Peter Neefs the Younger

Anonymous sale, Artcurial, Paris, 14 December 2009, lot 5 (as by Peter Neefs the Elder).

Peter Neefs the Younger (circa 1620 – after 1675) made his name during the Flemish ‘Golden Age’, following in the footsteps of his father Pieter Neefs the Elder as a painter of Gothic church interiors. He was known for his detailed, richly decorated depictions, sometimes inspired by real buildings, such as the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, and sometimes completely imagined. Father and son, whose work is sometimes difficult to tell apart, helped to make the painting of religious architecture a genre in its own right in seventeenth century Flemish painting.

Peter Neefs the Younger stands out for his representations of monumental spaces, playing with light effects, both in his use of chiaroscuro and in reflections from stained-glass windows. He brings his compositions to life with numerous figures, often painted with collaborators, which give a picture of his contemporaries’ activities inside these buildings. These scenes show masses, processions, conversations, people praying or simply walking about. Neefs the Younger’s paintings should be seen in the context of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, emphasizing the grandeur and spirituality of the Church through the beauty of its architecture and a luminosity that evokes divine light.

This painting, signed on one of the columns and dated 1643 on another, is one of Peter Neefs’s depictions of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. Given cathedral status in the sixteenth century, in these years the ancient church also suffered a fire and iconoclastic depredations. It was gradually rebuilt after 1585, with the works continuing for 150 years. These events had an enduring impact on the concept of religious space in places of worship in Flanders.

In the seventeenth century, more than forty altars were erected in the building, built by and for the guilds, corporations and brotherhoods of the new episcopal see, allowing these groups to differentiate themselves and assert their own importance. These spaces, reserved for their members, had a role that was political and economic as well as religious. Set against every column in the nave, the enclosed altars were surmounted by painted triptychs, candlesticks and sculptures. The paintings’ leaves were opened for important events as well as for three days during the most important feast days of the Catholic rite: Christmas, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost. In the present example, only one is open, the second in the left-hand row of columns in the nave.

The architectural space is bathed in light, diffused by the large windows in the building’s first and second registers. The line of perspective and the door of the rood screen – now lost – shows the choir and its altar, the most sacred place in the cathedral. Figures of the faithful move around the public areas, the nave and aisles, along with two dogs, perhaps allegories of the faithfulness to the Church expected from believers, in the context of the Counter-Reformation. Representing all sections of society, some of the figures are praying, some conversing with laymen or members of the clergy, some giving alms to beggars – illustrating the Christian principle of charity – or simply walking about among the altars and columns. While Neefs the Younger often asked collaborators to paint his figures – including David Teniers the Younger and Sébastien Vrancx – it is difficult in this instance to attribute them firmly to any one of these artists.