b. 1597, Assendelft, d. 1665, Haarlem,Painter and draughtsman, son of Jan Saenredam. His paintings of churches and the old town halls in Haarlem, Utrecht and Amsterdam must have been appreciated by contemporary viewers principally as faithful representations of familiar and meaningful monuments. Yet they also reveal his exceptional sensitivity to aesthetic values; his paintings embody the most discriminating considerations of composition, colouring and craftsmanship. His oeuvre is comparatively small, the paintings numbering no more than 60, and each is obviously the product of careful calculation and many weeks of work. Their most striking features, unusual in the genre, are their light, closely valued tonalities and their restrained, restful and delicately balanced compositions. These pictures, always executed on smooth panels, are remarkable for their sense of harmony and, in some instances, serenity. Here, perhaps, lies a trace of filial fidelity to the Mannerist tradition of refinement and elegance, of lines never lacking in precision and grace. But Mannerist figures and the more comparable components of strap- and scrollwork embellishment lack the tension and clarity of Saenredam's designs, which also have a completeness reminiscent of the fugues of Gerrit Sweelinck (1566-?1628).   Related Paintings of Pieter Saenredam :. | St Francis Giving his Mantle to a Poor Man | The First Days of Spring | Flaming June | St. Lucie Hughes I | Drinking Bacchus |
Related Artists:
David Luders
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Beard, William Holbrook
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Philippe de Champaigne
1602-1674 Philippe de Champaigne Locations His artistic style was varied: far from being limited to the realism traditionally associated with Flemish painters, it developed from late Mannerism to the powerful lyricism of the Baroque. It was influenced as much by Rubens as by Vouet, culminating in an aesthetic vision of the world and of humanity that was based on an analytic view of appearances and on psychological truth. He was perhaps the greatest portrait painter of 17th-century France. At the same time he was one of the principal instigators of the Classical tendency and a founder-member of the Acadmie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. His growing commitment to the Jansenist religious movement (see JANSENISM) and the severe plainness of the works that it inspired has led to his being sometimes considered to typify Jansenist thinking, with its iconoclastic impulse, in spite of the opposing evidence of his other paintings. He should be seen as an example of the successful integration of foreign elements into French culture and as the representative of the most intellectual current of French painting.