Interior of the Sint-Odulphuskerk in Assendelft

Bright, even light fills the sober Protestant church at Assendelft, whose dignified white interior is shown in precise perspective with the gravestone of the painter’s father in the foreground. Pieter Saenredam, who was born in this church where his father was a sexton, devoted his career to rendering church interiors with an archaeologist’s accuracy and a purist’s love of space and light. Completed in 1649, the panel demonstrates how he distilled measured drawing into serene, crystalline architecture, a type he made almost uniquely his own.