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Baroque and Rococo
Emanuel de Witte
Emanuel de Witte(b Alkmaar, c. 1617; d Amsterdam, 1691–2).
Dutch painter. He was one of the last and, with Pieter Saenredam, one of the most accomplished 17th-century artists who specialized in representing church interiors. He trained with Evert van Aelst (1602–57) in Delft and in 1636 joined the Guild of St Luke at Alkmaar, but he was recorded in Rotterdam in the summers of 1639 and 1640. In October 1641 his daughter was baptized in Delft, where he entered the Guild of St Luke in June 1642 and lived for a decade, moving to Amsterdam c. 1652. He began his long career as an unpromising figure painter, as can be seen in the Vertumnus and Pomona (1644) and two small pendant portraits (1648; all Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen). Jupiter and Mercury in the House of Philemon and Baucis (1647) and a Rembrandtesque Holy Family (1650; both Delft, Stedel. Mus. Prinsenhof) presage de Witte’s interpretation of architectural interiors predominantly in terms of light and shade, and—in their casual drawing, comparatively broad brushwork and uncertain articulation of space—are stylistically consistent with the unsigned Nieuwe Kerk, Delft (c. 1651; Winterthur, Stift. Briner), showing the tomb of William the Silent. The latter picture is based directly on Gerrit Houckgeest’s church interiors of the same years, as is de Witte’s version of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft (1650–51; Hamburg, Ksthalle), with the tomb seen from the rear. Like Hendrick van Vliet, de Witte turned from figure painting to a subject that had always been a perspectivist’s speciality. It can be assumed, and there is evidence in inventories, that a mostly local demand in traditionally royalist Delft encouraged de Witte and Hendrick van Vliet to concentrate on national monuments and the churches that enshrined them.
Interior of a Church
Oil on wood, 68 x 51 cm
Pushkin Museum, Moscow
Interior of the Oude Kerk at Delft during a Sermon
1651
Oil on wood, 61 x 44 cm
Wallace Collection, London
