The Interior of the Cunerakerk in Rhenen

In the Middle Ages pilgrims came to Rhenen for the relics of Saint Cunera, venerated there since the eighth century, and in the 15th century her church was built on this grand late Gothic scale. Since 1580 it had served the Dutch Reformed faith, and Saenredam paints it the way the Reformation left it, whitewashed and nearly empty. A diamond-shaped funeral board with a coat of arms hangs on a pillar, and two chandeliers dangle on long cords. He recorded the day he finished in the picture itself, lettered on a tombstone in the floor, 30 April 1655. Its later travels were less settled. The Ferdinandeum museum in Innsbruck bought it in 1887 and in 1938 traded it away for a portrait by another painter. After a sale in Vienna and a stay with a Zurich dealer, it reached the Mauritshuis in 1951.