Interior of the Church of Saint Odulphus, Assendelft

On 19 August 1633 Saenredam sat in the village church of Assendelft, north of Haarlem, and drew its interior in pen, grey wash and red chalk. The sheet is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and it very probably served as the basis for this panel. Put the two side by side and you can see how freely he worked. In the painting a central pillar has gone, a bay of the nave arcade appears that could not be seen from where he sat, the ornate pulpit has become a plain wooden one, and the heavy tie beams and braces have disappeared. The proportions are stretched, so the church looks far loftier than it was.

The panel carries no date, and the museum places it only somewhere between about 1633 and 1655. The building itself is gone. It was demolished in 1851 or 1852, and the tower that outlived it burned down in 1893.