Pieter Neefs the Younger

[1][2] Son of the prominent architectural painter Pieter Neefs the Elder he started out working in his father's workshop in Antwerp.

Pieter Neefs the Younger continued the tradition of the church interior in Antwerp in the manner created by his father and other artists of the previous generation like Hendrick van Steenwyck the Elder.

This is for example the case with the Interior of a Cathedral, Night Scene (c. 1660, Victoria and Albert Museum) which was attributed to Pieter the Younger as the dress of the characters in the composition were identified as being fashionable during the 1660s, a time by which is father is deemed to have been deceased.

[6] 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.

[9] The works of Pieter Neefs the Elder and Younger have been called propaganda for the Catholic Counter Reformation.

All of these activities were often included in a single composition in a church swarming with priests and bristling with statues and paintings.