Jan Saenredam
Encyclopedia
Zaandam
Zaandam is a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad, and received city rights in 1811...
- 6 April 1607 Assendelft), was a Dutch Northern Mannerist painter, printmaker in engraving, and cartographer, and father of the painter of church interiors, Pieter Jansz Saenredam
Pieter Jansz Saenredam
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his distinctive paintings of whitewashed church interiors.-Biography:...
. He is noted for the many allegorical images he created from classical mythology
Classical mythology
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
and the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
.
Biography
As an orphan Jan lived with his uncle, Pieter de Jongh, a bailiff in Assendelft who first sent him to learn basket weaving as a profession. Being an apt student, he was taught reading and writing, but astonished his teachers when he proved already so accomplished in this that he decorated his texts with curled decorations. An example of his penmanship could once be seen on display at Assum House near Heemskerk (residence of the Lord of Assendelft), which was his copywork of the ten commandments. Despite a decision that he follow a career in a trade or farming, he showed such artistic talent that he started as an apprentice cartographer. His first map is dated 1589 and is of the province of Holland, which could be seen in the city book of Guiccardijn (referring to a 1593 work by Lodovico GuicciardiniLodovico Guicciardini
Lodovico Guicciardini was an Italian writer and merchant from Florence, but who lived primarily in Antwerp. He was the nephew of historian and diplomat Francesco Guicciardini.-Description of the Low Countries:...
called The Description of the Low Countries). He was visited by a lawyer called Spoorwater tot Assendelft, who convinced his guardian to let him apply his gift, and thus young Saenredam was sent to learn drawing from Hendrick Goltzius in Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
, where he became a master at the age of 24 (in 1589).
After working for some time with Goltzius, he encountered the almost inevitable professional rivalry and jealousy, prompting his departure to work in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
for two years. He then returned to Assendelft where he married and set up his own workshop. His first engraving was of the 12 apostles after a drawing by Karel van Mander. He produced prints after Goltzius, Abraham Bloemaert
Abraham Bloemaert
Abraham Bloemaert was a Dutch painter and printmaker in etching and engraving. He was one of the "Haarlem Mannerists" from about 1585, but in the new century altered his style to fit new Baroque trends...
, Cornelis van Haarlem
Cornelis van Haarlem
Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem , Dutch Golden Age painter and draughtsman, was one of the leading Northern Mannerist artists in The Netherlands, and an important forerunner of Frans Hals as a portraitist.-Biography:...
, Polidoro da Caravaggio, and his own invention. He made over 170 plates of which the last one was a history of Diana and Callisto
Diana and Callisto
Diana and Callisto is a painting of 1556–59 by the Venetian artist Titian. It is currently part of the Bridgewater or Sutherland Loan, on display at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, with a later version by Titian and his workshop in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna...
by Paulus Moreelse
Paulus Moreelse
Paulus Moreelse was a Dutch painter, mainly of portraits.-Life:Moreelse was born and died in Utrecht. He was a pupil of the Delft portrait painter Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, who had himself been a pupil of Anthonie van Blocklandt. He took a study-trip to Italy, where he received many portrait...
in 1606. Two plates he was working on, after drawings by Bartholomeus Spranger
Bartholomeus Spranger
Bartholomeus Spranger was a Flemish Northern Mannerist painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He was born in Antwerp in the Habsburg Netherlands .-Biography:...
and Willem Thibaut
Willem Thibaut
Willem Thibaut, Tybaut, or Tibout , was a Dutch Golden Age painter.-Biography:According to the RKD he lived and worked in Haarlem, but made the cartoons for the two stained-glass windows in the Janskerk in 1570....
, were finished later by Jacob Matham
Jacob Matham
Jacob Matham , of Haarlem, was a famous engraver and pen-draftsman.-Biography:He was the stepson and pupil of painter and draftsman Hendrik Goltzius, and brother-in-law to engraver Simon van Poelenburgh, having married his sister, Marijtgen...
.
According to the Rijksmuseum
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or simply Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art...
, he returned in 1595 from Amsterdam to Assendelft, where he married Anna Pauwelsdochter. Jan left his wife a sizeable estate as a result of lucrative investments in the Dutch East India Company
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...
. He died of typhus on April 6, 1607 and was buried in the choir of the Saint Adolphus church at Assendelft, with the gravestone inscription Ioannis Saenredam Sculptoris celeberrimi.