Pieter Saenredam, Interior of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, 1641. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. We find something similar in the manner in which Saenredam identifies and places himself in his works through his signature. There are several instances in which his naming of the church, his name, and the date of his painting's execution are inscribed as graffiti on a church wall. In a painting of the Mariakerk, Utrecht, the inscription is grouped with three small figures that are scrawled on the foreground pillar in the same ink or chalk.
Like the figures to which it is bound, it is executed in three colors––ochre, black, and white––and in three hands that divide in such a way as to suggest a series of graffiti done over time: Dit is de St Mariae kerk binnen uijttrecht [ochre] Pieter Saenredam ghemaeckt [black] ende voleijndicht den 20 Januarij int Jaer 1641 [white] The effect of the different hands, the colors, and the division is to bind Saenredam's writing of the inscription to drawings of the least tutored kind. There is an anecdote told by Vasari that Michelangelo once demonstrated his superior skill by being able to mimic the art of a child. Saenredam's intent is quite the opposite. Far from claiming special knowledge for himself, the Dutchman instead exhibits the relatedness of all kinds of drawing––trained and untrained, image and script. The form and position of the graffiti-inscription also characterize or place the artist in another way. By locating himself within the church as the one who has marked the wall with graffiti, Saenredam subtly undercuts his priority as the creator of the picture. [...] Saenredam's aim in diminishing his role as creator is to give priority to the documentation of the church seen and thus to present the picture itself as a document of a particular kind.
from svetlana alpers, the art of describing: dutch art in the seventeenth century, 1983
