(Delft 1612–1675) The interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, with the tomb of William the Silent, Prince of Orange (1533-1584), oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm, framed,

Vliet was trained in the workshops of Michiel Jansz. van Miereveldt and Willem van der Vliet. Under Miereveldt‘s influence, he initially took to portraiture when he was admitted to the Delft painters‘ guild in 1632. Around 1651, he started to paint church interiors, a variant of the architectural genre that had been made popular by Saenredam and which had established itself firmly in Dutch painting by the middle of the century. In Delft, Vliet‘s church interiors, suffused with subtle light, numbered among the most successful works; today they figure in almost all of the world‘s prominent museums. Our painting shows the interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. Its entire decoration had fallen victim to iconoclasm in 1566, so that the church still presents itself here as an extremely austere building. The picture‘s only conspicuous element is the tomb of William the Silent, who was murdered in 1584, which appears at centre. This prince from the House of Orange is still venerated today as ‚Pater Patriae‘, not without reason. Educated as a Roman Catholic at the Brussels court, he was a confident and friend of Emperor Charles V, but soon became estranged from the latter‘s son, Philip II. In the course of the Protestant Reformation, he joined the rebels in Dillenburg and resisted the army of the Duke of Alba, who had been sent from Spain to suppress the revolt. This was the beginning of an eighteen years‘ war against Spain. In 1572, William settled in Delft and in 1573 converted to Calvinism. Having been declared an outlaw by Philip II in 1581, he was reinstated as governor of the seven independent provinces by the States-General of the Netherlands. This, in fact, marked the birth of the Northern Netherlands, and William of Orange became a national hero.