The Golden Age and Flemish Baroque
In the north, Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer painted for the homes of burghers; in the south, Rubens filled churches and palaces with the power of the Baroque.
After the fall of Antwerp in 1585 the Low Countries were divided into two artistic worlds. In the south, the Spanish Netherlands, art became part of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Churches were to be filled with new altarpieces after the iconoclasm, and princes wanted splendid palaces. Peter Paul Rubens became the great master of the Baroque in Antwerp, with pupils and collaborators such as Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. His dramatic and sensuous painting spread throughout Europe. Antwerp once again became a city of art of European importance.
In the north, the Dutch Republic grew into a world power in trade and shipping. Calvinism gave the churches white, imageless walls, and art moved instead into the homes of burghers. There people wanted portraits, landscapes, still lifes, interiors and scenes of everyday life. Thousands of painters produced for an open market. The period is known as the Dutch Golden Age, and it gave the world Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer and hundreds of other masters. Never before had so much art been produced in so small a country.
Art in the north was often small-scale, quiet and observant. It showed the world of the new society: canals, ships, cows in the meadow, tidy kitchens, well-dressed merchants and diligent housewives. But beneath the surface there were often moral messages about vanity and virtue. Towards the end of the century taste shifted towards the more elegant and French. After 1672, wars against France and England and fierce competition weakened both the republic and the art market. French influence would shape the following century.