Four years ago I went to the Church of St Nicholas in Perk, part of the municipality of Steenokkerzeel, just north of Zaventem Airport. I was just recovering from COVID, and was concentrating on the stucco ceiling, one of the dozen surviving works of the seventeenth century master stuccador Jan Christiaan Hansche, which I was obsessed by at the time. I was informed then that the church and the scupltures were due to be restored in the near future, and made a mental note to return some day. Today was the day.

The core of the church is possibly twelfth century, and a choir (behind the altar) was added in the fourteenth century. The red brick aisles on the sides were added in the nineteenth century, so you have to imagine a thinner, more externally austere building for most of its history.

(I’m glad to say that in 2023 the Belgian popular history journal Monumenten en Landschappen published a very good article (in Dutch) about the church and Hansche, by Jan Caluwaerts, Valerie Herremans, and Jan Verbeke, from which I have raided some of the information in this post.)

The church was refurbished in the late 1660s by the Brussels lawyer and writer Frederick van Martselaer (1594-1670), who would have been well into his eighties by then. He commissioned Jan Christiaan Hansche, who was at the height of his career, to decorate the interior. (Hansche’s earliest known work is dated 1653, and his latest 1684. Three of his surviving ceilings date from the 1650s, three, including the one in Perk, were started in the 1660s, four, and another three that have ben destroyed, are dated in the 1670s and one in the 1680s.)

Often Hansche signed his name to his work; he didn’t in this case (or if he did, it has been lost) but luckily his invoice for ninety days of work by him and three assistants to do the job has been preserved, so we know it was him (as if the characteristic style wasn’t enough).

Before we get to the ceiling, here are the decorations around the arches leading from the nave to the transepts and the choir.

The two transepts, which you can only see end-on here, are decorated with garlands and bunches of grapes, which turn up a lot in Hansche’s work (see for instance the saints in Antwerp). The central one however is a bit spookier – a winged child’s face, and claws at the bottom. Apparently these are linked with the symbolism of angels.

My 2021 picture of the nave is better than the one I took today, so here’s the view towards the altar from the church door, with particular attention to the ceiling panels.

There are six of them, though unfortunately one is hidden by the organ (even more hidden now than on my previous visit). But the others have been cleaned up nicely. The stars are the two central panels, depicting the church’s original patron, the Blessed Virgin, and its current patron, St Nicholas. In both of them the subjects are leaning out of the ceiling, holding an object that protrudes into our space, whose shadows you can see on the ceiling. The recent cleanup has made the fine details much clearer.

Both of these panels are framed between the arms of Frederick van Marselaer and his wife Margareta de Baronaige (1590-1646), who had died thirty years before but through whom van Marselaer had inherited the church. (The lozenges on the left are his, the bars on the right are hers.)

The evangelists have also been improved by the restoration.

(St John unfortunately is hidden by the church organ.)

They are framed by more abstract designs than St Nicholas and the Blessed Virgin.

I took the time also to look at a couple of the other artworks in the church. In the north transept, there is a painting of Jesus being presented by his mother to St Dominic by David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690). who I admit I had not really heard of before, but he was artistic royalty – his first wife was a daughter of Jan Bruegel the Elder, and Rubens was a witness at his wedding. The painting is right next to the tomb of Teniers’ second wife, and the implication is that he must be somewhere in the neighbourhood too. I love the dog wandering around in the church on the right.

In the south transept there’s a sixteenth century painting of the Holy Family, unattrributed unfortunately. I had to photograph it from the side to avoid glare from the lights.

For those who are based in Brussels and want to sample some exciting stucco and other baroque art. which you can see for free between 0930 and 1015 on a Sunday morning, the church at Perk is an easy drive from the city centre. You come off the E40 at Sterrebeek and keep going north, through the tunnel under the airport runway, and it’s 7.5 km north of the motorway exit.