

Frans’s painting Banquet of the Officers of the St. The beginning of the Golden Age is said to be 1609, but the foundational blocks were laid beforehand by artists like Frans Hals and Jan Bruegel. This time around, the heroes of the paintings were not the cavalry or a king sitting on the horse, but it was a woman working in her house, a simple man walking by the lake, or even a son returning to his parents and family.

There was a positive bias towards depicting the contemporary trends, lifestyle, and interests of the people living a life in and before the golden age. These landscapes, again, highlighted the Dutch village and rural lifestyle, shedding the affinity towards showing the grandeur lifestyle of the castle-dwellers and nobles. Vermeer’s subjects were mostly the women who indulged in daily household chores. Because these paintings and scenarios depicted reality, some historians might also refer to this period as Dutch Realism.īesides the switch to painting portraits of ordinary Dutch life, the painters were also taken to working on landscape-style paintings. One of the prime examples is Jan Vermeer Van Delft, the same artist who painted the Girl with a Pearl Earring.
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The painters became free to abandon showcasing the grandiose catholic lifestyle and switched their subjects to the normal lifestyle of the ordinary individuals. This is because of the reformation of the church the people saw the birth of Dutch Nationalism.ĭue to this, art became independent and free-thinking too over propaganda-based paintings. Some Key Developments of the Dutch Baroque Golden AgeĪmong several other reasons, the reformation of the Church was instrumental in developing the Golden Age in art. Such paintings and household scenes became the epitome of this period. The portrait painting “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” is a simplistic baroque style painting, but it has got the world’s attention and currently resides at the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It is said that during these 100 years, 4 million baroque paintings were made, and almost every class of society took part in this movement. One reason for compassion towards art was better economic status which led the people to live a lavish life, and the Dutch baroque artists got the most out of this love for art. The artists of this era were getting commissions from both the affluent sections and the middle and merchant classes. It was a time when the Dutch economy, political framework, and culture had no competitor.ĭuring the same period, Dutch art, specifically the Baroque painting style, was at its ultimate expression. In Dutch history, the Golden Age is a period between 16, and during 104 years, the small Dutch nation was at the top of the world.
