14-01 The Dutch Golden Age
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- Опубликовано: 20 июн 2024
- All of the lecture notes are at: www.shafe.co.uk/wp-content/up....
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The Dutch Golden Age spanned the 17th century and it was a time when the newly united Seven Provinces became the wealthiest nation in Europe. Having become independent from Spain following the Thirty Years War the Dutch excelled in trading, science and the arts.
The wealth of the Dutch Republic grew rapidly as a result of its trading links around the world supported by a navy of 2,000 ships, larger than the British and French navies combined.
As a result of the Republics openness and tolerance it attracted intellectuals from all over Europe and despite its small population it became the leading scientific, military and cultural power in Europe until the Year of Disaster, 1672, when its power started to gradually decline.
The Dutch Golden Age coincided with the Baroque period in Italy but the tolerant, hard working Dutch culture led to a very different style of painting. In the south the Flemish region was still controlled by the Spanish and this is where Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck flourished in Antwerp. Rembrandt was the most successful in the commercial centre Amsterdam and Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch worked in Delft. The growing wealth of the Dutch traders and the Dutch East India Company created a new class of wealthy tradesmen who commissioned works of art.
The earliest great artist of the period was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and he broke away from the Italian style to create a new style that combined the energy and excitement of the baroque with the naturalism and intenseness of the north. Rubens most important pupil was Anthony van Dyck who became court painter to Charles I in England and one of the great portrait painters of the period.
Many genres of painting flourished including still life produced in exquisite detail by artists such as Clara Peters. One dramatic episode during the period was tulip mania that was illustrated by A Satire of Tulip Mania by Jan Brueghel the Younger (ca. 1640). One later artist of still life was Rachel Ruysch who became famous for her precise rendition of flowers.
The most popular form of painting was the portrait, which could take the form of an anonymous figure, a tronie, a family portrait or a group portrait. In Haarlem the most famous painter was Frans Hals whose free expression and relaxed characters made him one of the famous portrait artists of the period. Group and individual portraits were one of the most important sources of commissions for artists and another all known portrait painter was Judith Lester. However, the giant of the Dutch Golden Age was Rembrandt van Rijn whose deep, penetrating portraits and dynamic group portraits created a legacy that grew and grew over the centuries since.
Perhaps the most representative type of painting during this period were scenes of everyday life. Johannes Vermeer produced some of the most peaceful yet intense representations of everyday life. More homely, comedic and rowdy scenes of everyday life were produced by Nicolaes Maes, Pieter de Hooch and Jan Steen. A Jan Steen household became synonymous with familiar everyday sins of gluttony, sloth and lust.
The other great defining genre of the age was landscape and the master was Jacob van Ruisdael who created a vision of the Dutch nation’s open landscape. The other artist who captured the vast open landscape and sky was Aelbert Cuyp. 
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Hello Dr. Shafe, thanks for this lecture of the Dutch art. I find your lecture very comprehensive . I have been studying Dutch Golden Age art for a while, I am enticing by the artworks of that period. I am also an emerging artist, many of my still life paintings are inspired by Dutch artists during that time. I do appreciate your videos.
Excellent documentary
I hope this feedback finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for the thorough and enlightening lecture you delivered on Dutch art. It was an incredibly insightful and engaging session that left a lasting impression on me.
Your extensive knowledge and passion for the subject matter truly shone through during the lecture. The way you effortlessly weaved historical context, and cultural significance together made the topic come alive. I greatly appreciated your ability to interpret and convey complex ideas in a clear and accessible manner, which made it easier for me to understand and appreciate the beauty and depth of Dutch art.
I love Dutch Genre paintings and found this very insightful - thank you.
Superb lecture, sir. My kudos to you.🌈
I enjoy your lectures very much if you ever have time to make one on Picasso I would quite enjoy that. Thank you for the great lectures
Hello Dr Shafe Loved the lecture but just wondering why you never mentioned that Rembrandts "The night watch" as we know it is not the original painting, as i recall it was cannibalized at some stage in order to fit into a hall in Amsterdam to be viewed.
In my humble opinion Vermeers The view of Delft was painted with the aid of a camera obscura {a portable one unlike the one in Vermeers studio as was set up in the Tim Jenison doc} from the room ,as you pointed out in the house across the river.As you said it is photographic.I hope you get to view the Tim Jenisons documentary on Vermeers "The music Lesson" which in my opinion proves beyond doubt the use of a booth type obscura in Vermeers studio.
Thankyou so much for the discussion
You are right, the painting was cut down to fit a space in the town hall in Amsterdam. The pieces cut off have never been found and one piece had three figures on it. I agree that he probably used a camera obscura which was known about in the ancient world and described by Leonardo da Vinci. However, this only takes the artist so far as it merely provides a rough sketch and one of the wonders of Vermeer's technique is his facture or paint surface.
I agree with you a box type obscura as Canaletto used could only take you so far but in the Tim Jenison doc {using the whole studio as the obscura & sitting in the booth looking down via the circular mirror to the surface & recording what you are seeing is far more advanced especially with the improved lenses of that era than a box type}.Is the the size of the early works compared to later due to the confines of the booth ?@@LaurenceShafe
Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) bought a portable camera obscura in London and knew Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt and possibly Vermeer. He wrote is was "now-a-days familiar to everyone ...". He calls it “a picture-making invention with which one can paint by means of reflections in a closed and darkened room everything which is outside.” By the seventeenth century most camera obscuras, portable and in a room or tent, would be using a lens. However, it only enabled an outline sketch of a scene to be drawn and it was of limited help as an aid to painting. It is interesting but just a variation of the way many artists take measurements using an outstretched pencil or some other mechanism. John Constable, for example, would sometimes attach a pane of glass to his easel and trace the outline of a landscape then transfer it to a squared-up sheet of paper. Many artists use squaring-up to transfer a small sketch onto a larger canvas. I think a camera obscura would be an advantage for transferring complex objects onto a drawing, for example, a chandelier.
Quakers a ducks sound is kwak kwak in Dutch or quak quak
I believe Charles the first was 5 ft 3 not under 5 ft
Estimates of Charles's height before his execution vary between 4ft 8in and 5ft 4in. Historic Royal Palaces gives his height as 1.5 metres or 4ft 11in but I have heard documentaries that give his height as 5ft 3in.
The man with the violin ..has his pants Open ???
The painting by Jan Steen at 49:30 is intended to be salacious and comic. In the sixteenth century men wore hose which were two separate pieces, one for each leg with the front and back exposed but covered by a long tunic. However, as tunics got shorter in 1463 in England, Edward IV’s parliament made it compulsory for a man to cover “his privy Members and Buttokes” and this led to the development of the codpiece. In the seventeenth century, when this was painted, men had switched to wearing one-piece breeches. Possibly Steen has dressed the fiddler in hose without a codpiece as an amusing addition to the picture. Maybe an expert on seventeenth-century fashion will have a better suggestion.
@@LaurenceShafe ..I did research the codpiece...it really only mentioned th 15 & 16 the Century & it started to go out of fashion by the 17 the Century ....need to do some more research .. thanks
The Netherlands were already very wealthy, mainly because of the Hanseatic League and fishery and textile production. When the Northern Netherlands split off in 1581 from today's Belgium and the Luxemburg they developped modern capitalism and industrialized shipbuilding, up to 30 times faster because of the invention of the wind mill powered saw in 1592.
The combination of advanced financial institutions, low interests, lots of ships and especially real merchant ships with small crews and often just one antipirate gun, made them outcompete everybody and doing more than half of all European trade, especially the Baltic Sea trade got completely dominated by the Dutch. They had more merchant ships than the rest of Europe combined for most of the 17th century.
The global trade outside Europe was far smaller, and they initially got in that take the war for independence against Spain and Portugal over the oceans. The Dutch East India company only started paying ROI in 1633 and the West India Company was only founded in 1620 and mostly a financial failure. The Dutch were already filthy rich by then from shipping wheat, wood, beer, rye, textiles, just European bulk goods.
Thank you for going to so much trouble to explain how the Dutch acquired their wealth to fund the Dutch Golden Age.
@@LaurenceShafe I think it's also reflected in a relatively broad middle class as subject of many 17th century paintings, while the earnings of the small intercontinental trade tended to end up with the filthy rich more.
It has also to do with the Dutch self image of that time and the place of the exotic in Dutch 17th century art, more as a matter of interest and amazement than business.