A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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924. A GOTHIC INTERIOR

Pieter Neeffs (Flemish: 1577-about 1661).

This eminent architectural painter belonged to a family of Antwerp artists. He was a pupil of Hendrick Steenwyck the elder. "He did for the Roman Catholic churches of Antwerp that which, thirty years later, and with greater talent, a more flowing brush, and a better understanding of chiaro-oscuro, Emmanuel de Witte (see 1053) was destined to do for the Protestant churches of Delft. Neeffs took special delight in the representation of night scenes, torchlight funeral services, and the like. Teniers and Velvet Breughel themselves often assisted him in these small canvases, thus bearing testimony to the high esteem in which Neeffs was held by his colleagues" (Wauters, The Flemish School, p. 342.)

A group of figures is inspecting a conspicuous Renaissance tomb. Notice the dogs among the visitors.