This major study provides the first comprehensive assessment of an important European institution, the Stadholderate of the Dutch Republic. Professor Rowen looks at the career of each Prince of Orange in turn, from William I ('The Silent'), to the last and saddest, William V, examining their roles as Stadholder and interweaving their personal lives and characters with the development of the institution. Without engaging in psycho-history, Rowen treats the individual personality of each Stadholder as a significant factor, and shows how the Stadholderate contributed to a distinctive political and constitutional coloration that rendered the United Provinces unique in Europe. The work assesses the contribution of the Stadholderate to the rise and subsequent fall of the Dutch Republic as one of the great powers of early modern Europe, and analyses each prince within his contemporary context, avoiding the highly present-minded approach of many of the Republic's subsequent historians. The Princes of Orange is thus neither a work of hagiography, glorifying the Dutch royal house, nor a piece of destructive iconoclasm, but an authoritative account of a most unusual political, dynastic and diplomatic institution.

The history of newspaper advertising began in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The newspaper publishers of the Dutch Republic were the first to embrace advertisements, decades before their peers in other news markets in Europe. In this survey, Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree have brought together the first 6,000 advertisements placed in Dutch and Flemish newspapers between 1620 and 1675. Provided here in an English translation, and accompanied by seven indices, this work provides for the first time a complete overview of the development of newspaper advertising and its impact on the Dutch book trade, economy and society. In these evocative announcements, ranging from advertisement for library auctions, the publication of new books, pamphlets and maps to notices of crime, postal schedules or missing pets, the seventeenth century is brought to life. This survey offers a unique perspective on daily life, personal relationships and societal change in the Dutch Golden Age.

Truly collaborative paintings, that is, not simply mechanical but also conceptual co-productions, are rare in the history of art. This gorgeously illustrated catalogue explores just such an extraordinary partnership between Antwerp's most eminent painters of the early seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625). Rubens and Brueghel executed approximately twenty-five works together between around 1597 and Brueghel's death in 1625. Highly prized and sought after by collectors throughout Europe, the collaborative works of Rubens and Brueghel were distinguished by an extremely high level of quality, further enhanced by the status of the artists themselves. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Getty Museum to be held July 5 to September 24, 2006, the catalogue features twenty-six color plates of such Rubens/Brueghel paintings as The Return from War, The Feast of Achelo�s, and Madonna and Child in a Garland of Flowers, along with Rubens and Brueghel's collaborations with important contemporaries such as Frans Snyders and Hendrick van Balen. This is the first such publication to fully address and reproduce these works in depth.

"From 1625 to 1647 Frederik Hendrik, prince of Orange, was stadholder of the most important provinces in the Dutch Republic. Frederik Hendrik and his wife Amalia van Solms created a royal court in the Netherlands, the like of which the country had never seen." "This book describes in full detail the rich world of their court. First the early history, daily life and the place of the court in a national and European setting is considered. The enormous cultural impact of Frederik Hendrik on architecture, painting and fashion is explored in the second part." --Book Jacket.

Historians and art historians provide a critique of existing methodologies and an interdisciplinary inquiry into seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture.