campen and the poet Joost van den Vondel and hisdaughter Anna. The Council urged the burgomasters to take action, but itspleas fell on deaf ears.35 De Krijtberg would grow into the most importantJesuit mission station in the United Provinces.

In 1788 Adriaan de Lelie made an enlightening drawing of the interior(fig. 75),36 in which we can make out an altarpiece depicting the Vision of St.Ignatius. Until some thirty years ago, this painting was still in the possessionof the same church, and there is a photograph showing what it looked like

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response to more or less occasional commissions, which probably ensued toa large extent from their close links to the Catholic clergy.

Nicolaes Roosendael (1634/5-1686) had a canal-house on Herengrachtand is frequently mentioned in the archives of the beguinage as having pro-vided loans and donations and ordered dedicated masses. In 1673 he alsosupplied bricks for the new church.25 On March 5, 1670 he drew up his lastwill and testament in the presence of a notary in Amsterdam,26 not becausehe felt death approaching, but as a precautionary measure because of hisplanned trip to Italy. He named his eight years younger wife CatharinaDeyl as his universal heir. She in turn drew up a will leaving him 12,000

guilders and all the rings and other jewellery he had given her. The couplewas far from poor and Nicolaes did not need to paint to earn a living.27

Roosendael had a passion for Italian art, as is clear from the paintings hemade before he actually set off to the south. In his Christ Carrying the Cross(1664) he derived the figure of the Virgin Mary from Barocci’s Deposition inthe cathedral of Perugia, which he may have known from a print; the head ofChrist in this work recalls a type that Rembrandt painted a number of timesin the 1660s.28 His creative mix of features of Northern Netherlandish andItalian features presents the picture of a painter who was eager to build onsouthern tradition but had little opportunity to study it, seeing only the occa-sional good example of Italian painting in a local collection or at an auction.

Rather curiously perhaps, Roosendael’s ambivalent attitude to Italian tra-dition endured even after his trip to Italy, as is clear from Christ at the Col-umn from 1677 (fig. 72), one of the series of rotating altarpieces used at thebeguinage. Against a background made up of classicist architectural ele-ments (including a dome reminiscent of St Peter’s) stands the figure of Christin chains, which is an obvious quotation from Sebastiano del Piombo’s Fla-gellation, dating from 1521-1524.29 Roosendael cannot have seen this workwith his own eyes in the Roman church of San Pietro in Montorio; the factthat it appears in mirror image suggests that he based his version on a print.In any case, he was not entirely successful in integrating the figure into thesurroundings: it has a rather cut-out air about it. The background and thetypes of figures exemplified by the bystanders are reminiscent of Gerard deLairesse. It is typical of Roosendael’s eclecticism that for an altarpiece of thesame subject in the clandestine church of St. Nicholas on Nieuwezijds Voor-burgwal, he based himself on a composition by Anthony van Dijck.30

Johannes Voorhout (1647-1716), like Roosendael, produced a small oeu-vre, most of which was painted for clandestine Catholic churches. He tooevidently had other sources of income besides his art; in 1675 he and hiswife Margaretha Vos moved into a large canal-house on Keizersgracht thatcould never have been paid for from the proceeds of his paintings. In the


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plate X), but since this painting has a different format, it may be assumedthat it did not belong to the original series.39 It may have come from a dif-ferent Jesuit church in Amsterdam, De Zaaier, which was closed in 1669 byorder of the vicar apostolic Van Neercassel.40

In the Vision of Francis Xavier by Erasmus Quellinus (fig. 77), the kneel-ing saint sees the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child appear above an altar;they have come to help him in his struggle against demons.41This work wasdonated in memory of her husband by the widow Elisabeth de Goyer, whoworshiped at De Krijtberg. Her cost of arms is visible on the side of thealtar. She took advantage of the presence of the well-regarded Antwerpartist, who had arrived in Amsterdam in 1656 to help decorate the newlybuilt town hall, the building that is today the Palace at Dam Square.42 Hehad come to join his famous brother, Artus Quellinus, who at that timeheaded the studio that was making all the sculptures for the new town halland who had close ties with the Jesuits: he made marble statues of the saintsIgnatius and Francis Xavier, which were extolled in eulogies by Vondel.43

The third in the series of altarpieces, the Adoration of the Shepherds (fig.78) by the Antwerp artist Jan Cossiers – whom we have already met as one


75. Adriaan de Lelie, Interior

of De Krijtberg, 1788.

Amsterdam, Municipal

Archives

76. P.N. Bosch, The Vision of

Ignatius, 1656. Present

whereabouts unknown

77. Erasmus Quellinus II,

The Vision of St. Francis

Xavier, 1656.

Indianapolis, Museum of

Art

(fig. 76). It is dated 1656 and signed by one P.N. Bosch. The story it depictsis crucial to the history of the Jesuit order. While Ignatius is on his way toRome to obtain the pope’s approval for his new order, he breaks his journeyat the little village of La Storta to meditate in a cave. There he has a vision ofChrist carrying the cross, who says to him: “I shall be at your side inRome,” after which the hoped-for papal recognition indeed proved to be amere formality.37 The artist based his composition on a print by Bloemaertwith the same subject.38

Besides this work by Bosch, De Krijtberg had two other seventeenth-cen-tury paintings, both exactly the same size, which alternated with this one inthe place above the high altar. They were a Vision of St. Francis Xavier by theAntwerp artist Erasmus Quellinus II, dating from 1656 (fig. 77), and anAdoration of the Shepherds by his fellow-townsman Jan Cossiers, from 1657.Later they were joined by Christ Carrying the Cross by Jacob Jordaens (color-

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Jesuits of Gouda possessed an altarpiece with The Glorification of the VirginMary (color plate XI) by Cornelis Schut, who had also completed the afore-mentioned series of altarpieces begun by Rubens in the Antwerp church ofSt. Ignatius.44

De Krijtberg was officially closed in 1708 as a result of the official banish-ment of all Jesuits, who were blamed by the authorities for the deposition ofthe vicar apostolic Codde by Rome. Still, the Jesuits continued their ser-vices in secret, even after their troubles deepened in 1773 with the pope’sdecision to proscribe the order altogether. Father Matthias Thomassen, whowas conducting services there at the time, simply continued to do so as asecular priest. In 1789 the province of Holland would officially reinstatefreedom of religion, but De Krijtberg was “reopened” somewhat earlier, onWhitsunday 1788. It is this occasion that is depicted in Adriaen de Lelie’sdrawing. Catholic dignitaries in Amsterdam had persuaded the papal nun-cio in Brussels to send Adam Beckers, a priest from Mechelen, to De Krijt-berg, and Beckers was duly recognized as the church’s priest afterdeliberations with the ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

The clandestine church continued to be used until the opening in 1881 ofa new neo-Gothic church – a building that still dominates the Singel’s sky-line today. In the meantime, services were being conducted by the Jesuitsagain – Pope Pius VII had reinstated the order in 1814. Just how entrenchedwas the tradition of rotating altarpieces is clear from the fact that anotherone was ordered in 1823, of the same size as the paintings already present.The Incredulity of Thomas by Navez, a pupil of David’s who lived in Brus-sels, is one of the highlights of neo-classicist art in the Netherlands.45

Altarpieces for the Augustinians According to the list of donations kept by Amsterdam’s Begijnhof, womenfinanced not only altarpieces, but also countless silver and gold objects thatwere essential to services, such as chalices, ciboria, candlesticks, altar bells,dishes, and ampullae. Similar archival information has been preserved forthe Augustinians of the clandestine church “’t Hart” on Oudezijds Voor-burgwal, who later moved a few streets away to De Ster on Rusland. Underthe Ghent-born Augustinian priest Petrus Parmentier, a remarkable collec-tion of paintings was gradually built up, with the spiritual virgins attachedto the mission station playing a very considerable role.

The clandestine church “’t Hart” was built between 1661 and 1663 by theCatholic merchant Jan Hartman so that his son, who was studying to be apriest, would be able to use it later. However, the son was far from complet-ing his studies when the church was finished, and in 1663 Hartman decidedto rent it out to Parmentier, who had been doing his missionary work from

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of the painters from the Jesuit church in Brussels – has a far more tradition-al iconography than the previous two. A trussed lamb in the foregroundimbues the composition with strong sacramental overtones, which arehighly appropriate given the painting’s place above the altar.

It was not uncommon for Antwerp painters to receive commissions fromclandestine churches, especially from those run by canons regular. Amster-dam’s Franciscans had two Flemish altarpieces in their first clandestinechurch (see below), and the Augustinians had a painting by Jordaens. The


78. Jan Cossiers, The

Adoration of the

Shepherds, 1656.

private collection, USA

129

owned by the wealthy Catholic cloth merchant Jacob van Loon on Oude-zijds Achterburgwal.49 St. Augustine’s Love of God may have been the onlyaltarpiece there for the first few years, but in 1677 a second one was pur-chased. The spiritual virgin Barbara van Roeyen commissioned an altarpiecedepicting the Virgin Mary, entitled: Let All Generations Call Me Blessed.50

This painting too has since vanished without trace, but a posthumousportrait of Petrus Parmentier, preserved in Museum Amstelkring (fig. 79),leads us to a book illustration that probably depicts a detail from it. Priestswere usually depicted seated on a chair, gazing straight ahead out of the pic-ture, but Parmentier’s face is painted in profile, and he raises his eyes toheaven. Beneath the portrait is an inscription relating that he came fromGhent, studied theology, provided spiritual care in Amsterdam for forty-sixyears, and died in 1681 at 82 years of age.51

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a number of different addresses in Amsterdam. The records kept by IoannesUutten Eeckhout, Parmentier’s assistant from August 2, 1664 onwards, havefortunately been preserved, and contain a wealth of information concern-ing the congregation and the decoration of the interior, which relied heavilyon believers’ donations.46 The four altarpieces that were ordered in or after1663 have vanished without a trace, but thanks to the notes kept by UuttenEeckhout, we know what they depicted and who donated them.47

Around 1665, the spiritual virgin Eva Claas and her brother-in-law Marti-nus Lubbersz donated a “picturam altaris” portraying St. Augustine’s Love ofGod.48 This painting could not serve its purpose for very long in “’t Hart,”however; Jan Hartman died in 1668 and when the house was necessarily putup for auction in 1671, it was purchased by a Protestant investor. Petrus Par-mentier found new premises for his mission station at the house De Ster


79. Anonymous, Petrus

Parmentier, 1681.

Amsterdam, Museum

Ons' Lieve Heer Op

Solder

80. Anonymous, detail of a

painting, presumably the

altarpiece Let All

Generations Call Me

Blessed, donated to ’t

Hart in 1677. Present

whereabouts unknown

fig 80breed 110 mm

131

tions, in the vast majority of cases donated by spiritual daughters. In 1688

another painting was ordered to hang above the altar, this time depictingThe Crowning of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Trinity, flanked by the HolyFather Augustine and St. John the Evangelist, who Contemplate and Describethis Mystery.55 There is no mention of the donor in this case.

In 1698 the mission station moved a second time, to a house in Spinhuis-steeg, taking the name De Ster with it. Another new altarpiece was ordered,the costs being borne by Maria Hartman,56 who paid 125 guilders for it in1699. The archives do not record its subject-matter, and we shall probablynever know, since in 1827 the then priest purchased a Crucifixion by Jacobde Wit to replace it above the altar.57

The Popularity of Rotating AltarpiecesThe above account has shown that for three churches alone – the church ofthe Begijnhof, De Krijtberg and De Ster, – at least sixteen altarpieces wereproduced. The other Amsterdam series and known individual altarpiecesare less well documented, but a brief summary will be provided here to givean idea of the total production. The Franciscans were among the first inAmsterdam to use rotating altarpieces. Two paintings of about 2.5 meters inheight, attributed to Rubens (Franciscan Saint Kneeling Before the Altar) andDe Crayer (Deposition) were present in the Moses and Aaron Church. Afterthe church’s enlargement in 1687 they were replaced by a far larger altar-piece (370 x 200 cm) depicting the Resurrection (fig. 115), to which works byJacob de Wit were added in the eighteenth century (a Crucifixion and anAnnunciation (fig. 116). This means that just as in the Begijnhof, there weretwo “generations” of altarpieces, necessitated by the greatly expanded spaceat the end of the seventeenth century.

The second Franciscan mission station, “’t Boompje,” possessed a Crown-ing of the Virgin Mary by Barent Graat (1670), to which an equally large Ado-ration of the Shepherds by Norbert van Bloemen was added in 1722. Thealtarpieces in the French Catholic Church (Carmelites) were a Simeon in theTemple by Jan van Neck dating from 1663 and an anonymous Christ Mournedby Angels (c. 1700), which were superseded after the spectacular renovations of1733 by a single, much larger, altarpiece by Jacob de Wit (fig. 119).58

The church “De Lelie” (secular) possessed a Crucifixion by Carel vanSavoy from 1656 and a Nativity and a Baptism in the Jordan, both made byNicolaas Roosendael in 1674. We have already discussed Roosendael’s workfor the church of the Begijnhof; Van Savoy (1621-1665) had been trained byCossiers in Antwerp, in 1649 he had come to Amsterdam, where he marrieda merchant’s daughter. Of his Amsterdam altarpieces, only an Adoration ofthe Shepherds (1659) has been preserved, made for the secular mission sta-

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His distinctive facial features and the way he carries his head are recogniz-able in the kneeling figure of a saint in a painting full of human figures,which unfortunately cannot be traced and is known only from a reproduc-tion in Knipping’s standard work on the iconography of the Counter-Reformation in the Netherlands. It is indeed a happy coincidence thatKnipping should have selected a detail including the figure of Parmentier.52

The primary motif of the scene cannot be seen in this illustration, but thedetail discussed here (fig. 80) is apparently the lower right-hand corner ofthe painting, and the kneeling figures are looking up at Mary, since Knip-ping has entitled the image Exotic People Before the Holy Virgin. On the rightwe see a man with a turban, and there were undoubtedly other exotic fig-ures in the painting, which Knipping had seen in its entirety. It is certainlytempting to suppose that this may have been the altarpiece donated in 1677

by Barbara van Roeyen, and that “all the generations” who call the VirginMary “Blessed” were represented by figures originating from the differentcontinents of the earth.

The man with the features of Petrus Parmentier has a prominent placeamong the kneeling figures. His clothing identifies him as William ofAquitaine, an important Augustinian saint who was regarded as the founderof the Guillemite order. After a life full of war and without any religiousfaith he underwent conversion and retreated to the wilderness. To put him-self to the test he always kept his suit of armor on under his hermit’s habit;we have already seen (in chapter II) that he was regarded as a good rolemodel for believers, in the discussion of Wouter Crabeth’s St. Bernard ofClairvaux Converting William of Aquitaine (fig. 41).53 By depicting himselfas the hermit saint William of Aquitaine, Parmentier urged viewers to emu-late William’s asceticism, while at the same time expressing, through hisplace in the painting, his worship of the Virgin Mary.

Aside from indicating the kind of worship that the priest wanted to com-mend to his flock, the work also helps us form a theory regarding the gene-sis of the posthumous portrait of Parmentier: when people felt the need tolook at his likeness after his death – he was much loved, most notably byCatholic laborers, some of whom cried at his funeral, holding in their handstheir tools, which he had paid for – it seems that no better example existedthan the portrait historié on the altarpiece, dating from 1677. His originalupwards gaze at the enthroned Virgin Mary was transformed, by removingthe figure from its context, into eyes raised towards the Exalted in general.Only the clothing and the positioning of the hands needed adjustment.54

His parishioners’ zeal for embellishing their church by no means abatedafter Parmentier’s death, as is clear from the records of the following years.Countless entries record gifts of altar silver, vestments and other decora-


133132

tion of St. Nicholas on Spui.59 Though the work is in poor condition, wecan conclude from it that Savoy, though not a brilliant artist, was used topainting large figurative compositions reflecting the classicist trend in theFlemish art of his day.60 This work too was part of a series – Van Savoy pro-duced a Deposition for the same church in 1650, and Nicolaas Roosendael(again) completed the series in 1668 with a Flagellation.

The secular church “Vrede-duifje” had a Crucifixion by JohannesVoorhout (second half of the seventeenth century). It would later be joinedby a Resurrection by Jacob de Wit (1750) and an Annunciation by Adriaen deLelie from the late eighteenth century (fig. 81).61 And after the AugustinianPetrus Parmentier had left “’t Hart,” and it had been occupied by secularpriests, an entirely new series was built up there – a Crucifixion (anon.,probably late seventeenth century), a Baptism in the Jordan (Jacob de Wit,1716), a Descent of the Holy Ghost (eighteenth century) and a Resurrection(Norbert van Bloemen, 1737).62

The archival material mentioned before, in addition to the matchingsizes and often silhouettes of the paintings, leave little doubt that the groupsof paintings under discussion were indeed meant to be placed alternatelyabove the high altar. In “’t Hart” (fig. 1), the original altar case from the lateseventeenth or early eighteenth century has been preserved, including themechanism used to switch paintings. Unlike the churches of Antwerp andMechelen, it does not rely on pulleys or axles. A space about three meters indepth has been left behind the altar, and on this side of the altar case, at thelevel of the first gallery, is a hatch that can be slid open, after which, with acertain amount of pulling and maneuvering, the painting can be removed.63

From the range of subject-matter, it is clear that the use of rotating altar-pieces was related to the demands of the liturgy and specific cults. Above thealtars of St. Ignatius in Antwerp and in De Krijtberg in Amsterdam, theJesuits rotated paintings of their order’s saints with those depicting more gen-eral themes linked to the daily liturgy, such as the Adoration of the Shepherdsand the Raising of the Cross. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the paint-ings in Mechelen’s beguinage (consisting of one altarpiece with the Assump-tion of the Virgin Mary and one with the beguines’ saints, such as St. Begga, St.Ursula, and St. Cecilia) and the Begijnhof in Amsterdam, where the series byMoyaert included a painting dedicated to St. Ursula as well as a Crucifixion,an Adoration of the Shepherds, and an Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Later series are considerably more general in their iconography and areprimarily geared towards having a suitable image to display for each seasonof the church calendar, with themes related to special cults gradually reced-ing into the background. Descamps and Mensaert have already noted, inconnection with the examples in Antwerp and Mechelen, that the paintings


81. Adriaen de Lelie, The

Annunciation, Utrecht,

Museum Catharijne-

convent

135

South. But when we study the history of the Catholic community in theUnited Provinces, we find that the major – successful – conversion offen-sive, the real competition with the Protestants and other faiths, took placein the first half of the seventeenth century. After 1650, the percentage ofCatholics remained reasonably stable, and there was a sharp fall in the num-ber of conversions.64

The only incontrovertible difference that we can identify betweenCatholic churches in the two regions is one of space.65 Even the largest threeclandestine churches in Amsterdam, which were built in the last quarter ofthe seventeenth century – The Moses and Aaron Church, De Ster and “’tBoompje,” measured no more than 25 x 14, 24 x 14, and 15.5 x 17 meters,respectively. They were all furnished with galleries on both sides, supportedby Tuscan columns. With an efficient use of space, it is said that 1,500 peo-ple could attend mass at the Moses and Aaron Church.

Most of the rectangular space was filled with chairs and benches, and thechoir was shallow. Frequently there was not even space for a decent-sizedpulpit. In the Moses and Aaron Church the pulpit was fitted with a springon which it could bounce up from the space beneath the sanctuary,66 andthe church “’t Hart” had a mechanism allowing the pulpit to be conjuredup from the side of the altar case when needed – a mechanism that is stillintact today (fig. 82). We shall also look in vain for any series of statues ofthe twelve apostles, such as those in Flemish church interiors of the seven-teenth century – the only space available for them in St. Gertrude’s inUtrecht was in paintings on the ceiling beneath the galleries, and in theMoses and Aaron Church the apostles are depicted in the form of portraitmedallions on the walls beneath the galleries.

Clandestine churches generally had no chapels in their walls such as thosefrequently found in baroque churches elsewhere. On the one hand it wasimpossible to bury the dead in clandestine churches, so that there was littlepoint in having a family chapel, and on the other hand such chapels wouldhave been hard to create from an architectural point of view, because clan-destine churches were generally hemmed in by buildings on all sides. Therewas sometimes space for a series of paintings on the long, straight side walls,but this was scarcely an ideal setting in which to hang paintings, since thespace left on the ground floor beneath the gallery was generally small andpoorly illuminated.

The need to make propaganda and to intensify the congregation’s experi-ence of the liturgy was just as important in the United Provinces as inCatholic countries, but the limited size of the interiors of Catholic churchesmeant that not only the churchgoers’ attention, but also the interest ofpotential donors, focused more narrowly than elsewhere on the high altar.

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were switched on the basis of the requirements of the church calendar. Although these observations explain the logic of the subject-matter

depicted in such altarpiece series, they do not explain why the custom ofvariable altarpieces was so common in the provinces of Holland andUtrecht, and most notably in Amsterdam. There is no reason to assume thatthe liturgy was any different in the Northern Netherlands than it was inCatholic churches elsewhere, or that cults attaching to specific places ororders played an unusually important role here.

The “theatrum sacrum” was intended to involve everyone who enteredthe church as actively as possible in the message that was propagated there,and to instill in every member of the congregation the belief that this par-ticular church was the best place to absorb that message. In an effort toexplain the greater frequency of the phenomenon in the United Provinces,Schillemans has suggested that there was a greater need for propaganda inthe Catholic churches there than in the Southern Netherlands, say, sinceProtestantism was far closer, far more tangible in the North than in the


82. Pulpit (18th century),

conjured up from the

side of the altar.

Amsterdam, Museum

Ons' Lieve Heer Op

Solder

137

The secular priests and canons regular who worked in the Dutch Missionquarreled not only about territorial and administrative issues – such as whomight settle where – but also about questions of spirituality and religiouszeal. Since the end of the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church of theNetherlands and France had locked horns on the issue of whether humanbeings were wholly reliant on God’s grace for their ultimate happiness, orwhether they could enhance or mar this happiness by their own actions.Many secular priests from the camp of the vicars apostolic inclined to theformer view, while most canons regular believed the latter. Secular priestsalso imposed stricter demands on believers than canons regular, and in thelatter half of the seventeenth century these disputes erupted into open con-flict. This was accompanied by friction concerning administrative matters,with the secular priests – who styled themselves “Old Catholic Clergy”(Oudbisschoppelijke Clerezie) – eager to return to the old Church presidedover by bishops, while the canons regular, most notably the Jesuits, pre-ferred the freedom of movement afforded by the missionary Church.1

This chapter will look at the extent to which the views of the elite amongthe secular priests concerning religious zeal within the Church and ecclesi-astical administration were reflected in the decoration of their clandestinechurches, on the basis of some well-preserved examples from the late seven-teenth and early eighteenth centuries, at the height of the conflict. TheUtrecht Schism of 1723, in which the elite of the secular clergy decided toreinstate the Episcopal hierarchy themselves by electing a new archbishopwithout the consent of Rome, was the tragic culmination of the spiralingconflict.2 The inevitable excommunication that was their lot caused themimmense distress, and led many believers literally to seek their salvationelsewhere. Nonetheless, these troubles did not deter the members of theOld Catholic Clergy from building beautiful new clandestine churches inRotterdam, The Hague and Delft.

“In Spirit and Truth.” ClandestineChurches of the Old Catholic Clergyand the Schism of Utrecht

V

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regular, for which they coined the term “Molinism,” after the Spanish JesuitMolina (died in 1600), who believed that every human being possessed aninnate capability to earn his own salvation.5

Long before the publication of Jansenius’s book, it had become clear thatthe vicar apostolic and his circle sought to propagate a more ascetic profes-sion of the faith. With this endeavor, they reflected a general trend in theCatholic Church of the early Counter-Reformation. The canonized bishopof Milan, Carolus Borromeus, was an important role model for both Vos-meer and Rovenius. The writings of Rovenius, such as Het Gulden wierook-vat (“The Golden Censer”) (1620) and Institutionum christianae pietatislibri quatuor (1635), were based in part on Introduction à la Vie Devote(1608) by François van Sales, bishop of Geneva, which was also available inDutch and was warmly commended to lay readers. In teaching Catholicshow to practice devoutness, De Sales emphasized the importance of innerprayer, which should focus on the life and suffering of Christ. In this waythe believer’s soul would be filled with Christ, who would teach him His

ways and provide guidance on how to live his ownlife.6

This trend of educating ordinary believers to practicetheir faith almost uninterruptedly throughout the daywas comparable to the Calvinists’ Second Reforma-tion (Nadere Reformatie), which also arose in the firsthalf of the seventeenth century.7 That is not to say thatthe strict religious beliefs of the seculars in the UnitedProvinces sprang from a desire to “snuggle up” toProtestantism; it must be stressed that both the opti-mistic type of faith, with its confidence in the instru-mental use of the veneration of saints and thesacraments, and the more ascetic variant, with itsgreater emphasis on Biblical worship, always coexistednaturally in the history of Catholicism, and they com-peted with each other at various levels and in differentplaces and times, including the Counter-Reforma-tion.8

During Johannes van Neercassel’s term of office(which lasted from 1663 to 1686), the NorthernNetherlandish version of this controversy shifted fromscholars’ private studies to the pulpit. The debate onthe doctrine of grace increasingly spawned questionslike: “What criteria must repentance fulfill for abeliever’s sins to be forgiven? How often must believ-

138

The secular clergy’s view of spirituality bore the stamp of the Universityof Leuven, where a strict, Augustinian, conception of faith held sway, aspropagated by professors such as Cornelius Jansenius. This revolved aroundthe sinfulness of Man and the arduous path to salvation. Jansenius’s posthu-mously published book Augustine (1640), which was soon proscribed by thepope, commanded passionate admiration there. Immediately after its pub-lication, Rovenius and his associates rushed to convey their approval of thebook to Rome.3 Throughout the rest of the seventeenth century, they heldtenaciously to the view that the book did nothing more than provide asound explication of Augustine’s ideas, but their opponents continued todenounce the work as heretical and started calling its apologists“Jansenists.”4 The secular priests in turn denounced the laxity of the canons

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

83. Willem van Ingen,

Johannes van Neercassel.

Utrecht, Old Catholic

church

84. Anonymous, frontispice

of Christelijke

Onderwijzingen en

Gebeden, 1685

141

Onderwijzingen en Gebeden included eight engravings, all of which under-score the earnest devoutness that is propagated in the text. The figuredepicted in prayer in the frontispiece, for instance, is not praying fromwithin himself but through the Holy Ghost, and addresses God directly(fig. 84). We find a far more emotional pose in the figure praying in thefrontispiece to the Palmier Celeste by Wilhelmus Nakatenus (GuillaumeNacatene), which first appeared in Dutch in 1683 as the Hemels Palm-hof,and was very popular among the Jesuits. Here, the protagonist prays fromhis own heart and addresses himself to the Virgin Mary and through her toher child, rather than praying directly to God (fig. 85).16

In his efforts to propagate his views throughout the United Provinces,Van Neercassel enjoyed the support of a circle of prominent clerics, includ-ing Ignatius Walvis and Joan Christiaan van Erckel, (the anonymous writersof Christelijke Onderwijzingen en Gebeden, who were still young curateswhen writing this book but later became eminent priests in Gouda andDelft, respectively), Petrus Codde (a priest in Utrecht), Henricus van derGraft (a priest in Warmond), and the latter’s cousins, Hugo Gael and Hugovan Heussen (active in Leiden).

Codde, Van Neercassel, and St. Gertrude’s Church in UtrechtVan Neercassel’s ideals were reflected in the decorative programs of twomajor clandestine churches led by Petrus Codde and Hugo van Heussen: St.Gertrude’s Church in Utrecht and De Liefde in Leiden, both of which werefurnished with paintings by Van Neercassel’s protégé Willem van Ingen.

The first clandestine church of St. Gertrude (see chapter II) was built in1626, close to the old St. Mary’s Church, by Johannes Wachtelaar, the right-hand man of the then vicar apostolic Philippus Rovenius. After its closure,in the wake of legal proceedings against Wachtelaar and Rovenius in 1640,the congregation of St. Gertrude’s and their new leaders took refuge in anearby medieval house near Catharijnesingel. Initially they held their ser-vices in the house’s main hall. The renovations, which transformed amedieval canon’s dwelling into a clandestine church, must have startedaround the time that Van Neercassel ordered the purchase of an adjoiningbuilding in 1683, which would remain in use as a presbytery until the nine-teenth century. 17 The stylistic features of the architecture and decorationunequivocally suggest a dating in the mid-1680s – that is, while the churchwas led by Petrus Codde (1683-1688). In 1688 Codde would succeed VanNeercassel as vicar apostolic.

The ceiling of the old canonical house was dismantled to allow for theconstruction of a galleried church. The wall of the small room behind thehall was also taken down, with the existing difference in floor levels being

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ers receive communion, and what conditions must they fulfill? Is it permis-sible to teach the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary? May church-goers be required to fulfill certain minimum requirements regarding theirknowledge of the faith?”9

Van Neercassel was one of the most powerful leaders of Holland’sCatholics in the seventeenth century (fig. 83) and he played a key role inthis debate. An important instrument that he used to reach believers wasthe publication in 1685 of a new book of prayers that were more or lessindispensable to Catholics’ morning and evening worship and to mass, con-fession and communion.10 Every page of this book breathes the spirit of St.Augustine, who is referred to as the “most august Church Father;” VanNeercassel’s admirers regularly stressed that the prayerbook was a perfectexpression of St. Augustine’s thought.11

The title of the book was Christelijke Onderwijzingen en Gebeden (Christ-ian Lessons and Prayers). The “lessons” were placed first quite deliberately;the opening commendation begins by asserting that God expects to beserved not in ignorance, but wisely and in enlightenment. Clemens gavethe following characterization of the “wise” devout believer who fulfilledVan Neercassel’s ideals: “[He] must draw on the purest possible sources:Holy Scripture, the Church Fathers and liturgical prayers … [He] abhorsall kinds of private worship, certainly those that distract attention fromGod and suggest that some exercises and prayers might accomplish just asmuch as a lifetime of preparedly receiving the sacraments.”12 In addition,the learned devout believer was expected to diligently practice the mostessential virtues (faith, hope and charity), and so to cultivate and if possibleintensify his commitment to God.13

In the book, these principles are reflected in part by an emphasis on allthe sacraments, the rejection of the practice of reciting the rosary duringmass, the view that mass is the best form of worship of the Passion ofChrist, and the assertion that saints wish to be venerated above all by seeingbelievers practice the virtues. Saints are seldom mentioned: the only ones toreceive any attention are Joseph and Mary, Willibrord and Boniface.14

The use of Holy Scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers, and theliturgy of the mass was of course common to all prayerbooks; what standsout here is the emphasis on exclusivity. Comparison with other prayerbookscirculating in the Dutch Mission reveals that many refrained from any kindof instruction, evinced little if any explicit interest in the liturgy, containeda miscellany of forms of worship, promised indulgences of up to 80,000

years, and presented exercises as automatically effective in safeguarding theworshipper’s salvation or that of others.15

The difference in views is also highlighted by illustrations. Christelijke


85. Anonymous, frontispice

of Hemels Palm-hof, 1683

143

this artist would probably never have been discovered, were it not that thepaintings in Leiden’s clandestine church De Liefde, discussed below, areunmistakably by the same hand. One of these works does display a signa-ture: that of the Utrecht artist Willem van Ingen (born Utrecht 1651, diedAmsterdam 1708).

In 1670, while still a young man, Van Ingen went to Rome as part of VanNeercassel’s retinue. The vicar apostolic evidently needed a painter who wasacquainted with the latest trends in Italian church decoration, to makeworks of art for clandestine churches when they returned home. Accordingto Houbraken, Van Neercassel himself arranged for Van Ingen to completehis training as a painter under Carlo Maratta in Rome, where he helped todecorate several Roman churches and palaces. The young man also joinedthe Schildersbent, an informal society of painters from the Low Countriesin Rome. He later went to Venice, spending some time working in the stu-dio of Roland Lefevre.18 On returning to the Netherlands he enrolled in St.Luke’s Guild in Utrecht, and after his marriage in 1681 he moved to Amster-dam; on his death, a quarter of a century later, he left a considerable for-tune, having been successful in business as well as painting.19

Van Ingen’s work in St. Gertrude’s Church made an important contribu-tion to the introduction of monumental concepts in the interior of North-ern Netherlandish clandestine churches, in which the figurative pieces onthe walls and ceilings, together with those on the paneling and other worksof art, made up a visual whole. This cohesiveness reflected internationaltrends in interior design of the latter half of the seventeenth century, in sec-ular as well as church architecture.20

It is hard to establish precisely who was responsible for the over-archingconcept. Perhaps it was the architect, whose identity is unknown, or itcould have been Van Ingen himself. In either case, the role of the clericsshould not be underestimated; they surely devised the iconographic pro-gram, as will be argued below, and they may well have issued instructionsfor the partitioning of the space and the arrangement of the works of art.

Although the interior has retained many elements from Van Neercassel’stime, further inspection belies the initial impression of unity that the wholemakes on us today. The vaulted ceiling is a later addition, and nothingremains of the original organ or the old altar and its casing. The presentaltar (fig. 86) comes from the Old Catholic clandestine church of St.George in Amersfoort. The painting by Steffelaar (fig. 88) shows that in thenineteenth century the church had another, High Baroque altar with a stat-ue of the Madonna, but that too was a later addition; it cannot havebelonged to the original, late seventeenth-century interior because it wouldnot have fitted under the original flat ceiling.

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retained and exploited by using the raised end for the high altar. The churchstill stands today, and visitors will see a high-ceilinged space with galleriesalong the walls and a wooden articulated barrel vault, a baroque altar, and alarge altarpiece depicting the Last Supper; against the short wall opposite,beneath the organ loft, is a baptismal font flanked by seventeenth-centurypaintings of biblical scenes relating to baptism (fig. 87). The ceilings of theground-floor galleries are adorned with paintings of the Evangelists andapostles, and the figure of St. Paul (figs. 88, 92).

All these paintings (17 in total) were made by a competent though notimmensely gifted artist, who was probably also responsible for the ceilingpainting with the Last Judgement and the original altarpiece, which hasbeen lost. None of the paintings still present is signed, and the identity of


87. Willem van Ingen, The

Baptism of the Eunuch.

Utrecht, Gertrudis

Chapel (former

clandestine church of

St. Gertrude)

145144

A salient clue as to the initial height of that ceiling is provided by a photo-graph from 1875, which shows the original organ (fig. 89). The organ-case, apure example of the Louis XIV style of the late seventeenth century, sur-mounted by a horizontal element with ornamental flags hanging from it,was later “crowned” by clumsily made ornaments and a statue of David.This discovery led the team of restorers who saved the chapel from decay inthe 1990s to hypothesize that only one floor had been removed in the seven-teenth-century renovations, with the ceiling of the next floor up being pre-served. The vault must have been added much later, in the late eighteenthor early nineteenth century.21 The restorers argued that once the new vault


86. Interior of the "Gertrudis

Chapel" (former clandes-

tine church of

St. Gertrude).

Current situation

88. J. Steffelaar, Interior of the

Gertrudis Chapel (former

clandestine church of St.

Gertrude), 1896. Utrecht,

Old-Catholic church

147146

The Iconography of the Interior and Van Neercassel’sConception of FaithIf we try to imagine how the church looked before the vault was added,with its original ceiling displaying a scene of the Last Judgement, theatmosphere of the whole is closer to the dignity that we associate with VanNeercassel. The austerity that marked the interior then is still exuded todayby the architecture and the decoration of the nave on the ground floor, withits classical architectural elements and modest ornaments, and the large fig-ures on the gallery ceilings. The iconography of the entire decorative pro-gram can be read as epitomizing everything that Van Neercassel (and in hiswake Codde) sought to promote.

The monumental exhortations, which we should imagine in their origi-nal place in the balustrades of the galleries, set the tone. The formula “Wor-ship the Lord your God in spirit and in truth” (fig. 90) can be regarded asthe essence of Van Neercassel’s conception of the faith.22 We first encounterthe adage in the commendation he added at the front of his ChristelijkeOnderwijzingen en Gebeden, and similar exhortations pepper the main textof the book. In the Litany of the Most Holy Trinity (Litanie van de Alder-heylighste Drievuldigheyt), we find: “… Lord, that art spirit, and would beworshipped in spirit and in truth.”23 The second phrase, “Worship God inHis Holy Place,” emphasizes that God should always be at the center of


89. 19th-century photograph

of the late seventeenth-

century organ with the

scultpture of David

added later. Utrecht,



St. Gertrude)

90. Vault of the Gertrudis

Chapel (former


Gertrude), Utrecht

91. Anonymous, St.

Willibrord. Utrecht,



Gertrude)

was finished, the church’s users must have decided that the totally flat upperedge of the organ looked peculiar and added an extra crowning piece.

These hypotheses were confirmed when the vault was dismantled forrestoration and the various paint layers were analyzed. It became apparentthat most of the wood in the vault had been re-used, while the bottom paintlayer on some of the boards turned out to contain elements of a scene of theLast Judgement, which must have embellished the original, flat ceiling. Therestorers also discovered fragments of painted decorative palm branches,which must have filled the corners outside the oval. Restoration of the paintlayers on the ceilings of the first floor galleries (fig. 90) revealed that“glimpses” of the sky had been painted straight onto the wood there, which,together with the Last Judgement on the main ceiling at the same height,were evidently designed to produce an illusionist effect.

At the same time as the construction of the vault, a new balustrade wasadded on the first gallery. The old one, which was carved in wood and intowhich wood engravings of large letters were interwoven, was moved to thespringing line of the vault. The letters, which are so large that they are stilllegible today, exhort churchgoers: “Worship the Lord your God in spiritand in truth” (AENBIDT DEN HEERE UWEN GODT IN GEEST ENWAERHEID) (fig. 90) and “Worship God in His Holy Place” (AENBIDGODT IN ZIJNE HEYLIGE PLAETSE).

149148

one’s profession of faith, and reminds churchgoers that the sacrament ofMass is the primary means of approaching Him.

The figurative section of the decorations is also perfectly attuned to VanNeercassel’s views. At their heart lie the oldest and most elementary sourcesthat Van Neercassel urges the “wise and devout” believer to take as his guid-ance – the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the liturgy of themass. The original ceiling paintings in the galleries display the main propa-gators of the word of Christ. The four evangelists are depicted on the choirside, and five apostles are shown on either side of the nave (if the evangelistsJohn and Matthew are included, the twelve are complete). Furthermore, inthe nave beneath the organ is a slightly larger painting depicting the “hon-orary” apostle Paul, who, as the quintessential Christian missionary, was animportant role model for Van Neercassel (fig. 92). Finally, the ChurchFathers were represented in the circular relief medallions above the doors atthe ends of the galleries, immediately beside the altar (fig. 88).

To the left and right of the baptismal font, on the narrow wall oppositethe altar, hang paintings with the appropriate themes The Baptism of Cor-


92. Ceiling beneath the

organ, with Willem van

Ingen's painting of St.

Paul and the symbols of

Faith. Hope and Charity.

Utrecht, Gertrudis

Chapel (former


St. Gertrude)

93. Frontispice to H. van

Heussen, Batavia Sacra,

1714

151

magnum opus of Hugo van Heussen, who was one of Van Neercassel’s mainconfidants. The print shows Christ in Triumph on a plinth with the coats ofarms of the archdiocese of Utrecht and the suffragan dioceses of Haarlem,Deventer, Leeuwarden, Groningen, and Middelburg. The figures of Willi-brord and Boniface are on either side of the plinth. While gazing reveren-tially up at Christ, they point emphatically to the coats of arms.

Batavia Sacra was a work of Church history designed to demonstrate,“from the continuity of ecclesiastical administration, that the Church in theNetherlands has survived in the face of many storms.”27 Based on animpressive quantity of historical research, the book describes the history ofpractically all the Catholic institutions in the Northern Netherlands, sothoroughly that it is still an important source today. Van Heussen placesgreat emphasis on the fact that the spiritual care of Catholics was not inter-rupted by the Reformation in countless towns of the United Provinces, asproof that the church hierarchy had been preserved intact.

With this work, the author presented himself as a spokesman for the sec-ular clergy who felt abandoned by Rome, held firm to their old rights, andstyled themselves the “Old Catholic Clergy” (Oudbisschoppelijke Clerezie).The clerics close to the successive vicars apostolic had been trying to get theEpiscopal hierarchy restored in the United Provinces since the early seven-teenth century, but they had never found a willing ear in Rome. Both inVan Heussen’s frontispiece and in St. Gertrude’s church, Willibrord andBoniface symbolized the national church that defied the erring authoritiesin Rome.

“De Liefde” in LeidenThe ideals of the Old Catholic Clergy were also propagated in the decora-tions of Van Heussen’s “own” clandestine church, which he founded in Lei-den. Hugo van Heussen (1654-1719) (fig. 94) was raised by his great-uncleHenricus van der Graft, a fabulously wealthy secular priest and a closefriend of Johannes van Neercassel’s. Such was Van der Graft’s asceticism –his stone pillow is still preserved in Museum Catharijneconvent – that VanNeercassel always referred to him as Pachomius, after the Egyptian wholived as a hermit in the desert. Van der Graft sent Van Heussen to study the-ology in Leuven, after which Van Neercassel took the young man under hiswing with a view to grooming him as his own successor. In 1675, Van derGraft purchased a house (in the name of Hugo van Heussen and his two sis-ters) on the canal Hooigracht in Leiden, which he renovated and named“Faith, Hope and Charity,” after the theological virtues that were para-mount to the conception of the faith propagated by Van Neercassel and hiscircle. 28

150

nelius and The Baptism of the Eunuch (fig. 87), scenes that allude not only tothe sacrament of baptism, but also to sincere faith in God and the impor-tance of understanding the Bible.

The big unknown quantity here is the altar and its surrounding architec-ture, most of which was evidently removed when the vault was built and thenew ensemble from Flanders was purchased to take its place. A few ele-ments remained of the old altar, however – the statues of Boniface, Christand Willibrord (figs. 88, 91), which now occupy niches along the wall.24

They can be dated around 1680-1690 on stylistic grounds and were clearlymade as an ensemble, but their present arrangement along the side wall,with several meters separating them, is not original. Willibrord and Boni-face undoubtedly once stood on either side of the altar, just as had formerlybeen the custom with paintings, in the first half of the seventeenth century.The statue of Christ probably stood in a niche above the altarpiece, as inother clandestine churches run by secular priests in this period, such as thechurch of Saints John and Willibrord on Brouwersgracht in Amsterdam(1667), De Liefde in Leiden (c. 1692 (fig. 96)) and St. John the Baptist inGouda (ca. 1688).25

The large painting of the Last Judgement on the ceiling of St. Gertrude'sreminded the believers of their own responsibility to follow Christ. Theessence of the pious life that must be lived if one was to face the Last Judge-ment fearlessly was depicted beneath the painting depicting the figure of St.Paul, with the symbols of Faith, Hope and Charity (crosses, anchors, andarrows) and banderoles with the words: “Place your hope in God / LoveGod / Have faith in God” (Hoopt op God/Bemint God/Gelooft in God; fig.92), referring to the paramount importance of practicing the virtues thatVan Neercassel ceaselessly extolled.

The only medieval saints to be accorded prominent places in the interiorwere Willibrord and Boniface. It was they who had finally spread the wordof God to the Netherlands, which is why they were the only non-biblicalsaints whose veneration was urged on the readers of Christelijke Onder-wijzingen en Gebeden. But they were more than objects of worship. Whilein Vosmeer’s day the two national saints had been seen as proselytizers, andunder Rovenius they were seen as the founders of the diocese of which thevicar apostolic deserved to be appointed archbishop once more, in VanNeercassel’s circles their role had developed one step further: they were nowseen as the founders of the archdiocese of which the vicar apostolic was nowthe lawful archbishop.26

The probable disposition of the group of statues around the altar has animportant parallel in the frontispiece to Batavia Sacra (1714, fig. 93), the


153

regular clerics) continued to brand him a Jansenist. They also lookedaskance at his intended successor, Van Heussen, and wrote to Rome inadvance, professing their opposition to him. Van Heussen was in factpassed over when Van Neercassel died in 1686, but after a rancorous disputethe position at length (in 1688) went to the latter’s second choice, PetrusCodde, who had held sway over the clandestine church of St. Gertrude inUtrecht since 1683. Van Heussen then decided to devote himself to the spir-itual care of Leiden’s Catholics and to the writing of theological and histori-cal works.30

Around 1694, Van Heussen replaced the modest-sized private chapel witha new clandestine church behind the house, which became popularlyknown as “De Liefde.”31 When this church was demolished, in 1926, itsentire interior, including a large number of paintings, was transferred to

152

Initially Van der Graft stayed in the house himself when called to Leidenfor administrative business. The household was run by Hugo van Heussen’ssisters, Wenina and Agatha. They were spiritual virgins and possessed a vastfortune, on which they drew generously for the Catholic cause. Theirbrother joined them after completing his studies in 1677, and in 1679 VanNeercassel moved in as well. In this period the house became an importantmeeting place for the senior clerics of the Dutch Mission, who held meet-ings there in secret. In 1685 the house acquired its own chapel. Van Neercas-sel wrote to a French sympathizer that “M. Pachomius [Van der Graft] andhis niece [Wenina van Heussen] are busy installing a chapel and equippingit with the necessary decorations.”29

Although Van Neercassel always showed himself to be an orthodox fol-lower of Rome when matters came to a head, his opponents (most of them


94. Willem van Ingen, Hugo

van Heussen. Utrecht,

Old-Catholic Church

95. Willem van Ingen, The

Adoration of the Kings,

Leiden, De Lakenhal

155

walls of the clandestine church almost entirely – nine paintings with scenesfrom the life of Christ and ten painted emblems in grisaille alluding to theseepisodes, in addition to six paintings in a vertical format with life-sizedimages of saints.

By 1926 the paintings had already been dispersed to different places in thechurch and the presbytery on Hooigracht, but a rough reconstruction canbe made of their original arrangement. To begin with, we have an old pho-tograph showing the approximate size of the space and the appearance ofthe area around the altar (fig. 96). Since the church was about seven meterswide (as inferred from the width of the altarpiece, 2.17 m.), it will have beenabout twelve to fourteen meters deep. The side walls supported a barrelvault, the peak of which was at a height of about six meters. The altarpiecewas (and still is) framed by a baroque wooden structure representing a tri-umphal arch with twisted columns. Above it, in a niche, is an almost life-sized statue of Christ in Triumph by an unknown sculptor. To the left andright of the altar were the doors with The Expulsion from Paradise and ChristAppearing to Mary Magdalene with similar baroque frames, while statues ofJoseph and Mary, respectively, occupied the niches above.

The scenes from the life and Passion of Christ (all c. 80 x 150 cm) are partof a series that probably consisted of ten paintings in total. The nine piecesthat have been preserved (though in deplorable condition) depict TheNativity, The Circumcision, The Childhood of Jesus, Jesus and the Doctors ofthe Temple (fig. 97), The Glorification, The Flagellation, Christ Carrying theCross, The Death of Christ and Lamentation. The ten emblems executed in

154

Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. The almost three-meters high altarpiecedepicting The Adoration of the Magi (fig. 95) is signed “G. Van Ingen” – whowas thus still painting under his Italianized first name of Guglielmo. Therewere also two doors with paintings of The Expulsion from Paradise andChrist Appearing to Mary Magdalene.32 These works are still found today, intheir original frames, in a chapel-like room that the museum had built atthe time especially for this cycle.33 The rest of the paintings, at least twenty-five in number, were placed in storage.

The total surface area of all these works of art was enough to cover the


96. View to the altar of De

Liefde, Leiden

97. Willem van Ingen, Jesus

among the doctors,

Leiden, De Lakenhal

157156

grisaille (each measuring c. 80 x 70 cm.) are the same height as the figura-tive pieces and are linked to them thematically (fig. 98), which strongly sug-gests that they were originally combined to form a frieze. Since the churchwas furnished with galleries, the walls of the nave provided the ideal placefor these paintings.

A frieze consisting of five scenes (each one c. 80 x 150 cm.) probablystretched along the lower edge of the barrel vault on both sides, to the leftthe scenes from the life of Christ and to the right the ones from the Passion,alternating with the emblems (each measuring c. 80 x 70 cm.), of whichthere must have been six on each side, assuming that the friezes hademblems at each end, which would be appropriate to the classical dividedwalls that were customary in the period of Louis XIV (fig. 99).

The large paintings with figures of saints (all c. 215 x 150 cm.) would havefitted exactly under the scenes of the Passion, in terms of their width. Theymust have been framed in wooden structures, with pilasters under the gri-saille elements of the frieze. If this reconstruction is correct, it means thatsome saints’ figures are missing (there are only six paintings of saints, asopposed to ten scenes of the Passion), or that there were windows instead ofpaintings under some parts of the frieze.

Although Van Neercassel had been dead for eight years when the clandes-tine church was decorated, it is clear that Van Heussen remained loyal to hisold mentor’s ideas – so much so, in fact, that the decorations as a wholealmost appear to have been devised as a tribute to the deceased vicar apostolic.

Among the saints, the most conspicuous are Frederick (fig. 100) andOdulphus, the saints to whom the clandestine church was dedicated – whowere favored over the more commonly depicted, popular national saintsWillibrord and Boniface because of the presence of their relics. These camefrom the former church of St. Salvator in Utrecht; after the death of thechapter’s last Catholic canon in 1666, Van Neercassel had had them trans-ferred to St. Gertrude’s.


98. Willem van Ingen,

painted emblem, Leiden,

De Lakenhal

100. Willem van Ingen, St Frederic. Leiden, De Lakenhal

99. Schematic rendering of a

side wall at De Liefde.

Reconstruction by the

author

159

Like most of the bishops from the time of the Counter-Reformation, thiscanonized Church reformer, who had been bishop of Milan, was of greatimportance to Van Neercassel as an author and role model. To take oneexample, his Instructiones (1582), which discussed the practice of confession,served as the basis for Van Neercassel’s own book on confession.37

The last painting in the series is initially something of a puzzle. We see St.Bruno, dressed as a bishop, showing St. Hugo of Grenoble the place wherehe must build a church. This scene is completely unique in the iconographyof the Northern Netherlandish Catholic Church; Hugo of Grenoble wasprobably chosen as Van Heussen’s own name saint. Van Heussen undoubt-edly identified Bruno, the senior cleric who chooses the site of his church,with his own deceased mentor.

However appropriate these saints may have been in Van Heussen’schurch, the frieze above them reminded believers that only through the Pas-sion of Christ could salvation be achieved. The altar section too placesChrist at the center, with the statue of the Resurrected Christ above thepainting of the Adoration of the Shepherds; together with the doors (showingthe Fall of Man and Christ’s Meeting with the converted sinner Mary Mag-dalene after the Resurrection), the decorations made up a complete narra-tive on the sinfulness of Man and the redemption wrought by Christ’sbirth, death and resurrection.

Altarpieces Commissioned by the Old Catholic Clergy in theYears Around the Schism of UtrechtPetrus Codde, now vicar apostolic, was summoned to Rome in 1699 toanswer a large number of complaints that had been submitted by a group ofJesuits and a handful of secular priests. Not only were the secular and regu-lar clergy at loggerheads, but the secular clergy were themselves divided.Many thought that the Old Catholics were pursuing a course that wouldestrange the Dutch Mission from Rome. Codde refused to sign a declara-tion condemning Jansenius, which was one of the reasons for his depositionby the Holy See in 1704. After that, Rome unilaterally appointed severalsuccessive vicars apostolic to the Dutch Mission, but none of them had thenecessary authority to forge unity. The unfortunate climax of the conflictcame in 1723, when the Old Catholic Clergy elected Cornelis Steenoven asarchbishop. This ostensibly solved several problems at once: at last the arch-diocese had an archbishop again, and at last that archdiocese could pursueits own theological course without outside interference. St. Gertrude’sChurch now truly became a cathedral. But the clerics who followed this linewere excommunicated by the pope, a fate that also threatened those whoworshipped in their churches. 38

158

When the French seized the Netherlands in 1672 and Van Neercassel wasactually permitted to celebrate mass in Utrecht Cathedral again, the saints’relics will undoubtedly have been displayed there as objects of veneration. In1673, when the French were forced to retreat, they were taken to a place ofsafety by a French lieutenant-general. Van Neercassel, who fled to the Southwith the French and ended up in Antwerp, evidently retrieved them fromthe soldier and eventually took them with him to Leiden.34 They were keptin superb silver reliquaries. The bust of Frederick (fig. 101), made in 1362 byElias Scerpswert, has been preserved, and is now in the Rijksmuseum.35

Although there were no separate entries for Frederick and Odulphus inVan Neercassel’s Christelijke Onderwijzingen en Gebeden, they belonged tothe same category as Willibrord and Boniface. Indeed, they were included,along with these two saints, in a series of twelve prints depicting nationalsaints after Abraham Bloemaert, which was produced around 1640 – andreprinted in Van Heussen’s Batavia Sacra. Frederick (for whose figure VanIngen took the Bloemaert print as his example) had been assassinated asbishop of Utrecht in the year 838, immediately after celebrating mass. In thepainting, his assistant kneeling at his side watches the attack, aghast. Odul-phus, the parish priest of Oorschot, helped Frederick to convert the Frisiansto Christianity, and died a martyr’s death in the same year as the bishop.

The apostolic ideal pursued by Van Neercassel, however, was based pri-marily not on national saints but on the Bible. He liked to compare thecommunity that grew up around him in Leiden to that which had formedaround the apostle Paul. He referred to Van Heussen as “My Timothy,”after Paul’s companion, and called Van Heussen’s sisters Wenina and Agatha“Tecla” (described in the Apocrypha as Paul’s most fervent female kindredspirit) and “Phoebe” (known traditionally as the woman who carried Paul’sepistle to the Romans).36

Van Neercassel identified with Paul on the one hand because he was the“apostle of the heathens,” and on the other hand because of his unswervingstand in matters of faith; Van Neercassel quotes copiously from Paul’s epis-tles in his Amor Poenitens, (“the love of penitence”). In this book he assertsthat only those who profess complete, deeply felt penitence should beallowed to take confession – appropriately enough, the third large figurepainting shows Peter kneeling and wringing his hands while contemplatinghis sins. The portrayal of Paul reflects another of the vicar apostolic’s pettopics, “Spirit and Truth” – we see the apostle writing while inspired by theHoly Ghost.

The fifth saint portrayed in a life-sized painting, Carolus Borromeus(who had never been depicted before, as far as is known, in a painting for aclandestine church in the Northern Netherlands) reflects similar themes.


101. Elias Scerpswert, St.

Frederic, 1362.

Amsterdam,

Rijksmuseum

161

The altarpiece painted by the French exile François Marot (1666-1719)depicted the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (fig. 103), traditionally the patronsaint of the Rotterdam parish of which the new clandestine church was thecontinuation.42 The decision to highlight this patronage in the decorationswas undoubtedly prompted by the undiminished need of the secular clergyto stress the continuity of the Catholic Church here.

While Kerricx was producing his sculptures, fourteen large paintingswere installed beneath the gallery, with scenes from the life of St. Lawrence.As far as is known, it was the only cycle of decorations of its kind within theDutch Mission – that is to say, the only series of monumental works devot-ed entirely to a specific saint. Sadly, the church was lost in the bombing ofMay 14, 1940, and nothing remains of the paintings.43

The nearby Paradise Church (Paradijskerk), built in 1719 as the successorto the seventeenth-century clandestine church founded by BernardusHoogewerff, was demolished long before its neighbor was bombed, in 1907,having fallen into decay. This galleried church, with its vaulted plasteredceiling crowned by an octagonal dome, was an impressive structure tobehold. The altarpiece by the Rotterdam artist Dionys van Nijmegendepicted the Transfiguration; above it was a relief by the Antwerp sculptorAlexander Pluskens, who also made the pulpit and the other sculptures inthe church. The relief depicts Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, the momentat which Peter, thus acquiring the leadership of the Church, becomes thefirst pope. Although the priest of the Paradise Church, Johannes van Beek,sided with the Old Catholic Clergy in 1723, thus prompting the pope toplace him under a ban, this certainly did not imply that he, for his part,renounced the Church of Rome.

With the exception of the lost buildings in Rotterdam, the two mostbeautiful eighteenth-century clandestine churches have fortunatelyremained intact: the church of Saints James and Augustine in JuffrouwIdastraat in The Hague, and that of Saints Mary and Ursula at thebeguinage in Delft, dating from 1721 and 1743-1747, respectively. The firstof these “pearls of interior design” was commissioned by the priest Wilhel-mus van Dalenoort of The Hague, dean of the Utrecht vicariate. TheHague had become an important city for the Old Catholics: it was the seatof the government whose support they sought, as a “national” church. Itwas therefore in this church, rather than in St. Gertrude’s, Utrecht, thatCornelis Steenoven was elected archbishop on April 27, 1723.44

The lack of galleries in the Hague church of St. Augustine (as in De Liefde)made it possible to create a splendid Louis XIV interior (fig. 104). So it isnot surprising that the design has been ascribed (by Plantenga) to theFrench-born artist Daniel Marot, who also worked for the Stadholder’s

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Throughout the eighteenth century, the Old Catholic Clerics doggedlycontinued their efforts to achieve reconciliation with Rome. In 1763 theyeven convened a provincial synod in St. Gertrude’s Church in the presenceof foreign bishops, the outcome of which showed that everything that tookplace within the circles of the Old Catholic Clergy could pass the scrutiny ofthe Vatican with flying colors. They were fighting a rearguard action, howev-er. The writings of the little group of excommunicated priests from theswampy missionary territory in the north made little impression in Rome.39

As the conflict deepened under Codde, culminating in schism, the num-ber of communicants at the churches of the Old Catholic Clergy rapidlydwindled. Most Catholics were loath to risk excommunication and chosethe safest option by worshipping at a mission station that was run by a regu-lar cleric, or by a secular priest who had not followed the Old Catholics’ linein 1723.

Notwithstanding the risks, tens of thousands of Catholics remainedfaithful to the “Utrecht clergy.” They included some very wealthy clericsand believers, and in spite of all their difficulties, some of the churches ofthe Old Catholic Clergy newly built in the eighteenth century rank amongthe most beautiful clandestine churches in the history of the UnitedProvinces. Another factor that enhanced the splendor of the Old Catholics’churches was their good relationship with the authorities, who positivelywelcomed the idea of a national Catholic church that had loosened its tieswith Rome.40

The secular clergy that had remained faithful to Rome, though in themajority, was fairly rudderless, since the administrative elite had flocked toSteenoven’s camp. What is more, after 1727 the Holy See decided not toappoint a new vicar apostolic and to leave the administration of the DutchMission to the archpriests, who were accountable to the papal nuncio inCologne. This construction rather drained the vigor from this part of theChurch, and in the eighteenth century it no longer figured prominently inthe decoration of clandestine churches.41

The members of the Old Catholic Clergy, on the other hand, wereundaunted by the events. Two new clandestine churches were built in Rot-terdam, quite close together, in the early eighteenth century, by clerics fromCodde’s circle: Father Timmer of the parish of St. Lawrence and Mary Mag-dalene had a splendid galleried church built in 1698, though its decorationdid not really get started until 1706 (fig. 102). That year an organ wasinstalled, made by the organ builder Matthijs Verhofstad of Tiel, withwoodcarving by the leading Antwerp sculptor Willem Kerricx (1652-1719),who would also supply the pulpit, the altar frame, and eleven large statuesof saints, for a total price of 500 ducatons.


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the altar was a major enterprise that ended up costing 4,120

guilders, 642 guilders of which went to the Antwerp sculptorDe Kok.47 It was he who provided inter alia the sculpturegroup that crowns the structure, depicting Christ in judge-ment between two angels.The painting, the composition of which derives fromRaphael’s legendary depiction of the same subject, thoughwithout the dramatic scene in the lower section, can still beseen in situ in its original frame. Robert Nachbahr has notedthat the use of the Transfiguration as a subject for altarpiecesin the Dutch Mission occurs first in the churches of the OldDutch Clergy – three times in close succession (the first wasin Van Nijmegen’s painting in the Paradise Church in Rotter-dam in 1719, the second in an anonymous piece dating fromc. 1725 that can still be seen at the church of St. James, Buitende Weerd in Utrecht). Cautiously, but no doubt quite cor-rectly, Nachbahr suggests a link with the heavily “Christo-centric” worship that was propagated by the “Utrechtclergy,” in contrast to the relatively great importance that theJesuits attached to the worship of the Virgin Mary and thesaints.48 The church’s other decorations reflect the same

emphasis: in the stucco ceiling we see Christ at the center, surrounded byhis apostles.

The pulpit was made by the Antwerp-born sculptor J.B. Xavery, who hadpreviously collaborated with Marot and Terwesten to create interiors inwhich architecture, sculpture and paintings produced a harmonious, uni-fied whole. In this particular case, the contract between the church’s priestand the sculptor, drawn up on February 5, 1729, has been preserved. Xaveryundertook to make “a canopy depicting the Sun, and above it an angelkneeling on the clouds … against the back support a relief of a young manrepresenting the Evangelist St. Matthew … item: under the pulpit a Life-sized image of St. Augustine and Episcopal robes….”49 Xavery, who did infact execute this commission as required, was promised the sum of 570

guilders; eventually he would receive 811 guilders, since he did some extrawork, including bas-reliefs on the body of the pulpit and two additionalangels on the canopy.50

The preaching of the faith is the common theme here. Augustine wasundoubtedly chosen as the central figure because his view of the Church, asexpressed by Jansenius among others, had served as the basis for the theo-logical views of the elite among the secular clergy in the United Provincessince the latter half of the seventeenth century.

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court and the wealthy citizens of The Hague. However, there is cleararchival evidence citing the unknown Van Kruysselberghe as the church’sbouwmeester or architect.45 That does not rule out Marot’s involvement;elsewhere in The Hague, Daniel Marot designed the façade of the houseknown as “Schuylenburch” on Lange Vijverberg, after which the rest of thedesign was entrusted to Felix du Sart. Marot may well have supplied adesign for this church in the preparatory phase that was subsequently exe-cuted under Van Kruysselberghe’s supervision.46

The approximately four-meters high altarpiece with the Transfiguration (seefig. 104), the only painting admitted to this space, which was primarily dec-orated with stucco, was installed quite late, in 1733. It was made by theHague artist Mattheus Terwesten, at a cost of 350 guilders. The erection of


103. F. Marot, The

Martyrdom of St. Lawrence,

altarpiece at "De Oppert",

destroyed 10 May 1940

102. N. van der Meer jr.,

Interior of the Church of

SS. Lawrence and Mary

Magdalene

("De Oppert"),

engraving, ca. 1770

fig 102(eerder gebruikt)

165

The Beguinage in DelftIn 1743, the Delft priest Nicolaas Broedersen, who was an important histo-rian of the Old Catholic Clergy, started to build a new church at thebeguinage, dedicated to the saints Mary and Ursula. Here too a space wascreated without galleries and with a vaulted ceiling, dominated by stuccowork on the ceiling and walls (fig. 105, color plate XI). The large and yetintimate interior was patently inspired by the example in The Hague, albeitthat the style had now moved on to Louis XV decorations, which gave theDelft church a somewhat more joyful atmosphere. Even the altar frame,which in The Hague was still an autonomous element, is here an integralfeature of the interior. The altarpiece (fig. 105), the only painting in thechurch, was made by the Amsterdam artist Jacob de Wit, in his day notonly the most popular artist of Amsterdam burghers seeking to decoratetheir canal-houses, but also of the Catholic clergy in the United Provinces(see also chapters IV and VI). With a height of over four meters, it is thelargest altarpiece that De Wit ever made.51

It was a gift to the church presented in 1747 by one of the church’s femaleparishioners, the spiritual virgin Cornelia Wittert. She donated 725 guildersand 5 stuyvers, 525 guilders of which went to De Wit “for [the work of ]

164

In broad outline, the iconographic program of St. Gertrude’s chapel wasrepeated in the church on Juffrouw Idastraat. In both churches, the imageryrevolved around Christ in Judgement and the preaching of the faith by theapostles, the Evangelists, the Church Fathers, and the proselytizers whobrought Christianity to the Netherlands. The original altarpiece of St.Gertrude’s chapel has unfortunately been lost, so we do not know if it alsodepicted the Transfiguration. Still, that it featured a scene with Christ as themain protagonist does not seem an unduly speculative assumption.

What changed was above all the form in which these themes were pre-sented – instead of the paintings that graced St. Gertrude’s Church, beneaththe galleries and on the ceiling, this church abounded in stucco work andsculptures.


104. J. Steffelaar, Interior of

the Old Catholic church

of SS. James and

Augustine, 1896. Old-

Catholic Church, The

Hague

105. View to the altar of the

Begijnhof Church, Delft

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An inscription was added to the top of the frame of the altar, reading: “Apure offering shall be offered to My name” (Malachi 1:11). This obviouslyforges a link with the Sacrifice of the Mass, but at the same time it clarifiesthe role of the Virgin Mary. Father Bessemers of Gouda, a kindred spirit ofBroedersen’s, referred to the same passage in Malachi when he wrote aboutthe Presentation in the Temple in his Roomsch Misboek (1744): “Mary was

poor, and instead of a lamb she was therefore permitted to sacrificea turtle-dove or a young dove. She was poor, and was not

ashamed of making the sacrifice of the poor, even thoughshe was of David’s Royal Line … Yet she was the richest

in Christ, and in the end sacrificed infinitely morethan all the other women, namely the Lamb of

God, who alone could take away the sins of theworld, and who was represented by all thelambs brought to the slaughter in the OldLaw. The great Lesson that Mary presentsto us here is that we sacrifice the Lamb ofGod for our sins, and that we sinners arenot ashamed to submit to the laws of Godand the Church.”57

Mary is thus depicted as a priestess whosacrifices her Son, thus filling the sceneemphatically with Eucharistic overtones,which are further emphasized by the stuc-co relief with the Lamb of God surmount-ing the painting, and which, in a Biblicalcontext, make her into a role model forbelievers. Probably to focus all attentionon Mary’s role as priestess, Broedersen hadasked De Wit to omit the backgroundscene with the priests making sacrifices.58

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painting.” The rest of the money was used for the purchase of the canvasand the frame, and the gilding of the frame.

The total cost of the entire enterprise of building and decorating the newchurch ended up exceeding 28,000 guilders, while the incoming funds,from the sale of old silverware and donations, amounted to a total of 9,718

guilders and 17 stuyvers. The remaining money Broedersen supplied him-self, on the condition that “when physical ailments have made it necessaryfor me to abandon my spiritual duties of presbytery, I shall receive theannual sum of two hundred guilders from the said sum out of the church’sassets as long as I shall live, and after my death an annual memorial serviceshall be held for my soul around the time of my death.”52

Although a spiritual virgin paid for the altarpiece, the priest himselfretained firm control of the work, as is clear from a letter that De Wit wroteto him and that provides unique insight into the exchange of views betweena cleric and an artist about the making of a work of art. The two men clearlycorresponded at length on the exact representation of the subject, The Pre-sentation of Jesus in the Temple. The painter also sent the priest a preliminarydrawing, elaborated in color, executed in pen, chalk, graphite, watercolor,and gouache (fig. 106, color plate XII). “I have represented this,” wrote DeWit, “in accordance with the indications that Your Reverence was pleasedto give me – viz. the Holy Virgin Mary presents the Child to the priest her-self.”53 In the rest of the letter, he relates that he has tried to depict theclothes and the interior of the temple as aptly as possible, but that his clientcan of course indicate any changes he deems desirable – preferably on a sep-arate sheet of paper – De Wit evidently wanted the drawing back to use forthe actual painting. One conspicuous change was made, in fact: the back-ground scene showing priests busying themselves making a burnt offeringhas been replaced in the painting by a piece of classical architecture.54

The fact that Broedersen did not dedicate his new church to St. Ursulaalone, but also to the Virgin Mary, arises in the first place from the impor-tant role that Mary always played in beguine circles;55 in the second place, itillustrates that Mary was certainly loved in the circles of the Old CatholicClergy, though there was an insistence on her being presented in the right –Biblical – context. The iconography of the altarpiece, too – as is clear fromthe above passage from De Wit’s letter – was designed to place her at thecenter of attention. Traditionally, the emphasis in images of The Presenta-tion of Jesus in the Temple is generally on the old Simeon, who holds theChrist Child in his arms and thanks God, but here the emphasis is on themoment at which Mary hands the child to Simeon – in accordance withBroedersen’s explicit instructions that Mary must “present” her Son to thepriest “herself.”56


106. Jacob de Wit, The

presentation of Jesus in

the Temple, water color,

1747. Amsterdam,

Rijksmuseum

Clandestine Splendor. Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, pp. 86-167

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