Bob Zijlmans Saint Bavo (1959)

The Sint Bavo Church was designed by architect HNM Nefkens (1918-2018) and has several works of art by the Rotterdam artist Bob Zijlmans. In addition to this facade mosaic, Zijlmans' stained glass can be found in the church and he made the large facade wall of glass-in-concrete on the Slinge. This mosaic depicts the holy Saint Bavo. The image fits in the iconographic tradition surrounding this saint: a dissolute nobleman who gained insight and then converted to the faith and became a hermit. He is usually depicted as a well-dressed and armed nobleman with a falcon on his hand. The tree can be seen at the bottom right, into which he retreated as a hermit. At the top left is a church that disappears into the waves: a reference to the storm flood of 1373, when the Bavo church in the village of Pendrecht was destroyed at the time. Below that a coat of arms shows the Heerlijkheid Pendrecht. The mosaic Saint Bavo emphasizes the entrance to the church building, which was given the status of a national monument in 2019. As a whole, architecture with art, the Sint Bavo Church is a beautiful reminder of the time when Pendrecht was formed.