THREE 'DANZIG' DRAWINGS: NOTES ON THE LlMITS OF INFLUENCE

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& HMgMWe AcAoy Hans Vredeman de Vries,
/F'M.S\S'c/.S', 7574, A7/cpagg

books like the HrcAtfgctMru and TA/ispuct/w? involved active interactions between reader
anduser, an interaction long characterised as reader-response in literary criticism.' -1 want,
however, to suggest one other way to better describe such relationships in the context of
art history, using materiał terms.
In a 1991 exhibition at Rotterdam devoted to the painter Pieter Saenredam, Vredeman
was referred to as 'the father of architectural painting'.^ Gerard HouckgeesFs magnificent
painting of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft (ill. 7) from around 1652, for example, can indeed be
described as a kind of formal offspring of Vredeman prints. To be surę, the panel echoes,
almost eerily, piąte 24 from the ^ Houckgeest has drawn out Vredeman's
example and imported it to the tonality of an extant church, fusing Vredeman's perspective
with a subject matter pioneered by Pieter Saenredam, a painter from Haarlem. From our
point of view, Houckgeest clearly Vredeman; in the tirst place he modifled
yredemanT fonu; in the second, HouckgeesFs work has changed how we retrospectively
assess Vredeman's art historically. The achievements of Houckgeest (and Saenredam),
while post-dating the HurypuGmu, serve to make Vredeman, a predecessor, that much
morę prescient and germane to history in our eyes. The prints in themselves - in their
inherent historical mutability - are no longer inert senders of forms, but rather artifacts
constituted by their very relation to other works of art. The of these multiple
relations to Vredeman explains his products of making themselves. ^
In early Vredeman historiography this kind of reverse-influence even took a
nationalistic form. In 1876, a monographic study of Vredeman was published by Augustę
Schoy, then professor of architectural history at the Royal Academy in Brussels (ill. 8). For
See, e.g.: Wolfgang ISER, Pro^pgctmg.' Frow Rg^&r Rgypo^g to ThgrarydMtAropo/ogy, Baltimore 1989.
'6 Jeroen GILTAJ, Guido JANSEN (eds.), Pgr^pgctmgn.' ^ogn/^g&w g/r & orc/zhgctMM/^c/zAdg/^ Fo/r & 77& ggrw,
Rotterdam 1991, p. 55.
The Hague, Mauritshuis, inv. 57. The similarity between the print and Houckgeesfs painting was iirst noted in Arthur
WHEELOCK, Pgr^pgchFg, ophc-y, onr/Dg^t ortAA aroM/?<7 7450, New York 1977, p. 233ff.
' - On the relational constitution of'things' by history see Paul VEYNE, FoMCOMAFgw/Mho/?tzg^ WAtory, [in:] Amold
I. DAYIDSON (ed.), FoMconA and /?A 7^tgr/ocMtory, Chicago 1997, p. 146-72.