The Dutch text painting*

Abstract

What the viewer today often shares with the diminutive figures that populate Pieter Jansz. Saenredam's church interiors is a sensitivity to the quality of absence — the sense of emptiness with its white walls and cavernous, unfocused spaces. In Saenredam's Interior of the Great Church, Haarlem, 1628, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, a man gestures to his companion, pointing either to the vast spaces beyond the choir screen or the heights above the arcade (figure I). With a like emphasis on open space, Saenredam presents the Great Church to the viewer by showcasing the expansive gravestone floor that opens the transept to us with its stately columns neatly marking recession at regular intervals. But after the initial impression of emptiness, the eye might in fact be caught by the blur of some large paintings. What are those strange blocks of strong color that interrupt the otherwise creamy white and tonal pastel palette of the painting? Just off center and in one case roughly five times the height of the figures, these curiosities confront us with their jarringly dissimilar color, composition and size. Often explained as 'inscriptions', in fact they look more like elaborate and illegible graffiti encased in decorative borders. This article is an attempt to better understand these 'elaborate graffiti' found on the columns, walls and choir screens of Dutch church interiors and perhaps best known from the work of architectural painters like Saenredam, de Witte and the Berckheydes.