Interior of the Church of St Bavo in Haarlem

The soaring white interior of the great Haarlem church rises in a tall, narrow view, its ribbed vaults and slender columns bathed in even daylight with a few small figures near the far end. Painted in 1636, this is one of the celebrated church interiors of Pieter Saenredam, the first painter to make the Dutch church interior a subject in its own right. Working from measured drawings, he combined mathematical exactness of perspective with an extraordinary sense of light and quiet space, giving the empty, whitewashed building an almost abstract purity that still astonishes viewers.