An interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, looking west

Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet specialized in church interiors, often taking the Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk in his native Delft as his subject. In his book on Dutch and Flemish depictions of church interiors, Bernard Maillet identified more than 120 views of Delft's Oude Kerk by van Vliet (op. cit., pp. 415-455), nearly doubling the number published by Walter Liedtke several decades earlier (op. cit., pp. 105-108, nos. 29-93). Van Vliet’s earliest dated depiction of the Oude Kerk appears to be the painting of 1654 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. A455). The present composition is known in another version of slightly larger scale which is signed and dated 1670 (see Maillet, op. cit., p. 418, no. M - 1444), and a similar dating can be proposed for this canvas.

Van Vliet treated the Oude Kerk more frequently than any other subject over the course of his career. Founded as St. Bartholomew’s Church in 1246, Delft’s Oude Kerk underwent a series of alterations in subsequent centuries and became a central place in Dutch civic and religious life. It served as the final resting place for several of the Republic’s most famous military leaders, including Piet Hein (1629) and Maarten Tromp (1653). In 1675, both Johannes Vermeer and van Vliet himself would likewise be buried in the church.