Emanuel De Witte

Emanuel de Witte (1617 – 1692) was a Dutch perspective painter. In contrast to Pieter Jansz Saenredam, who emphasized accuracy, De Witte was especially concerned with atmosphere. Emanuel was born in Alkmaar and learned geometry from his father, a schoolmaster. He joined the local Guild of St Luke in 1636. After a stay in Rotterdam, he moved to Delft and studied with Evert van Aelst. In 1651 de Witte settled in Amsterdam; his first wife, Geerje Arents, died in 1655. He then married a 23-year-old orphan, Lysbeth van der Plas, who exercised a bad influence on his probably 17 years old daughter. Both were accused and interrogated in December 1659 for stealing four times from the neighbor. The first time the child climbed over the fence on a Sunday when nobody was at home but came back over the roof, the last time she dug a hole in the wall. Lysbeth, pregnant, had to leave the city for a period of six years; she lived outside the city wall and died in 1663. Following the arrest of his wife and child for thievery, De Witte was forced to indenture himself to the Amsterdam notary and art dealer Joris de Wijs, surrendering all of his work in exchange for room, board, and 800 guilders annually. De Witte broke the contract, was sued by the dealer, and forced to indenture himself further as a result. Several patrons provided De Witte with support, but these relations did not work out well, for he tended to shout at his clients and at people watching him at work in churches. Records tell of his gambling habit and a fight with Gerard de Lairesse. According to Arnold Houbraken, after an argument about the rent, Emanuel De Witte hanged himself from a bridge on a very cold evening in 1692. The rope broke and De Witte drowned. Because the canal froze that night, his corpse was not found until eleven weeks later, in Spring 1692. Interior of the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam, 1680.De Witte initially painted portraits as well as mythological and religious scenes. After his move from Delft to Amsterdam in 1651 de Witte specialized more and more in representing church interiors, and he painted the old church in Amsterdam from almost every corner. He sometimes combined aspects of different churches to depict interiors of ideal churches, populating them with churchgoers, sometimes accompanied by a dog. De Witte's unexcelled composition and use of light in his created atmospheres show them to be the real theme of each painting.