The interior of the St. Bavokerk, Haarlem, looking south-west towards the choir screen

After travelling extensively through Germany in the 1650s together with his younger brother and pupil, Gerrit, the artist returned to Haarlem in around 1660 where the two shared a house and possibly a studio as well. There, Job produced several views of the interior of St. Bavo's that combine the tight delineation of Saenredam and the atmospheric effects of Emanuel de Witte, for example the picture of 1676 in the Detroit Institute of Art, Minneapolis, and that dated 1674 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The date of the present picture coincides with Berckheyde's only dated town view, of the Oude Gracht, Haarlem (Mauritshuis, The Hague), and was the year of his election to the Haarlem Society of Rhetoricians.