The interior of Onze Lieve Vrouwe Cathedral in Antwerp, signed at lower right (in the column’s base): Pieter Neefs, oil on panel, 40.7 x 56 cm, framed

Provenance:
Iakov (Carl) Nikolajevitch Danzas (1876–1943), St. Petersburg, Imperial Russian Minister.

Exhibited:
The Art of the Allied People, St Petersburg 1914, no. 122 (as Frans Francken II)

We are grateful to Dr Tatjana Bushmina, Hermitage, St. Petersburg, for her assistance in researching the provenance of the present painting and for identifying the artist (correspondence with the consignor, February 2012). We also thank Dr Ursula Härting, who also acknowledged the painting’s authenticity. The painting is accompanied by a certificate written by Dr Härting.

The two Neefs – father and son – were celebrated architectural painters who limited themselves to three buildings or types of buildings, the most frequently varied motif being the Cathedral of Antwerp. Since the two artists worked together closely over many years, it is difficult to distinguish between their hands, as they also collaborated with the same figure painters. However, the works by Neefs the Younger make a more reserved impression; their colouring is smoother, and they are not as dark in the shadows, while their drawing is sharper. Solely working as architectural painters, they had the figures added to the finished works by colleagues. The present painting shows the interior of the Cathedral of Antwerp, which is considered the most beautiful Late Gothic church in the Southern Netherlands. The depiction of the interior is characterized by a perfect construction of the central perspective, which through the rendering of the vault – a sequence of bays with their accompanying ribs and wall elements – produces a dynamism of its own. The figures mainly serve to illustrate spatial proportions and distances.