The Dutch Golden Age

After the Eighty Years War (1568–1648), the Dutch Republic won independence from the Spanish Empire and became one of Europe’s most prosperous nations, seeing innovation in trading practices, sciences, and the arts. Painters sought to establish painting practices that distinguished their works from those of the Spanish Empire. Although the compositions and paint handling of Dutch Golden Age works generally align with European Baroque art, they diverge from the continental norms in their lack of idealisation, intense detail, and mundane, non-religious subject matter. Popular subjects included history paintings, genre paintings (scenes of everyday life), landscapes, still lifes, and tronies—portraits of particularly expressive characters or tropes. Masters of the Dutch Golden Age include Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Frans Hals.