Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft

A grave stands open in the floor of the Oude Kerk in Delft. At the lower right the paving stones have been lifted and a spade leans in the loose earth. In the 1660s that was an ordinary sight in a Dutch church, where families bought burial places under the floor, and the diamond-shaped boards with coats of arms on the columns, called hatchments, went up after the funerals of the well-to-do.

Hendrick van Vliet painted this view some time after 1665, looking through a dark arch past a massive column into the whitewashed church, with boys crouched on the floor at the left and a couple walking with their dog. The canvas belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V. In October 1675 Van Vliet himself was buried in the Oude Kerk, and seven weeks later Johannes Vermeer was buried in the same church.