Groundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-Hertogenbosch

Groundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-Hertogenbosch

Pieter Jansz. Saenredam

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing is one of only two known architectural plans by the famous Dutch artist Saenredam, best known for his meticulous perspectival oil paintings of churches and church interiors. Numerous preparatory drawings, done at the scene, allowed Saenredam to re-create a specific church interior while working in his studio, sometimes years later. This plan of the Cathedral of Saint John shows an aspect of the artist’s working process—inscribing a pre-drafted plan of the building with detailed measurements from the site. Saenredam’s scrupulous nature comes to the fore in the corrections he made in his inscriptions, indicating where the sketch was misleading and reminding himself to trust the figures rather than the scale of his drawing.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Groundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-HertogenboschGroundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-HertogenboschGroundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-HertogenboschGroundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-HertogenboschGroundplan of the Church of Saint John in ’s-Hertogenbosch

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.