Fontaine publique et église Saint-Géréon à Cologne

In the foreground figures bustle about a public fountain: women rinse their laundry, while another woman on a donkey stops beside a cart, a basket of linen in hand. Toward the right, in the shadow, a hunter on horseback is accompanied by hounds and a valet holding a falcon on his left hand — they advance toward the two small female figures passing under the city gate. The ramparts shown here to the east of the church of Saint-Géréon actually stood to the west, several hundred metres away, for Gerrit Berckheyde composed his famous townscapes with the liberty of the Dutch city-view painter. Painted about 1670, the view of the Romanesque church of Cologne is the catalogue’s first Berckheyde of the Dutuit bequest. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.