Old Church in Delft

De Witte was born in Alkmaar, the son of a schoolmaster. He worked in Delft and entered the Delft guild in 1642. By 1652 he settled in Amsterdam where he spent the rest of his life.

In Amsterdam de Witte continued to paint views of Delft churches, but he was inspired more often by the metropolis’s grand buildings: its Old Church, lofty New Church, Stock Exchange, and, after it was consecrated in 1675, its Portuguese-Jewish Synagogue. By the late fifties the contrast of light and shadow grows stronger and powerful, and he abandons oblique views for more frontal ones. At this time his interiors also become more fanciful. To be sure, other specialists made changes in the architecture they portrayed but de Witte was capable of radically rearranging it to increase massiveness, and to heighten spatial and chiaroscuro effects.

He also painted purely imaginary interiors of Catholic and Protestant Gothic and Renaissance churches, and designed others using elements taken from well-known Dutch buildings. But he always convinces us, in an uncanny way, that he has painted a view of a real church.

Comparison of this great artist’s works with those by Houckgeest and van Vliet shows his wider range, his more powerful spatial effects, and his more interesting pictorial qualities. In general, there is the same noble restraint as in Pieter de Hooch’s best genre pieces, Kalf’s mature still-lifes, and the grand solemnity of Ruisdael’s forest scenes.