The Tomb of Michiel de Ruyter in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam

In April 1676 the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter, who had commanded the Republic's fleet through its wars with England and France, was hit by a cannonball in a battle with the French off Sicily. He died a week later at Syracuse. His body was brought home and buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, and the States General, the government of the Dutch Republic, paid for a marble monument by the sculptor Rombout Verhulst, finished in 1681. It was built in the choir, on the spot where the high altar had stood when the Nieuwe Kerk was still a Catholic church.

De Ruyter's son then commissioned Emanuel de Witte to paint it. De Witte filled the choir with visitors who have come to look at the tomb, and signed and dated the canvas lower right, 1683. The Rijksmuseum bought it in 1896.