Saenredam's painting of the whitewashed, nearly empty interior of St Bavo's Church in Haarlem, with its organ and a few small visitors. Artist

Pieter Saenredam

Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists

The Dutch painter of whitewashed church interiors — the Reformed interior, empty of images, made itself the picture.

Tagged: Painting Early Modern Devotional Iconoclastic Church Interiors Reformed and Presbyterian

Saenredam measured church interiors on site and painted them with surveyor's patience: bare walls, clear light, a few figures small against the architecture. His St Bavo's interiors are the visual record of the Reformed settlement after iconoclasm.

His work anchors this section's entry on Reformed iconoclasm, where the picture of the emptied church is itself the argument.

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