Project 2 :17th-century Context of Artist

Context : Art in the Northern Netherlands, 1585–1700
• Within a few decades after Antwerp fell to the armies of Philip II in 1585, its population was reduced by half, to around fifty thousand. Because the northern Netherlands now controlled the entrance to the Scheldt River on which Antwerp lay, the city lost to Amsterdam its position as the leading port in northern Europe.
• Artists fled to the northern Netherlands as Protestants and sought relief from the repressive policies of the Catholic Habsburg rulers
• They responded to the tastes of a predominantly Protestant culture (and the growing wealth of a broad middle class that was concentrated in the cities.
• The earliest examples of a uniquely northern Netherlandish art were in the 1580s.
• the first works these artists produced were dramatically mannerist
• The new Protestant faith had little use for religious imagery. Nevertheless, religious paintings continued to be produced (although on a much smaller scale) for hidden Catholic churches to which municipal authorities turned a blind eye, for private devotion in the home, and even for Protestant collectors.
• the Dutch were better known for secular subjects and contemporary scenes, they also produced important history paintings. Pastoral subjects, from classical mythology and contemporary plays, were popular with members of the stadtholder's court. Later, a taste for such works was developed by wealthy burghers who increasingly aspired to an aristocratic lifestyle.
• While history painting traditionally enjoyed the highest prestige, there was a tremendous demand for portraiture as well in a culture where men and women were amassing fortunes and defining new social roles.
• There was also a demand of genre painting—depictions of men and women in contemporary interiors, from a broad range of social classes, and engaged in mundane tasks—has always been closely associated with seventeenth-century Dutch art.
• In observing the world around them, Dutch painters developed a unique genre, the church interior painting. This appeared to record the church exactly, manipulate both the perspective and details of the interior.