The first comprehensive examination of the accomplishments of

Heda's Banquet Piece, Frans Hals' Willem Coymans, and Rembrandt's Lucretia. Paintings by these and other masters attracted the American collectors P. A. B. Widener, his son Joseph, and Andrew W. Mellon, whose bequests form the heart of the National Gallery's distinguished and remarkably cohesive collection of ninety-one Dutch paintings.

Essays by American and Dutch scholars and museum curators explore the collecting and reception of seventeenth-century Dutch painting in America, from the colonial era through the Gilded Age to today.

Fear, sadness, surprise, anger, lust and love - virtually nothing was more important in the paintings ofthe Golden Age than convincingly depicting human emotions. In this publication, the Frans Hals Museum and Rembrandt expert Gary Schwartz present a selection of masterpieces in which these emotions are sublimely portrayed. According to seventeenth-century connoisseurs, the beauty of a painting was not even half as important as the passions that could be seen in that painting; they formed the soul of the work. Painters such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Maerten van Heemskerck and Cornelis van Haarlem were masters at depicting a range of emotions. Their works are presented in a new context - the emotional life - and with a focus on the flourishing scientific study of emotions in our own time. Emotions will be published in conjunction with the first exhibition in the Netherlands to present this essential component of painting. Exhibition: Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands (11.10.2014-15.02.2015).

In a brilliantly inventive work, bestselling author Simon Schama explores the enigma of 17th-century Holland, a nation that attained an unprecedented level of affluence, yet lived in constant dread of being corrupted by prosperity. Drawing on a vast array of period documents and sumptuously reproduced art, THE EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES throbs with life on every page. 314 photos & illustrations. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

At Home in the Golden Age reveals how the art industry operated during the seventeenth century. In word and picture the story is told of an abundance of art during this period in the Netherlands. Many reproductions are used to illustrate both the enormous production of paintings involved as well as the purchasing of art at auctions, art markets and even through lotteries. Much attention is given to the owning of art, where paintings were placed in the home and the way art works were perceived by their owners. The book answers such questions as 'Where were paintings bought?', 'How much did people pay to have their portrait made?', 'In which rooms did the owners hang their paintings?' or 'What were the popular types of paintings at the time?' All styles of paintings are looked at, including history pieces, still-lifes, portraits, genres and landscapes. To illustrate the sheer extent of the numeber of painters and art buyers in the Golden Age, the book's authors have taken a representative selection from the SØR Rusche Collection, amassed by the German textile baron Thomas Rusche, an art collection that contains all of the aforementioned aspects.