STEENWIJK, Hendrick van the Elder

Flemish painter. According to van Mander, he was a pupil of Hans Vredeman de Vries in Antwerp. In 1570 he followed his master to Aachen, where he stayed for several years, in 1573 marrying Helena, the daughter of Marten van Valckenborch, who had also left Antwerp for Aachen.

Van Steenwijk’s earliest known painting is an Interior of Aachen Cathedral (1573; version, Schleissheim, Neues Schloss). In 1576 he also painted a view of Aachen (untraced), which was reproduced in print in later editions of the Civitates orbis terrarum of Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg (Cologne, 1572-1617). Van Steenwijk returned to Antwerp and was enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in 1577. A small painting on copper of the Interior of a Gothic Church (1578; private collection) is composed mostly of elements from Antwerp Cathedral.

Possibly for religious reasons, he fled from Antwerp and settled in Frankfurt am Main, where he became a citizen in 1586. His continuing presence there is indicated by a painting of 1588, but he is thought to have returned for a short while to Flanders. This was probably when he painted the Interior of a Church (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), considered as his masterpiece.

Although few paintings by van Steenwijk are known, he is recognized as the creator of a special genre of architectural painting, which became popular in both the northern and the southern Netherlands. His paintings depart from the theoretical architectural perspectives of Vredeman de Vries and introduce a perception of reality in which both colour and the transitions between light and shadow are used to suggest depth and spatial recession.