This beautifully illustrated, expansive overview of Dutch and Flemish art during the 17th century illuminates the creative achievements of one of the most important eras in western art. The Golden Age in Holland and Flanders roughly spanned the 17th century and was a period of enormous advances in the fields of commerce, science--and art. Still lifes, landscape paintings, and romantic depictions of everyday life became valued by the increasingly wealthy merchant classes in the Dutch provinces, while religious and historic paintings as well as portraits continued to appeal to the Flemish patronage. The Golden Age brought us Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, and Van Dyck, but it was also the period of Frans Hals' revolutionary portraiture, Adriaen Brouwer's depictions of the working class at play, Jan Brueghel's velvety miniatures, and Hendrick Avercamp's lively winter landscapes. Norbert Wolf applies his vast understanding of the interplay between history, culture, and art to explore the forces that led to the Golden Age in Holland and Flanders and how this period influenced later generations of artists. Accompanied by luminous color illustrations, Wolf's accessible text considers the complex political, religious, social, and economic situation that led to newfound prosperity and, thus, to an enormous artistic output that we continue to marvel at and enjoy today.

"The still life is one of the best-loved subjects in painting. For hundred years it has been depicted by great and minor masters. The genre reached its climax in the Dutch Golden Age. This handy dictionary provides information on painters of still life in oils, active between 1525 and 1725 and considered as Dutch/Flemish school. 'Still lifes' are arrangements of flowers, fruit, fish, barn, plants, game, vanitas symbols, trompe l'oeil etcetera." --Back cover.

" ... accompanies the exhibition of the same name organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, in conjunction with the Mauritshuis, The Hague. The exhibition is on view from February 26 through June 19, 2011; and travels to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, July 9 through October 2, 2011, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 13, 2011 through February 12, 2012"--T.p. verso.

This book presents the first systematic analysis of artistic techniques and terminology related to the rendering of light and shade in Dutch and Flemish art from the early-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. It traces a shift in aesthetic perception, which is visible in the handling of chiaroscuro in Dutch and Flemish art in the course of 150 years, and challenges the view, widespread since Julius von Schlosser's influential survey of European art and literarure, that Netherlandish art was mainly uninventive. In their discussions Netherlandish writers of art theory drew on a) earlier and foreign art literature, b) their insights, mainly as painters, into workshop practice, c) observation of nature (including natural sciences) and d) aesthetic judgement. This volume investigates the different extents to which Netherlandisch writers on art depended on these four aspects as they devised their concepts of chiaroscuro and how this relates to contemporary pictorial practice. Statements on chiaroscuro in the writings of Karel van Mander, Philips Angel, Willem Goeree, Samuel van Hoogstraten, Gerard de Lairesse, Arnold Houbraken and Jacob Campo Weyerman have been compared with paintings of the period to test the writers' statements against the artists'methods. The comparison shows that writers of art theory described partly the same or similar methods to achieve effects of chiaroscuro that artists used in their works, which is understandable, given that most of them were active as artists themselves. Yet there are also divergences, especially when it comes to the question whether artists should value rendering natural effects over pictorial coherence. Dutch writers of art regarded natural impression as a crucial aim of art, but they often struggled with reconciling nature and aesthetic requirements in their arguments. In the art of the Netherlands, however, we can observe frequently that aesthetic and pictorial composition came before nature.

This richly illustrated book provides an overview of all known Dutch and Flemish artists up to the nineteenth century, who painted or drew flower pieces, or else made prints of them.

Even though it was a time of near financial ruin in Flanders, Baroque art flourished during this period thanks to the patronage of an arts-minded aristocracy. Meanwhile, the Dutch had become rich from trade and the desire for art found its way into almost every social class in the Netherlands. The naturalistic traditions shared by the two halves of the Low Countries experienced a renaissance of their own at this time.

Monographs on Bosch, Van Eyck etc. are numerous. But no affordable work on the subject, the period and the common style of these painters is currently available. This book therefore allows art lovers and students to understand how the art of each of these artists is inter-related.