Ebook: Dutch Painting

The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of Dutch painting. It saw an explosion of artistic talent, which not only gave birth to world famous artists such as Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer, but which also produced brilliant, though lesser known, painters such as Carel Fabriti us, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Steen and Pieter de Hoogh. The historical reasons for this extraordinary flowering of artistic genius are complex, but one influential factor was the economic prosperity of the Northern Proinces in the early years of the century, which allowed the merchant and artisan classes to patronize their favourite artists.