Focus on this artwork and explore the Location and context.
On the southern outskirts of Amsterdam is the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, and its Beth Haim (House of Life) cemetery lies by the Amstel River provides the subject matter of Jacob van Ruisdael's painting. David Henrique De Castro was the first to connect the marble tomb in Dresden painting to the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk.The site was also visited by other artists, including Rembrandt. Rembrandt was struck by its unusual beauty in the Ouderkerk church's steeple, with its decorative knob-like projections. Frits Lugt discovered the structure in a  pen-and-ink drawing by Rembrandt. Jacob van Ruisdael made sketches that demonstrate his awareness of the surroundings early in his career. During his trip to Ouderkerk, the artist still lived with his father in his native Haarlem. At that time, Ouderkerk had a small Jewish community, but Haarlem was the first city in Holland to allow Jews to practice openly. Following the fall of Granada in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella granted full power to the Inquisition, which drove Jews from Spain, leading to the arrival of Portuguese-Jewish refugees in Amsterdam, around 1590. In Amsterdam, many Portuguese Jews reverted to Judaism after generations of being forced to live as Catholics in the Iberian peninsula. Since its founding in 1614, the year Jews became officially religiously free, the Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk saw the burial of Sephardic refugees who fled the Inquisition from Spain and Portugal. The Jewish cemetery there was thus emblematic of Jews' freedom in Amsterdam.
Many of the largest elements depicted in the painting do not represent how Ouderkerk really appears, including the church ruins: there was neither a castle nor church on the grounds, nor any small timber building nearby, nor hills or rushing streams, all of which Jacob van Ruisdael must have invented. Svetlana Alpers finds "radical changes wrought on a site ... which nears, in this regard, his imaginary representation of swamps." Only the tombs in Beth Haim cemetery are similar to those in the painting. The drawing of the ruined remains of Egmond aan den Hoef Castle were depicted in his Dresden painting. In the Detroit version, the scene contains what was left of the Romanesque Abbey of Egmond Binnen, near Alkmaar. The abbey had been sacrificed during the Dutch revolt against Spain over 80 years before Ruisdael painted it. Landscape artists like Jacob van Ruisdael may have selected representative sites of the Dutch Republic, such as ruins, windmills, and city views, to illustrate Dutch patriotism. In his Haarlem studio, he added the additional landscape elements to render compositional and allegorical elements into the scene. These features are found in sketches Jacob van Ruisdael made at other locations, but do not appear in the Ouderkerk landscape.
Sephardic Ferdinand Granada Ouderkerk David Henrique De Castro Amsterdam Jacob van Ruisdael Beth Haim Egmond aan den Hoef Castle Inquisition Frits Lugt Rembrandt city views Romanesque Abbey of Egmond Binnen live as Catholics Dresden Haarlem Sephardi left Isabella Alkmaar Dutch revolt Ouderkerk aan de Amstel