Dutch art and architecture encompasses those works produced in the Netherlands after the Dutch declared (1581) their independence from Spain. Until the start of the Dutch Revolt in the mid-1560s, the art of the northern provinces of the Low Countries (now the Netherlands) was heavily influenced by the art of the southern, or Flemish and Walloon, provinces (see \TFlemish art and architecture\t). Only in the late 16th and early 17th centuries did a clearly independent artistic tradition emerge in the north. In the course of the 17th century, considered the golden age of Dutch art and architecture, renowned Dutch painters such as Frans \THals\t, \TRembrandt\t, and Jan \TVermeer\t executed some of the greatest masterpieces of European art. The art of this period was not only intended for a large segment of society, but also reflected in compelling detail the everyday reality that all of society would recognize. THE LATE 15TH AND THE 16TH CENTURY Hints of a uniquely Dutch style of painting began to emerge in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Although some of the best early masters, such as Dirk \TBouts\t and Gerard \TDavid\t, remained deeply indebted to Flemish art, an indigenous artistic personality was already discernible in the northern schools of Haarlem, Utrecht, and Amsterdam. By far the most important Haarlem master was \TGeertgen tot Sint Jans\t. Geertgen's style, although ultimately derived from the Flemish tradition of Rogier van der \TWeyden\t and Hugo van der \TGOES\t, has a distinctive scope and grandeur of composition combined with a specificity of detail and precision of portraiture that anticipates later Dutch painting. Another major early Dutch master was Hieronymus \TBosch\t, whose intense visions of hell and human suffering were deeply religious in their fantasy and imagination and influenced many later 16th-century Flemish artists, in particular Pieter \TBruegel\t the Elder. Rome exerted a major and recurring influence on Dutch art, not only in terms of the ancient monuments preserved there but also because of the avant-garde styles generated in the city by artists of many nationalities. Many members of the next generation of Dutch artists visited Rome in the 1520s and '30s and returned influenced both by classical motifs and by dynamic, often attenuated and contorted forms characteristic of Italian \TMannerism\t. Jan van \TScorel\t and Maerten van \THeemskerck\t were the leaders of this new enthusiasm for Italian art. At the same time, the burgeoning affluence of Leiden, noted for its prosperous textile industry, attracted several talented artists, including Cornelis Engelbrechtsz (1468-1533) and, especially, \TLucas van Leyden\t. Lucas was an important painter, but his true genius lay in his extraordinary prints, etchings, woodcuts, and above all engravings, some created when he was in his early teens. His facility with the engraver's burin was almost equal to that of the greatest northern printmaker, the German artist Albrecht Durer. The principal centers of late 16th-century Dutch Mannerist painting were the towns of Haarlem and Utrecht. At Haarlem, three artists--the prolific engraver Hendrik \TGoltzius\t, Carel van \TMander\t, and Cornelis van Haarlem (1562-1638)--formed the first academy for artists in the Netherlands. At Utrecht, Abraham Bloemaert (1564-1651) and his many pupils created a broad, flamboyant, highly colorful variant of Mannerism that was tremendously popular and persisted into the early 17th century. THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE 17TH CENTURY The great age of the Netherlands, economically, politically, and culturally, was the 17th century. Although early in this period much of northern Europe was ravaged by the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), the Dutch--particularly in the dominant province of Holland and its capital, Amsterdam--remained protected by their dikes and their large navy from the devastation and interruptions of war. Amsterdam came to be the financial, shipping, and commodities center for much of western Europe, and artists flocked to the city for commissions. Architecture also flourished; fine public buildings and merchant town houses were constructed along the canals of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. In addition, an atmosphere of religious and intellectual tolerance prevailed in the Netherlands at this time, fostering artistic freedom and experimentation. As a result, a variety of schools and art styles coexisted, even within individual Dutch cities. Moreover, the principal patrons of art were no longer the church or the aristocracy but the urban merchant class; the dominant Protestant sect, the Dutch Reformed church, was explicitly opposed to the placement of images in churches, and the medieval aristocracy, for the most part, lived on rural estates, although the center of economic and cultural life had moved to the cities. The Dutch burghers wanted pictures representing the everyday world they knew and the objects their new wealth had allowed them to acquire, from still lifes and portraits of the merchants, their families, and their political and religious leaders, to cityscapes, landscapes, and homely interior views of taverns, stables, and domestic activities. Painting In the early decades of the 17th century in Haarlem, Frans Hals transformed what had been a minor aspect of earlier Dutch art--the portraits of such groups as militia companies and the directors of corporations or guilds--into a major genre. His large group portraits, showing a dozen or more men arranged dynamically around a table, have a spontaneous quality that captures the vitality of his subjects, robust burghers with a broad, detached brushstroke--for the first time, individual strokes were meant to be seen detached from other strokes. The immediacy and baroque (see \Tbaroque art and architecture\t) freshness of his highly influential style signaled the end of Mannerist painting in the Netherlands and encouraged a large group of followers, including Hals's brother Dirck, Adriaen van \TOstade\t, and the Flemish peasant painter Adriaen \TBrouwer\t. At the same time, a brilliant new style of \Tlandscape painting\t was emerging in Haarlem, Leiden, and The Hague, in which artists responded with remarkable sensitivity to characteristically Dutch scenes. Esaias van de Velde (1590-1630), Salomon van \TRuisdael\t, and especially Jan van \TGoyen\t created in the 1620s a recognizable world of flat fields and straight canals that not only depicts identifiable views but also captures the evanescent effects of the high clouds, shifting sunlight, and moisture-laden atmosphere typical of the Dutch countryside. The development of a distinctive school of Dutch marine painting paralleled the evolution of landscape painting, reaching its peak in the period 1645-75. Principal painters of sea pictures include Aelbert \TCuyp\t, also noted for his light-infused landscapes; Hendrick Dubbels (1620-76); Willem van de Velde (1611-93); and Simon de Vlieger (1600-53). Outstanding painters of the Utrecht school, notably Gerrit van \THonthorst\t and Hendrick \TTerbrugghen\t, traveled to Rome, as had their predecessors. There they were powerfully influenced by the spiritually tormented realism and dramatic effects of light and shade of Michelangelo Merisi da \TCaravaggio\t and his followers. This tradition also influenced Rembrandt, the towering figure who dominated Dutch painting in the middle third of the 17th century and ranks among the greatest artists of all time. Rembrandt was a protean genius; his 2,000 to 3,000 surviving paintings, prints, and drawings reveal his extraordinary responsiveness to literally everything he saw, from his own face and those of members of his family, to blacks and Jews and people from all walks of life whom he saw in the street; and from camels, elephants, lions, and other exotic animals to architecture, cityscapes, and landscapes. Rembrandt's early work from the 1620s and '30s has a high baroque energy, sometimes almost a wildness and torment, that owes much to the style of Caravaggio and other artists working in Rome, known to him through works by Dutch followers. The climax of this high baroque period is the famous group portrait of an Amsterdam militia company, the so-called Nightwatch (1642; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). By the late 1640s, his middle period, Rembrandt had developed a calmer, more classical style, perhaps influenced by Italian High Renaissance prototypes. This new serenity and introspection is beautifully embodied in perhaps his most famous etching of Christ healing the sick, the so-called Hundred Guilder Print (c.1650). By the 1660s, his late period, Rembrandt's tendency toward a monumental simplification of form and expression became more pronounced; his figures now made only the most controlled gestures, seeming almost to float, isolated, in a sea of encroaching shadows, as in the celebrated portrait known as The Jewish Bride (c.1668; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Rembrandt had scores of students, and the best of them, Gerard \TDou\t, Nicolaes \TMaes\t, Ferdinand Bol (1616-80), Carel Fabritius (1622-54), Govert Flinck (1615-60), and Aert de Gelder (1645-1727), incorporated their master's vision into their own personal style. Along with a new monumentality in the depiction of landscape evident in the masterful canvases of Jacob van \TRuisdael\t, the most important development in the 1660s, the last phase of the golden age of Dutch art, was the vogue for small, \Tgenre\t \Lpainting\ls depicting elegant ladies and gentlemen in the courtyards, drawing rooms, and bedrooms of their spacious homes. These dignified views of domestic life reflect the increased wealth of the Netherlands, then the most prosperous and dynamic nation in Europe, with a commercial empire stretching from the New World to western Africa and to what is now Indonesia. The greatest masters of this genre were Pieter de \THooch\t, Gerard \TTer Borch\t, and, above all, Jan Vermeer. Vermeer, the central figure of the Delft school, concentrated on the world of women with an exquisite refinement and attention to detail. In his portrayals of young, well-dressed matrons absorbed in everyday tasks, his subjects are imbued with a profoundly simple beauty--their routine activities become an eternal moment that binds the physical and the spiritual, the specific and the evanescent, in perfect equilibrium. The Dutch love of intimate domestic culture was also expressed in a tradition of sumptuous \Tstill life painting\t, principally in the depiction of luxurious floral bouquets or arrangements of fruits, tableware, and books. The tradition of flower painting was established as an independent genre by the mid-16th century, but the most beautiful Dutch still lifes were produced in the second half of the 17th century. Outstanding still-life masters include Willem \TKalff\t, Abraham van Beyeren (1620-90), and Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-83). A noted painter of fowl and wildlife scenes was Melchior d'\THondecoeter\t. Architecture The most impressive achievement of Dutch architecture prior to the 17th century may more properly be called \Turban planning\t. Because much of the western Netherlands, as part of the Rhine delta, was originally marshland under sea level, almost every community of any size had to be painstakingly built up and its land reclaimed from the water. Even Utrecht, one of the oldest Dutch cities, had been a Roman ford over an arm of the Rhine. Amsterdam began in the 13th century as a small settlement along the built-up banks of the Amstel River; it gradually grew as a series of dams and dikes were expanded along the river. In addition to these dike-dam towns, some Dutch communities, such as Leiden, were originally clustered around a fortress on a high point of land and later expanded from this strong point, called the burcht, onto reclaimed land. Although there are fine examples of late Gothic architecture in the Netherlands, especially the Dom Cathedral in Utrecht, an indigenous Dutch style did not develop until the last years of the 16th century. The most important architect of the early 17th century was Lieven de Key (c.1560-1627); his lively Meat Hall in Haarlem (1602-03) is a colorful mixture of stone quoins and other decoration, including projecting sculpted heads of bulls, set against red brick, with small turrets probably influenced by French Mannerist designs. In the first quarter of the century the skyline of Amsterdam was transformed by the imposing multifaceted church towers of Hendrik de \TKeyser\t, which may have later influenced the English architect Sir Christopher \Twren\t in London. By the mid-17th century, a classical reaction had swept through Dutch architecture. This trend was exemplified in Jacob van \TCampen\t's elegant house the Mauritshuis (c.1633; The Hague), for the prince of Orange, with its flat facade and pediment balanced on delicate pilasters. Van Campen's Amsterdam City Hall (begun 1648), now the Royal Palace, was the most important architectural commission of the 17th century in the Netherlands. It became the focus for the entire city and in its imposing, classically balanced facade, airy piano nobile (main floor), and ornately decorated offices, served as a declaration of the power and dignity of the new Dutch state. The Palladian tendencies of late 17th-century Dutch architecture are even more pronounced in the spacious town house for the Trippenhuis, an Amsterdam merchant family, designed (1662) by Justus Vingboons (c.1621-98). Sculpture and the Minor Arts Because the western Netherlands was largely marshy and sandy until the Dutch laboriously drained the land, stone and even wood were scarce and sculpture was traditionally small in scale and of little importance in comparison with pointing and graphic art. Only in the 17th century did Dutch sculpture become artistically significant, especially in the work of the architect Hendrik de Keyser. De Keyser's major sculptural commission was the tomb of William the Silent (c.1618; New Church, Delft), a splendid mixture of bronze and marble figures surrounding the effigy of the dead prince. The minor arts of silversmithing and goldsmithing provided another medium for sculptors. Adam (c.1569-1627) and Paulus (c.1565-1613) van Vianen of Utrecht were known for their ornately decorated Mannerist plates and their ewers emblazoned with flowing arabesque forms; their work was succeeded in the middle of the century by the lush natural forms of the baroque silversmith Johannes Lutma (c.1587-1669), a friend of Rembrandt in Amsterdam. Throughout the late 16th and 17th centuries, fine ceramic tiles and vessels decorated with floral and other patterns were produced in great quantities at Delft and elsewhere in the Netherlands (see \Tpottery and porcelain\t). LATER CENTURIES In the 18th century, Dutch political power was eclipsed by that of Britain and France, and the country fell into economic stagnation. The influence of French art is strongly apparent throughout Dutch art of the period. Although the genre artist Cornelis Troost (1697-1750) painted and drew amusing scenes from the contemporary stage, and Jacob de Wit (1695-1754) executed superb rococo ceiling and wall decorations, their works are more French than Dutch in inspiration and orientation. Eighteenth-century Dutch architecture was likewise largely a derivative of contemporary French developments. Perhaps the finest architect and designer of architectural ornament working in the Netherlands in the early part of the century was in fact the Frenchman Daniel \TMarot\t, whose facades and interiors were widely imitated by Dutch artists. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did Dutch art recapture, especially in the artists of the Amsterdam and Hague schools, some of the power and individuality of the 17th century. Notable genre painters of this period include Jozef \TIsraels\t, whose works depict the grinding poverty of the peasant; and G. H. Breitner (1857-1923), who produced large powerful scenes of everyday life on the streets and canals of Amsterdam. The airy, atmospheric style of Johann Barthold \TJongkind\t, considered a forerunner of the impressionists, was notably linked to the French \TBarbizon school\t. By far the greatest Dutch artist of the late 19th century was Vincent \Tvan Gogh\t. In his response to \Timpressionism\t and \Tpostimpressionism\t, his style was more French than Dutch; however, his early pictures of peasants, such as the naive yet powerfully expressive Potato Eaters (1885; Rijksmuseum, Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam) show his northern heritage. One of the most significant 20th-century art movements, largely Dutch in origin, was \Tde Stijl\t ("the Style"), at its height in the second and third decades of the century. Its lines, volumes, and textures were clean and smooth, and the resulting architecture, sculpture, and painting was related to the machine aesthetic of Ludwig MIES VAN DER ROHE, LE CORBUSIER, and the German \TBauhaus\t of the 1920s. The major Dutch painter of this time and a cofounder, with Theo van \TDoesburg\t, of the movement, was Piet \TMondrian\t. His classically simple abstractions, balancing small patches of color next to large rectangles of white paint within a black grid, are among the greatest achievements of modern art. Such de Stijl architects as J. J. P. \TOud\t and Gerrit \TRietveld\t won international acclaim for their modern building designs based on sleek, unadorned spaces and the smooth integration of simple forms. After World War II, a very different group of artists emerged, heavily influenced by \Tabstract expressionism\t. The avant-garde painters of the \TCoBrA\t movement, in particular the Dutch painter Karel \TAppel\t, strove to express the pain and fury of the war in contorted forms, harsh colors, and vigorous impasto technique. In the graphic arts, the engraving of Maurits Corneille \TEscher\t are noted for deft juxtapositions of metamorphic forms. Other prominent Dutch artists of the 1960s and '70s include Jan Dibbets, Peter Struycken, Ger Van Elk, and Carel Visser. Franklin W. Robinson Bibliography: Bergstrom, Ingvar, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century (1956); Bernt, Walther, The Netherlandish Painters of the 17th Century, trans. by P.S. Fall, 3d ed. (1969); Burke, G. L., The Making of Dutch Towns (1956); Giltaij, J., The Drawings by Rembrandt and His School (1989); Hopkins, Adam, Holland: Its History, Paintings, and People (1988); Leymarie, Jean, Dutch Painting, trans. by Stuart Gilbert (1956); Panofsky, Erwin, Early Netherlandish Painting (1964); Rosenberg, Jakob, et al., Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600 to 1800 (1966); Stechow, Wolfgang, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century (1966); Sutton, Peter C., Dutch Art in America (1986); Timmers, J. J. M., A History of Dutch Life and Art (1959); Wilenski, Reginald, Dutch Painting, rev. ed. (1955).