Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam

The great interior of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue rises in cool light through this canvas, its wooden galleries and brass lamps rendered with the precision that made Emanuel de Witte the leading master of the Dutch architectural view. The Sephardic congregation’s monumental synagogue, completed in 1675, is shown here as it stood just five years later. His church interiors, which often combined real architecture with invented elements, earned him a lasting reputation that outlived the impoverished circumstances of his later years.