Of the diverse artistic specialties that developed in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century, architectural painting was the last, fully emerging only during the 1650s. Interior and exterior views of major local buildings—real or imagined—along with depictions of the larger built environment of the rapidly growing Dutch cities allowed artists to celebrate national power and prosperity while examining aspects of visual experience also explored in many landscapes and genre paintings of the period: space and the interaction of solids and voids as revealed within varying conditions of natural light. Particular artistic problems are posed, however, by the need to render such large and complex three-dimensional forms as small two-dimensional images. Thus, the works of architectural painters inevitably address technical problems such as perspective, often revealing the complex and fascinating blend of empirical observation and theoretical thinking commonly encountered in both the art and scientific illustration of the Age of Observation. The recent exhibition of Jan van der Heyden’s works at the Bruce Museum, curated by Executive Director Peter Sutton, is also being shown in a slightly abridged form at the Rijksmuseum. The exhibition is an important contribution to an understanding of this category of painting and to a painter,...