Jan van der Heyden (5 March 1637, Gorinchem – 28 March 1712, Amsterdam) was a Dutch Baroque-era painter, glass painter, draughtsman and printmaker. Van der Heyden was one of the first Dutch painters to specialize in townscapes and became one of the leading architectural painters of the Dutch Golden Age. He painted a number of nevertheless lifes in the beginning and at the decline of his career.
Jan van der Heyden was then an engineer and inventor who made significant contributions to contemporary firefighting technology. Together with his brother Nicolaes, who was a hydraulic engineer, he invented an forward movement of the blaze hose in 1672,. He modified the manual flame engine, reorganised the volunteer fire brigade (1685) and wrote and illustrated the first firefighting manual (Brandspuiten-boek). A accumulate street lighting plot for Amsterdam, designed and implemented by van der Heyden, remained in operation from 1669 until 1840 and was adopted as a model by many supplementary towns and abroad.
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