HENDRICK CORNELISZ. VAN VLIET | INTERIOR OF THE NIEUWE KERK, DELFT WITH THE TOMB OF WILLEM THE SILENT

Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. (1909-1988), Norfolk, Virginia, until 1969;

Private collection, New York, 1969-1988;

With Otto Naumann, New York, 1988;

With Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna;

From whom acquired by a private collector in 1989;

From whom acquired.

B.G. Maillet, Intérieurs d'Églises, 1580-1720: La Peinture Architecturale des Écoles du Nord, Wijnegem 2012, p. 419, no. M - 1451, reproduced.

Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet specialized in church interiors and painted around seventy views of the Nieuwe Kerk in his native Delft between 1655 and 1671.¹  The church had special significance for the city and the nation, and patriotic visitors flocked to see the tomb of Willem the Silent (1533 - 1584), assassinated leader of the Dutch Revolt. While fellow architectural and perspective painters like Gerard Houckgeest and Emmanuel de Witte had by 1654 left Delft for other cities, Van Vliet remained and cornered the market for Delft church interiors. Here he shows the famous tomb not head on, but rather obliquely, through imposing columns beyond which townspeople stroll. The two dogs chasing one another in the foreground add liveliness to the scene and emphasize the fact that Protestant churches were public gathering places in the seventeenth century. This particular composition likely derives from a lost compositional drawing and exists in at least four other versions.

1. See Maillet in Literature, pp. 414-455.