A Sermon in the Oude Kerk, Delft

This painting is one of De Witte’s finest works of his Delft years. It can be compared with the panel of 1651 in the Wallace Collection, London, which shows the same pulpit from another position in the southern aisle of the Oude Kerk. In composition the picture bears a surprising resemblance to the artist’s early panel in Winterthur, considering that the two paintings depict dissimilar spaces in different churches. In both compositions an illusionistic curtain on the right is balanced against a dominant column on the left.