Constructed between 1662 and 1674 for the Norbertine nuns of Leliëndaal, the Church of Our Lady of Leliendaal is the only monastic foundation in Mechelen designed entirely by Lucas Faydherbe (1617–1697), the city’s most distinguished sculptor-architect and a former pupil in Peter Paul Rubens’s Antwerp studio. It is a rare survival of a seventeenth-century convent church in the Southern Netherlands to preserve its original Baroque spatial conception, despite the loss of much of its original furnishing after the French Revolution.
The Norbertines, or Premonstratensians, founded by Saint Norbert of Xanten in 1120, had maintained their abbey at rural Leliëndaal before relocating to Mechelen in the seventeenth century, seeking a location within the city’s religious and civic life. Their decision to commission an entirely new church and convent complex reflected both the order’s Counter-Reformation vitality and Mechelen’s role as an episcopal centre in the Spanish Netherlands. The foundation stone was laid in 1662, and the church was consecrated in 1674.
Lucas Faydherbe, trained in Rubens’s Antwerp studio in the 1630s, developed a distinctive approach to ecclesiastical architecture, combining the sculptural dynamism of the High Baroque with a measured clarity suited to liturgical function. In the Leliendaal church, his facade is organised into three vertical bays defined by paired pilasters of the Composite order, the central bay projected slightly forward and crowned with a broken curved pediment framing a niche — originally holding a statue of the Virgin — and surmounted by a volute-shaped gable. The articulation reflects the influence of Jesuit church design in the Low Countries, particularly the façades of Willem Hesius’s Antwerp churches, but with a more restrained proportional balance characteristic of Faydherbe’s own style.
Inside, the single-aisled narrow plan is articulated by Composite pilasters and covered by a barrel vault with lunettes, proportioned to direct the gaze toward the chancel. The visual impact of the interior is heightened by a pronounced black-and-white contrast, created through the interplay of pale plastered wall surfaces, dark stone pilaster bases and arches, and richly coloured altar elements. At the east end, Faydherbe’s high altar originally formed the compositional and liturgical climax: an architectonic ensemble of marble columns, sculptural reliefs, and a central altarpiece conceived as a unified visual statement.
Following the suppression of the convent during the French Revolutionary occupation in the 1790s, the Norbertine community was dispersed, and the church was stripped of much of its original movable decoration, including choir stalls, confessionals, and several altarpieces. However, its architectural structure, facade, and much of its sculptural ornament survived intact. Unlike many monastic churches that were repurposed for secular use, it continued to serve religious functions under parish administration, ensuring the preservation of its essential Baroque form.
