Painted birds in full flight on some recently discovered 17th century Amsterdam ceilings, were inspiration for two newly designed paintings done on over one hundred pieces of antique floorboard, now suspended between the beams of a 1670’s Herengracht monument.

"In recent years seventeenth century birds have been discovered behind wood, paint or plaster on several locations..."

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"To me there is something strikingly appropriate about these animals resurfacing in a time of biodiversity crises."

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Hidden birds.
Flying birds painted above your head on the boards between the ceiling beams, enjoyed a short two decades of being highly fashionable roughly between 1660 and ‘80. But, as fashions do, they go out of style eventually, and in the following centuries all of these vivid birds were covered, either by elaborately carved rococo ceilings, 19th century plaster or even simply overpainted.

Reviving a genre.
So when its current owner decided to restore her newly acquired 1670’s canal palazzo as a family home, after decades of it being used as bank office stripped of its original floors and all but every historic detail of its interior, one of my first proposals was obvious.
Doing a new interpretation of a 17th c Amsterdam bird ceiling has been a long cherished dream, and this seemed the perfect occasion. A house from this date could actually once have held such a ceiling. Yet there is no way of knowing if it did.
I really like that idea.

Some years ago a mid 18th century ceiling painting was removed from its frame for restauration, revealing behind it an older ceiling filled with birds for the first time in centuries. Eighteenth century fashion had changed the taste for these kind of decorations into a more classical orientated and idealized imagery, while Amsterdam had changed from a city of tradesmen and shipping companies into an economy of bankers and shareholders, people with an urge to show off a certain amount of cultural bagage. A process also known as the artistocratization of the Dutch merchant elite.
In recent years seventeenth century painted birds have been discovered behind wood, paint or plaster on several locations.

These new ceiling paintings are about birds that have been stuck behind paint, wood or wallpaper for centuries, slightly deformed - or choreographed like flowers in an herbarium.

“Le rappèl des Oiseaux” ( a title derived from one of Rameau’s compositions) was installed in July 2022.

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