Originally posted to AskUK but I think this is not and English church. “Does anyone know what church or which community this painting is from?”. Dank u bij voorbaat!

11 comments

  1. Hello all, this was posted in AskUK but I think it isn’t an English church. The subject seems as if it might be more up your collective straat than ours… can anybody identify the town depicted here?

    Many thanks, and proost 🙂

  4. This does not look Dutch at all. The houses are medieval and could be anywhere in Europe. The church looks like English or maybe Flemish Gothic.

  7. I think the houses and the church might not be from the same town. The church tower to me looks very much like English Gothic architecture, while the buildings in the foreground are much more German/Austrian. The two houses in the front right might pass as Dutch or Belgian gabled houses, but the thing as a whole definitely is not anywhere in the Netherlands.

    Edit: taking a closer look, the houses on the right seem to be brick. I don’t know of any place where brick and German Holzfachwerk styles are used side by side like that, so I’m going to definitely say this is a cobbled together scene.

  8. the church is brabantine gothic, so it probably is either in the south of the netherlands, in Belgium or northern france.
    I found 3 possible options
    Searching via google lens, it seems to be similar to the sint-maartenskerk in zaltbommel, however it misses the piramid-shaped roof on top of the tower, as well as the decorations on the top rim of the tower.
    It could also be the older rendition of the Sint-Niklaaskerk in Gent, however it only has 4 smaller spires on the top of the tower unlike what we see in the picture.
    I believe it is the Onze lieve vrouwekathedraal in Antwerpen, where the painter stood at the current crossing of the Vleminckstraat and sint-pieterstraat, facing the cathedral. From the original medieval street, you would see the southern aisle of the church, with the southern tower behind it. It seems to match this drawing from anton pieck quite well : [https://cdn.myonlinestore.eu/93fb59eb-6be1-11e9-a722-44a8421b9960/image/cache/full/f29e8be0c64bbc500e31fe8553810a292a455e63.jpg](https://cdn.myonlinestore.eu/93fb59eb-6be1-11e9-a722-44a8421b9960/image/cache/full/f29e8be0c64bbc500e31fe8553810a292a455e63.jpg)

    What’s interesting is that the main tower is not visible in this painting, meaning that the scenery could be from before 1502. Originally this tower was intended to be symmetrical to the current northern tower, yet is was decided to not execute this plan between 1521 and 1565, and therefore it looks like this still to this day.

  11. Honestly, I’m tempted to think this isn’t a real place, and simply a painting inspired by German/Dutch architecture. The houses on the left look German, the houses on the right Dutch. All conveniently facing slightly towards us.

    The church looks like it has random spires everywhere and googling Gothic churches (the style it seems to be), comes up with nothing even similar.

    I could very much be wrong though.

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