Pieter Neefs the Elder

[2] Active in Antwerp, he was influenced by the works of the Dutch architectural painters Hendrik van Steenwijk the Elder and the Younger.

His father was Aart Neefs, a cloth merchant and innkeeper who had difficulty making ends meet after losing most of his fortune during the Spanish Fury.

Generally speaking, the works he made before c. 1640 when his son Pieter the Younger became involved in the workshop are superior in quality.

It is possible that works attributed to either Pieter the Elder and the Younger are, in fact, by Lodewijjk of Ludovicus, the least-known member of the Neefs family.

[7][8] Pieter Neefs is known to have painted several copies of Steenwyck compositions, including his earliest dated church interior of 1605.

[9] Father and son van Steenwijck and the two generations of the family Neefs painters are considered to be representatives of the Antwerp school of architectural painting.

[10] Neefs' compositions are characterised by their deeply receding spaces, created through the use of linear perspective and contrasting areas of light and dark.

[8] While nocturnal scenes of church interiors were likely an innovation of Hendrick van Steenwyck the Elder, Pieter Neefs became one of the principal practitioners of the genre.

[8] Neefs would vary elements of the architecture of actual churches to which he added paintings and sculptural details of his own invention.