(Tournai circa 1610–1673 Rotterdam)
The interior of a church with elegant figures,
signed and dated lower left: A. de Lorme 163(?)2,
oil on panel, 89 x 125 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2017, lot 149;
where acquired by the present owner

The present panel depicts an imagined church interior, with elegant figures processing through its nave. The soft rounded arches and deep viewpoints lend the composition an Italianate character, redolent of both Renaissance architecture and Brunelleschi’s experiments with linear perspective. The absence of pulpits, textual decoration, and sober dress which would mark out a Dutch Calvinist church further add to the caprice. Indeed, contemporary inventories of the collections of Dutch connoisseurs describe such views by de Lorme as ‘perspectives’.

In the present picture, the animated gestures of the figures evoke the wandelkerk or walking church of the 17th century United Provinces, where churches were places to meet or even discuss business. The figure lifting a paving slab to prepare a tomb, the children playing marbles and the animals all form an ensemble that move between light and shade to further exhibit the artist’s mastery in modelling space. The prominence of the organ on the right, its role still at the time controversial in Calvinist worship, along with the light source of the single chandelier and the shadowed apse adds to a sense of baroque drama. Another composition, related in terms of its interior drawing, shows turbaned Turks along with Jews walking within it. The dating suggests de Lorme executed this piece at the age of 22, making it significant within his early oeuvre as an important testament to the definition of his unique style.

De Lorme also depicted existing church interiors with a realism that matched his more celebrated contemporaries such as Pieter Jansz. Saenredem. Important works include his views of Rotterdam’s Laurenskerk (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) which were used as records in the re-construction of the church following its destruction in the Second World War.