Arts and Music Atlas

Works, Makers, Traditions
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Movement

Dutch Golden Age Painting

Baroque, Rococo and Classicism

Dutch Golden Age painting was the extraordinarily productive tradition of the newly independent Dutch Republic from roughly 1600 to 1680, distinguished from contemporary Catholic Baroque art elsewhere in Europe by its largely Protestant, mercantile market: rather than church or royal commissions, painters sold finished works on an open market to a prosperous urban middle class, producing an unprecedented specialization into genres, still life, landscape, portraiture, genre scenes of everyday life, and history painting. Rembrandt van Rijn dominated portraiture and history painting with his dramatic chiaroscuro, Johannes Vermeer perfected quiet interior genre scenes built on subtle light, and Jacob van Ruisdael and others established landscape as an independent, respected subject. The tradition's technical mastery and its unusually direct, secular relationship between artist and buying public influenced European art history far beyond the Republic's small territory.

Facts
Start Year
1600 1
End Year
1680 1
Founded In Place
The Dutch Republic (the northern Netherlands) 1
Key Principle
Specialization into distinct genres, still life, landscape, portraiture, genre scenes and history painting, produced for an open middle-class art market rather than church or court patronage. 1
Connections

Expressed In

Painting, Art Forms

Influenced By

Caravaggism, Movements

Movement Members

Rembrandt is the defining Dutch Golden Age artist; the atlas's Dutch Golden Age Painting movement entity is used here for his graphic-art output as well as his painting.

Sources
1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkView the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.