The Nave and Choir of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, Seen from the West

On the pier at the left, two women and a man stand looking up at the image of a bull with a Latin inscription beneath it. It illustrated a legend of the Mariakerk in Utrecht, that this column kept sinking while the church was being built until it was set on bulls' hides, and the inscription asks posterity to pass the story on through the ages. The bull was attributed to Jan van Scorel, the Utrecht painter who was a canon of this church, and it survives in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

Saenredam drew the nave on the spot on 9 July 1636, in a drawing now in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, and finished this panel on 29 January 1641. It probably belonged first to Constantijn Huygens, poet and secretary to the stadholder, Prince Frederick Henry, and it stayed with his descendants until they sold it in 1725.