Jan van Goyen in The Hague: how a 4.6-metre painting built a civic image

Jan van Goyen's View of The Hague from the Southeast is free to see in The Hague City Hall Atrium until 31 December. It suits city-history, art and architecture visitors; opening follows city-hall hours, so check the official page first. Do not treat it only as a 4.6-metre photo backdrop: this 1650-1651 work was paid for by government to construct a public image of the city. The museum's collection research also shows that the artist altered canals and buildings, so the work can be read as both a city record and 17th-century civic communication.

• Who ordered it: The Hague government commissioned the leading landscape painter and paid 650 guilders, roughly two years of a craftsperson's wages. The panorama originally hung in the old city hall on Groenmarkt as an expression of civic pride.
• The view is not a neutral map: Van Goyen bends the Trekvliet and rotates buildings so landmarks such as the Binnenhof and Gevangenpoort read more clearly. A stork, The Hague's emblem, turns the landscape into deliberate civic branding.
• Why today's location matters: during renovation of the Haags Historisch Museum, the painting sits in a climate-controlled case inside the modern city hall. A work made for an old government building has returned to administrative space centuries later.

Hokimi field note: Find the stork first, then compare the painted Trekvliet with a current map; spotting where the artist tells a useful visual lie reveals more than simply naming landmarks.