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The Cloister
Jacob van Ruisdael·1649
Historical Context
The Cloister of 1649, now at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, is an early work in which van Ruisdael explores the ruined religious architecture that would become a recurring meditative subject throughout his career. The cloister — a monastery courtyard enclosed by arcaded walks — was a subject charged with post-Reformation significance in the Dutch Republic: monastic buildings had been seized and dissolved during the Dutch Revolt, and their ruins dotted the Dutch landscape as reminders of the Catholic past that Calvinism had displaced. Van Ruisdael was twenty when this was painted, and his treatment of the ruined cloister shows already the philosophical seriousness with which he would approach all architectural decay — nature reclaiming the works of religious institutions, the forest growing through cloisters once dedicated to prayer and contemplation.
Technical Analysis
The ruined architecture creates dramatic compositional forms overtaken by vegetation. Ruisdael's detailed rendering of weathered stone and encroaching plants embodies the theme of natural reclamation.
Look Closer
- ◆The ruined cloister arches are overgrown with ivy — the vegetation's organic curve invading the architectural geometry, Van Ruisdael's preferred image of nature reclaiming culture.
- ◆Bright sky is visible through the remaining arch openings — the ruined building open to weather, its enclosure function gone.
- ◆A pool of still water in the cloister yard reflects the arches above — the ruin doubled in its reflection, both present and its own memory.
- ◆A Protestant interpretation is implied — Haarlem's cloisters were secularized after the Reformation, and Van Ruisdael's ruins often carry confessional undertones.
- ◆The warm stone of the surviving walls and the cool shadow of the collapsed sections create a chiaroscuro specific to the archaeology of ruins.
