Masterworks Low and Surrounding Countries

The seventeenth century in the Low Countries was anything but a controlled environment. Many were the harbingers of revolution. The Netherlanders of the north fought for and won their freedom from Catholic Spain, and subsequently became the global hub of commerce. The predominantly Protestant republic freed from noble rule and now dominated by a merchant class was obsessively interested in paintings. Next door Flanders, for centuries northern Europe's heartland of high aesthetics, elected to not part ways with Spain and yet continued its aesthetic traditions. A collecting craze spread from noblemen's courts to the homes of butchers and bakers, spurring the growth of many new genres during the first part of the century. With a collective output of some nine million paintings the artistic environment of the Low Countries in the seventeenth century, while many term it the Golden Age, controlled chaos is more apropos. Understanding this environment, it's not difficult to grasp why today signatures, copies, attributions, originals, good artists, great artists and all of the surrounding hubbub on the best of days are a blur. The art trade was too expansive, the standards too limited and the time, too long ago to truly know the specifics of particular paintings. The environment was hierarchical, replete with indentured servitude of apprentices, rampant copying and vast studios akin to factories. Even with a single digit percentage of the some nine million paintings executed in the Golden Age now known to exist, the sorting does not get any less involved as politics and price rule the day. As to those who will tell you that indeed they have determined the history of this particular painting or that specific masterwork and they absolutely know who painted it - well, you need to carefully consider the source, particularly if its a museum, an auction house or a gallery with a vested interest. Few provenances trace to even the nineteenth century. The Dutch public's passion for paintings was not quite as febrile as their notorious tulip mania, the bubble of speculation that spectacularly burst in 1637; but it too reached a tipping point in the mid-1650s. Masterworks brings to light impressive information as to the historical and cultural events which occurred during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the Low Countries. It features in vivid color many works that have never been published and focuses on seminal paintings, many of which have rarely been seen. No single publication, coupled with an extensive array of images, has heretofore concentrated solely on this dramatically uncontrolled environment and its implications. Significant archival and original records have been carefully and thoroughly researched. Additionally the reader will find critical information on the Low Countries including a historical perspective, particular collection nuances and a broad context of the issues presented.