Interior of the Old Church in Delft
Is leeg, of bestaat niet
HENDRIK CORNELISZ VAN VLIET
Delft 1611/12-1675
Oil on canvas 41 x 35,7 cm.
Indistinctly signed lower left, datable ca. 1660
Provenance
C.M. Napper, London/Switzerland, by 1997
Anonymous sale Sotheby’s, London, 14 December 2000, lotno. 365
Hendrik Cornelisz van Vliet was a pupil of his uncle Willem van der Vliet. He admitted the Guild of Saint Luke in Delft in 1632. He started his career with architectural painting, particularly the painting of church interiors. Before him, Pieter Saenredam introduced innovative techniques of perspective. By mid of the century, architectural painting gained great popularity. Among the churches painted by van Vliet are the Pieterskerk in Leiden, the Oude- en Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. Hendrik van Vliet was buried in the Old Church in 1675.
Later in his career he took up portrait painting with Michiel van Mierevelt. Three similar renderings of the Old Church in Delft by Hendrik van Vliet, depicted from the same point and distance are a 1660 dated canvas in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Mauritshuis and the Gemaeldegalerie der Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in
Vienna, also datable ca. 1660.
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