Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, 1597-1665

The Interior of St Bavo, Haarlem, 1628

These paintings of whitewashed church interiors are almost too beautiful for me to bear.

From the Getty Museum, we get this:

Light fills the interior of the Church of Saint Bavo in Haarlem, one of the finest Gothic buildings still in existence today. Dutch artist Pieter Jansz. Saenredam who died #onthisday in 1665 devoted himself almost exclusively to painting church interiors, always using precise perspective. By the 1600s, Protestant churches in Holland had become relatively austere in response to the teachings of theologian John Calvin.

More images, more information, are available at the Rijksmuseum. Naturally enough.