The meticulous delineation and carefully-constructed compositions of Job’s church interiors reflect his debt to the Haarlem painter Saenredam, while his depiction of light and atmospheric effects suggests the influence of Delft-based De Witte. The present work is particularly meditative in mood, achieved through Job’s rendering of the shafts of light entering from windows hidden on the right to illuminate an ecclesiastical tomb, leaving the foreground in relative shade, with the bright daylight and buildings outside visible through intricate mullions beyond. This warm, peaceful ambience, conveyed through a refined palette, is underscored by the quiet, sparse staffage, somewhat dwarfed by the architecture around them. In these respects this painting is comparable to the work in the Musée des Pécheries, Fécamp, of larger dimensions, also datable to circa 1680.¹

Most others of Job’s paintings from the 1680s consist of genre portraits, similar to the work of his Haarlem contemporaries Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade, representing figures of various professions engaged in daily tasks, such as The Bakery Shop in the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College,² or The Pigment Seller, in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.³

1 Inv. no. FEC 101; see B.G. Maillet, Intérieurs d'églises 1580–1720: la peinture architecturale dans les écoles du Nord, Wijnegem 2012, p. 216, cat. no. M-0229, reproduced.

2 Inv. no. 56.63; see Catalogue of European and American paintings and sculpture in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin 1967, pp. 16–17, reproduced p. 253, fig. 65.

3 Inv. no. 988; see J. Nicolaisen, Niederländische Malerei 1430–1800 im Museum der bildende Künste Leipzig, Leipzig 2012, p. 50, cat. no. 22, reproduced.