Jan van der Heyden, An Imaginary View of Nijenrode Castle

Jan van der Heyden was, and still is, particularly well known for his pictures of city streets and individual buildings. He was an expert at painting with meticulous attention to detail and seems to have relished depicting the surface texture of stone and brick at the smallest scale. Many of his buildings seem almost photographically real, an effect which was enhanced by his attention to the play of light and the angles of shadows. Often, as here, he would cast the foreground in shade and bathe the middle ground in sunlight, a technique which adds to the impression of depth and perspective in the painting.

Although he clearly liked to paint scenes that looked realistic, van der Heyden made adjustments to what he saw and often created entirely imaginary scenes. Sometimes he would compose fantasy buildings, combining elements from more than one structure. Here his approach is slightly different. He has taken two buildings which were in reality about seven miles apart and placed them much closer together. In the foreground is the sacristy of Utrecht Cathedral. Just across the cobbled street is Nijenrode Castle, which is located at Breukelen, well outside the city. 

Both buildings still exist but have been significantly altered since this painting was made. We can’t judge for sure whether the depiction of the castle is a faithful account of the building when van der Heyden saw it, but because he included it in several of his pictures we know that he often made changes to it. One of his paintings (now in a private collection) shows the castle from the same angle as here and, while both are similar in outline, there are numerous small differences between the two versions. We do know, from a late eighteenth-century drawing of the Cathedral, that the sacristy shown here is largely accurate. The key difference from reality is that van der Heyden has painted it as built of brick instead of stone, perhaps because he felt it would add detail and interest to the building.

The people and animals here add both interest and a sense of scale to the composition. Sometimes van der Heyden painted them himself, but these may have been added by Adriaen van der Velde, a specialist figure painter with whom he often collaborated.