The Oude Delft Canal and the Oude Kerk, Delft

Jan van der Heyden made drawings and copper engravings and painted landscapes, still lifes, and urban scenery. But in his own time he was perhaps best known as the inventor of a fire-extinguishing pump and as being in charge of the oil lamps that illuminated the streets of Amsterdam. His greatest success as an artist came with his depictions of cities. Sometimes he would combine the architectural elements at will, even though this particular painting from Delft is topographically correct down to the smallest detail. Some of the staffage in van der Heyden’s paintings is reported to have been done by Adrian van de Velde, but he died a few years prior to the completion of this painting, which suggests that van der Heyden appropriated here his colleague’s style of painting figures.

An idyllic peace permeates the picture’s cityscape, with swans swimming in the canal in front of the Oude Kerk in Delft, the Dutch city where the painters Jan Vermeer (1632–1675) spent most of their lives. The church where Vermeer is buried can be seen from the south.

The view is the same as the one van der Heyden painted in an undated work, now in the possession of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Though that version also meticulously depicts Delft’s architecture and brickwork, it is far more arid in its execution and lacks atmosphere and shadowing, so that it is considered to be a work from his youth. The National Museum’s painting features a relaxed style and sophisticated atmospheric effects, where the sunbeams graze the treetops and illuminate the house facades from the right. There is a harmony between the people, engaging in gentle conversation as they go to and from their daily tasks, and the surrounding architecture.