With great interest in optics, depicting shade and shadows advanced in the 17th century, in paintings by van Honthorst, Judith Leyster, and above all Rembrandt, whose promoter was the father of Christiaan Huygens.
Golden Age
Paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael, probably the first in which species can be distinguished reliably, and leaf forms are depicted accurately, plus delights from Paulus Potter and Jan van der Heyden.
Links to each of the articles in this series, and to many other previous articles. Covers painting in the provinces forming the Dutch Republic between 1600-72.
The main driving forces were a rich diversity in both Dutch society and its painted themes, and the popularity of paintings among the republic’s citizens. Visual art thrived.
From the end of the Thirty Years’ War, settlement of Cape Colony, the United East India Company as the largest in the world with a private army of 10,000, Vermeer’s Milkmaid, to invasion by France and decline in 1672.
From the start of the Eighty Years’ War with Habsburg Spain, through the Union of Utrecht, foundation of the East India Company, tulip mania, and abundant Rembrandts.
After the Disaster Year of 1672, the art market collapsed. Dutch artists reverted to the more traditional, but their impact on secular themes, and genres including landscapes and still life has endured.
Watermills by Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema, and a selection of windmills by Rembrandt, Jan van Goyen, and a later copy by John Constable.
At the end of the Golden Age, he specialised in painting the Dark Arts, with astrology, rejuvenation, witchcraft, and faerie allegories.
Five paintings of women in trouble: Ariadne on Naxos, Mary Magdalen, an allegory of logic, the disillusioned Medea, and Cydippe with the apple of Acontius.
The Eclectic Light Company 