Bordeaux, Sara Rachel2020-10-162020-10-162014https://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/27841This dissertation proposes a revised view of Emanuel de Witte's Calvinist church interior paintings as sites of spirituality that evoke the sensory experience of attending church. Calvin's objection to devotional art precipitated the traditional understanding of these paintings as perspectives, which privileges their architectural elements and diminishes their spirituality. Because paintings by De Witte and his contemporaries represent structures recently stripped of most Catholic accoutrements, art historians have described them as spare spaces fit for a faith based solely on scripture. However, De Witte's sermon paintings assert Calvinist presence by showing the Reformed faithful at worship. De Witte utilizes paint to evoke the experiences of looking and listening, which encourages the viewer-as-congregant to attend the painted service. I suggest that we may identify a distinctly Reformed image in the subject matter, style, and technique of De Witte's paintings, which introduce a new visual and aural vocabulary to represent an aniconic faith. This dissertation fills a lacuna in the scholarship on Emanuel de Witte, whose oeuvre has not been the sole subject of study since Ilse Manke's 1963 monograph. Whereas De Witte's brief career in Delft has received attention in abundant literature on the Delft School, my focus on his Amsterdam paintings enhances our understanding of Calvinist identity and worship in Amsterdam's multiconfessional environment. My exploration of the sensory appeal of De Witte's paintings recasts Calvinism in Early Modern Europe as a profoundly experiential faith. In light of the Calvinist Church's mutability during the seventeenth century, it is possible that De Witte's paintings contribute to the formation of Dutch Calvinist identity by picturing the Reformed congregation practicing their faith. De Witte's paintings may be understood as a fundamentally new kind of religious art that depicts sacred spaces activated by the communities within them. His painted sermons represent the Word made image."Images removed due to copyright"--Page 361.CalvinismChurch interior paintingsEmanuel de WitteIconoclasmOrgansPerspectivesThesis1200510330https://doi.org/10.58088/gvr8-4v19