1.
Dutch Golden Age
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The Dutch Golden Age was a period in Dutch history, roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first half is characterized by the Eighty Years War which ended in 1648, the Golden Age continued in peacetime during the Dutch Republic until the end of the century. The Netherlandss transition from a possession of the Holy Roman Empire in the 1590s to the foremost maritime, in 1568, the Seven Provinces that later signed the Union of Utrecht started a rebellion against Philip II of Spain that led to the Eighty Years War. Antwerp fell on August 17,1585 after a siege, the United Provinces fought on until the Twelve Years Truce, which did not end the hostilities. Under the terms of the surrender of Antwerp in 1585, the Protestant population were given four years to settle their affairs before leaving the city, similar arrangements were made in other places. Protestants were especially well-represented among the craftsmen and rich merchants of the port cities of Bruges, Ghent. More moved to the north between 1585 and 1630 than Catholics moved in the direction, although there were also many of these. Many of those moving north settled in Amsterdam, transforming what was a port into one of the most important ports. The Pilgrim Fathers also spent time there before their voyage to the New World, Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke contribute part of the Dutch ascendancy to its Calvinistic ethic, which promoted thrift and education. This contributed to the lowest interest rates and the highest literacy rates in Europe, several other factors also contributed to the flowering of trade, industry, the arts and the sciences in the Netherlands during this time. A necessary condition was a supply of energy from windmills and from peat. The invention of the sawmill enabled the construction of a massive fleet of ships for worldwide trading. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was founded and it was the first-ever multinational corporation, financed by shares that established the first modern stock exchange. This company received a Dutch monopoly on Asian trade and would keep this for two centuries and it became the worlds largest commercial enterprise of the 17th century. Spices were imported in bulk and brought huge profits, due to the efforts and risks involved and this is remembered to this day in the Dutch word peperduur, meaning something is very expensive, reflecting the prices of spices at the time. To finance the trade within the region, the Bank of Amsterdam was established in 1609. According to Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, geography favored the Dutch Republic and they write, The foundations were laid by taking advantage of location, midway between the Bay of Biscay and the Baltic. The Dutch share of European shipping tonnage was enormous, well over half during most of the period of their ascendancy, from here the Dutch traded between China and Japan and paid tribute to the Shogun
2.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
3.
Marine art
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Marine art or maritime art is any form of figurative art that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre particularly strong from the 17th to 19th centuries, as landscape art emerged during the Renaissance, what might be called the marine landscape became a more important element in works, but pure seascapes were rare until later. In this, as in much else, specialist and traditional marine painting has largely continued Dutch conventions to the present day. With Romantic art, the sea and the coast was reclaimed from the specialists by many landscape painters, vessels on the water have featured in art from the earliest times. The earliest known works are petroglyphs from 12,000 BCE showing reed boats in the Gobustan Petroglyph Reserve in modern Azerbaijan, which was then on the edge of the much larger Caspian Sea. Rock carvings and carved objects depicting ships have been found on islands of the Aegean as well as mainland Greece. The central cult image in Egyptian temples was usually a figure of the god. Ships sometimes appear in Ancient Greek vase painting, especially relevant in a narrative context. As in Egyptian painting, the surface of the water may be indicated by a series of parallel wavy lines, the water is usually calm, and objects that are submerged, or partly so, may be shown through the water. The large Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a version of such compositions, Marine highlights in Medieval art include the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry showing the Norman Invasion of England. From the 12th century onwards, seals of ports often featured a ship portrait, there was also a true seascape, the Voyage of St Julian & St Martha, but both pages were destroyed in a fire in 1904, and only survive in black and white photographs. Scenes of small boats on rivers sometimes feature in the calendar miniatures from books of hours by artists such as Simon Bening. During the Gothic period the nef, a piece of goldsmiths work in the shape of a ship, used for holding cutlery, salt or spices. Initially just consisting of the hull, from the 15th century the most elaborate had masts, sails, as the exotic nautilus shell began to reach Europe, many used these for their hull, like the Burghley Nef of about 1528. Lower down the scale, interest in shipping was reflected in many early prints of ships. They also usually anticipated the low horizon that painting would not achieve until the 17th century, the first print of a naval battle is an enormous woodcut of the Battle of Zonchio in 1499 between the Venetians and the Turks. The only surviving impression is coloured with stencils, most were probably pasted onto walls, the earliest comparable painting to survive comes from several decades later. At the same artists were often involved in the expansion of Western cartography
4.
Cornelis Vroom
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Cornelis Hendriksz Vroom was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter. According to the RKD he was the son of the painter Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, the brother of Frederick and Jacob. He became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1634, who was in Italy for many years, Nicol. Zuyker, Gerrit Claesz Bleker, Salomon van Ruysdael, and Reyer van Blommendael, like his father, Vroom is best known for his landscapes and seascapes. He was an influence on fellow local Haarlem landscapist Jacob van Ruisdael. Vroom on Artnet Cornelis Hendrikszoon Vroom or looking at ultimate space Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael, Master of Landscape
5.
Delft
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Delft is a city and a municipality in the Netherlands. It is located in the province of South Holland, to the north of Rotterdam, the city of Delft came into being aside a canal, the Delf, which comes from the word delven, meaning delving or digging, and led to the name Delft. It presumably started around the 11th century as a landlord court, from a rural village in the early Middle Ages, Delft developed to a city, that in the 13th century received its charter. The towns association with the House of Orange started when William of Orange, nicknamed William the Silent, at the time he was the leader of growing national Dutch resistance against Spanish occupation, known as the Eighty Years War. By then Delft was one of the cities of Holland. An attack by Spanish forces in October of that year was repelled, after the Act of Abjuration was proclaimed in 1581, Delft became the de facto capital of the newly independent Netherlands, as the seat of the Prince of Orange. When William was shot dead in 1584, by Balthazar Gerards in the hall of the Prinsenhof, therefore, he was buried in the Delft Nieuwe Kerk, starting a tradition for the House of Orange that has continued to the present day. The Delft Explosion, also known in history as the Delft Thunderclap, occurred on 12 October 1654 when a gunpowder store exploded, over a hundred people were killed and thousands were wounded. About 30 tonnes of gunpowder were stored in barrels in a magazine in a former Clarissen convent in the Doelenkwartier district, cornelis Soetens, the keeper of the magazine, opened the store to check a sample of the powder and a huge explosion followed. Luckily, many citizens were away, visiting a market in Schiedam or a fair in The Hague, Delft artist Egbert van der Poel painted several pictures of Delft showing the devastation. Historical buildings and other sights of interest include, Oude Kerk, buried here, Piet Hein, Johannes Vermeer, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. Nieuwe Kerk, constructed between 1381 and 1496 and it contains the Dutch royal familys burial vault, which between funerals is sealed with a 5,000 kg cover stone. A statue of Hugo Grotius made by Franciscus Leonardus Stracké in 1886 and this is the only remaining gate of the old city walls. The Gemeenlandshuis Delfland, or Huyterhuis, built in 1505, which has housed the Delfland regional water authority since 1645, the Vermeer Centre in the rebuilt Guild house of St. Luke. Windmill De Roos, a mill built c.1760. Restored to working order in 2013, another windmill that formerly stood in Delft, Het Fortuyn, was dismantled in 1917 and re-erected at the Netherlands Open Air Museum, Arnhem, Gelderland in 1920. Delft is well known for the Delft pottery ceramic products which were styled on the imported Chinese porcelain of the 17th century, the city had an early start in this area since it was a home port of the Dutch East India Company. It can still be seen at the pottery factories De Koninklijke Porceleyne Fles, the painter Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft
6.
Kronborg
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Kronborg is a castle and stronghold in the town of Helsingør, Denmark. Immortalized as Elsinore in William Shakespeares play Hamlet, Kronborg is one of the most important Renaissance castles in Northern Europe and has added to UNESCOs World Heritage Sites list. The castle is situated on the northeastern tip of the island of Zealand at the narrowest point of the Øresund. In this part, the sound is only 4 kilometres wide, the castles story dates back to a stronghold, Krogen, built by King Eric VII in the 1420s. Along with the fortress Kärnan, Helsingborg on the opposite coast of Øresund, from 1574 to 1585 King Frederick II had the medieval fortress radically transformed into a magnificent Renaissance castle. The main architects were the Flemings Hans Hendrik van Paesschen and Anthonis van Obbergen, in 1629 a fire destroyed much of the castle, but King Christian IV subsequently had it rebuilt. The castle also has a church within its walls, in 1658 Kronborg was besieged and captured by the Swedes who took many of its valuable art treasures as war booty. In 1785 the castle ceased to be a residence and was converted into barracks for the army. The army left the castle in 1923, and after a renovation it was opened to the public. The castles story dates back to a fortress, Krogen, built in the 1420s by the Danish king, Eric of Pomerania. At the time, the Kingdom of Denmark extended across both sides of the Sound, and on the shore the Helsingborg Castle had been in existence since the Middle Ages. With the two castles and guard ships it was possible to all navigation through the Sound. The castle was built on Ørekrog, a tongue of land stretching into the sea from the coast of Zealand towards the coast of Scania. The castle consisted of a curtain wall with a number of stone buildings inside. The stone building in the northeastern corner contained the kings residence, the building in the southwestern corner contained a large arched banquet hall. The building in the southeastern corner possibly served as the chapel, large portions of the walls of Krogen are contained within the present-day Kronborg Castle. King Christian III had the corners of the curtain wall supplemented with bastions in 1558-59, from 1574 to 1585 Frederick II had the medieval fortress rebuilt into a magnificent Renaissance castle, unique in its appearance and size throughout Europe. After the conclusion of the Northern Seven Years War in 1570, the main architect was the Flemish architect Hans Hendrik van Paesschen and the fortification works were completed in 1577
7.
Haarlem
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Haarlem is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland and is situated at the edge of the Randstad. Haarlem had a population of 155,758 in 2014 and it is a 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam, and many residents commute to the countrys capital for work. Haarlem was granted city status or stadsrechten in 1245, although the first city walls were not built until 1270, the modern city encompasses the former municipality of Schoten as well as parts that previously belonged to Bloemendaal and Heemstede. Apart from the city, the municipality of Haarlem also includes the part of the village of Spaarndam. Newer sections of Spaarndam lie within the municipality of Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude. The city is located on the river Spaarne, about 20 km west of Amsterdam and it has been the historical centre of the tulip bulb-growing district for centuries and bears the nickname Bloemenstad, for this reason. Haarlem has a history dating back to pre-medieval times, as it lies on a thin strip of land above sea level known as the strandwal. The people on this strip of land struggled against the waters of the North Sea from the west, and the waters of the IJ. Haarlem became wealthy with toll revenues that it collected from ships, however, as shipping became increasingly important economically, the city of Amsterdam became the main Dutch city of North Holland during the Dutch Golden Age. The town of Halfweg became a suburb, and Haarlem became a bedroom community. Nowadays many of them are on the Dutch Heritage register known as Rijksmonuments, the list of Rijksmonuments in Haarlem gives an overview of these per neighbourhood, with the majority in the old city centre. The oldest mentioning of Haarlem dates from the 10th century, the name probably comes from Haarlo-heim. This name is composed of three elements, haar, lo and heim, there is not much dispute about the meaning of lo and heim, in Old Dutch toponyms lo always refers to forest and heim to home or house. Haar, however, has several meanings, one of them corresponding with the location of Haarlem on a sand dune, the name Haarlem or Haarloheim would therefore mean home on a forested dune. There was a stream called De Beek, dug from the peat grounds west of the river Spaarne as a drainage canal, over the centuries the Beek was turned into an underground canal, as the city grew larger and the space was needed for construction. Over time it began to silt up and in the 19th century it was filled in, the location of the village was a good one, by the river Spaarne, and by a major road going south to north. By the 12th century it was a town, and Haarlem became the residence of the Counts of Holland
8.
Karel van Mander
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Karel van Mander or Carel van Mander I was a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembered as a biographer of Early Netherlandish painters, as an artist and art theoretician he played a significant role in the spread and development of Northern Mannerism in the Dutch Republic. It is not certain who wrote this sketch and various candidates have been proposed. Most recently it has argued that it was written by his son Karel van Mander the Younger. His son would have relied on information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections. The information in the sketch is not entirely reliable but is still regarded as the best source of information on van Manders life. Van Mander was born into a family in Meulebeke, in the County of Flanders. He studied under Lucas de Heere in Ghent, and in 1568-1569 under Pieter Vlerick in Kortrijk, the next five years he devoted to the writing of religious plays for which he also painted the scenery. Then followed three years in Rome and his biographical sketch refers to van Mander as the discoverer of caves in Rome. This may be a reference to the Catacombs of Rome although the meaning of the reference is unclear. In Rome he may also have come into contact with fellow Fleming Bartholomeus Spranger and his patrons in Rome included several cardinals. On his return journey he passed through Vienna, where, together with Spranger, van Mander settled in Meulebeke in 1578 where he was active as a painter and writer. He married an 18-year-old local girl, with whom he had a son, in 1580 he left for Kortrijk due to religious troubles caused by Catholic zealots in Meulebeke. Karel van Mander had at some point become a Mennonite and was therefore a target of these zealots. In Kortrijk he got a commission for an altar piece, in Kortrijk another son was born. He left Kortrijk for Bruges in 1582 because of an outbreak of the plague, in Bruges, he worked with the painter Paul Weyts. Here he worked for 20 years on a commission by the Haarlem city fathers to inventory their art collection, the city of Haarlem had confiscated all Catholic religious art after the satisfactie van Haarlem, which gave Catholics equal rights to Protestants, had been overturned in 1578. Van Mander used his work on the commission in his Schilder-boeck, while in Haarlem he continued to paint, concentrating his energy on his favourite genre, historical allegories
9.
Schilder-boeck
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Het Schilder-Boeck or Schilderboek is a book written by the Flemish writer and painter Karel van Mander first published in 1604 in Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, where van Mander resided. The book is written in 17th century Dutch and its title is translated into English as The Book of Painters or The Book of Painting. Het Schilder-Boeck consists of six parts and is considered one of the sources on the history of art and art theory in the 15th and 16th century Low Countries. The book was well received and sold well. Karel van Mander died two years after its publication, a second posthumous edition, which included a brief, anonymous biography of van Mander was published in 1618. This second edition was translated by Hessel Miedema into English and published in 1994-1997 together with a facsimile of the original and 5 volumes of notes on the text, Het Schilder-Boeck is divided into six parts that have separate title pages and are indexed. This book formed a source for Giorgio Vasaris famous biographical accounts of painters in his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, often referred to as the Vite. That tradition took little account of the topology of the Low countries. Karel van Mander intended to correct this misconception by listing all the famous early Netherlandish painters and he encountered many difficulties in obtaining accurate information, due to the political and religious unrest at the time. The biographies in the Schilder-Boeck are similar in style and format to Vasaris Vite, the second edition includes a biography of van Mander himself that Miedema believes was written by his brother, who may have been with him on his deathbed. Other candidates have proposed as authors of the biography. Recently his son Karel van Mander the Younger was identified as a possible author and his son would have relied on biographical information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections and notes. The information in the sketch is not entirely reliable but is still regarded as the best source of information on van Manders life. Van Mander was writing in a country where Calvinists where powerful, the market for religious subjects was quickly replaced in favor of genre scenes and historical allegories. It became fashionable to choose politically correct such as stories too old to be offensive to either Protestants or Catholics. The city of Haarlem needed to reinvent itself after losing its attraction as a site for St. Bavo. Its leaders commissioned paintings depicting the citys glorious past, such as in the story of the crusade against Damietta, artists and writers helped update the local source of inspiration for art. The book begins with a book on the foundation of the art of paintings and this introductory book has fourteen chapters on art theory listing such subjects as landscapes, animals, drapery, and arrangements of subjects
10.
Faience
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Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff earthenware body. It is originally associated by French speakers with wares exported from Faenza in northern Italy. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, the invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C was required to achieve this result, the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. The term is now used for a variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares. Technically, lead-glazed earthenware, such as the French sixteenth-century Saint-Porchaire ware, does not properly qualify as faience, semi-vitreous stoneware may be glazed like faience. However, this material is not pottery at all, containing no clay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art displays a faience hippopotamus from Meir, Egypt, dated to Dynasty 12, ca. Examples of ancient faience are also found in Minoan Crete, which was influenced by Egyptian culture. Faience material, for instance, has recovered from the Knossos archaeological site. The Moors brought the technique of tin-glazed earthenware to Al-Andalus, where the art of lustreware with metallic glazes was perfected, from Málaga in Andalusia and later Valencia these Hispano-Moresque wares were exported, either directly or via the Balearic Islands to Italy and the rest of Europe. This type of Spanish pottery owed much to its Moorish inheritance, in Italy, locally produced tin-glazed earthenwares, initiated in the fourteenth century, reached a peak in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The first northerners to imitate the tin-glazed earthenwares being imported from Italy were the Dutch, English Delftware produced in Lambeth, London, and at other centers, from the late sixteenth century, provided apothecaries with jars for wet and dry drugs. Many of the potters in London were Flemish. By about 1600, blue-and-white wares were being produced, labelling the contents within decorative borders, the production was slowly superseded in the second half of the eighteenth century with the introduction of cheap creamware. Dutch potters in northern Germany established German centres of faience, the first manufactories in Germany were opened at Hanau and Heusenstamm, in Switzerland, Zunfthaus zur Meisen near Fraumünster church houses the porcelain and faience collection of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. Faïence parlante bears mottoes often on decorative labels or banners, wares for apothecaries, including albarello, can bear the names of their intended contents, generally in Latin and often so abbreviated to be unrecognizable to the untutored eye. Mottoes of fellowships and associations became popular in the 18th century, at the low end of the market, local manufactories continued to supply regional markets with coarse and simple wares. These so-called majolica wares were also made by Wedgwood and numerous smaller Staffordshire potteries round Burslem
