The Choir of St. James's Church in Utrecht

This church in Utrecht was dedicated to Saint James the Greater, and in the Middle Ages pilgrims on their way to his shrine at Santiago de Compostela came through it. Scallop shells, the pilgrims' badge, still turn up all over the building, and one of them serves as the weathervane on the tower. By 1642, when Saenredam painted this panel, the Jacobikerk had been Protestant for some 60 years, and he shows it the way the reform left it, pale, monochrome and almost empty of people. Part of what he saw did not last long. In the summer storm of 1674 the tall spire blew down and crashed through the roof and the stone vault, which was never rebuilt and was replaced by a wooden ceiling. The picture came to Munich from the residence of the prince-bishops of Würzburg.