Interior of an Imaginary Church

1640 · Private collection

interior

Most of Van Delen's paintings from the 1620s feature dark, rather rigid and angular, Renaissance-style architecture and usually include a vanishing point exactly in the middle of the painting. During the 1640s, the decade in which the present work was executed, Van Delen crafted a more monumental, simpler, cubic style, which was at once more somber and more coherent architecturally.

About the Artist

Dirck van Delen

1604 – 1671

Dutch painter. He was the pupil of Frans Hals and Hendrick Aerts (active early 17th century). His work consists almost entirely of architectural paintings of imaginary palaces and church interiors. His earliest paintings of palace scenes were influenced significantly by the work of Hans Vredeman de Vries and his son Paul Vredeman de Vries. He also painted church interiors, in which he initially showed an influence of the paintings by Hendrick Aerts. His church interiors are also close in style to those of Bartholomeus van Bassen. When he married in 1625 he was a citizen of Middelburg, but he settled in nearby Arnemuiden, where he became master of the toll-house. From 1628 until his death he was almost continually a member of the town council, mostly as burgomaster. He was widowed three times and had at least one son, though no children survived him. The inventory of his estate testifies that he was well-to-do.

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