The Great Market (Grote Markt) in Haarlem

By the time Gerrit Berckheyde set up this view in 1693, he had painted the Grote Markt, the great market square of his native Haarlem, many times over, and he knew every stone of it. The huge church rising over the rooftops is the Grote Kerk, dedicated to Saint Bavo, and Berckheyde lines the square up so that its brick tower anchors the whole scene. He belonged to a small group of Dutch painters who treated the city itself as a worthy subject, drawing the buildings with an almost surveyor's care while keeping the light soft and the streets busy with small figures going about an ordinary morning. Haarlem had been a boom town earlier in the century, grown rich on linen and beer. This is a calmer, settled version of it, painted five years before Berckheyde drowned in one of the town's canals in 1698.