View of Oudezijds Voorburgwal with the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam

The Oudezijds Voorburgwal, running along the east side of the Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Amsterdam's oldest district, was one of the city's most historically dense waterways — its banks lined with medieval and early modern buildings that recorded the successive layers of Amsterdam's urban development. Van der Heyden's 1670 view of this canal with the Oude Kerk, once in the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit collection, documents the street as it appeared before the major urban changes of the eighteenth century. The Oude Kerk — Amsterdam's oldest building, dating from the fourteenth century — dominates the background, its Gothic tower rising above the canal-side houses with an authority that asserts the medieval foundations of a city more often celebrated for its modern commercial energy. Van der Heyden was alert to this historical layering and gave Gothic ecclesiastical architecture a prominence in his Amsterdam views that counterbalanced the newer civic buildings he also painted.

Oil on panel, with van der Heyden managing the compositional complexity of a canal view in which the Gothic church tower, canal-side houses, and the canal surface itself must each be rendered with appropriate detail and spatial coherence. The tower's Gothic stonework is given his characteristic stippled treatment, while the canal houses are distinguished by their individual facade types. Canal water reflections of the varied facades are rendered with horizontal brushwork that suggests gentle movement.