ABSTRACT
Protestantism doubtless played a part in shaping the down-to-earth quality, but Catholic Dutch artists also contributed to the trend, which seems to have been national rather than sectarian. The diversity of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings was fostered by the fact that instead of painting to the order of the wealthy and powerful, painters were—for the first time in the history of Western art—producing wares commercially. Intellectual life was enriched also by immigrants who came to the Dutch Republic mainly because it offered freedom of thought and conscience. Most of the subject-matter interests and stylistic achievements usually credited to seventeenth-century Dutch art were foreshadowed in paintings that originated in the fifteenth century in the same geographic area. The acquaintance of the Dutch painters with works by foreign artists also helps people to understand their place in the history of art, as people shall see in relation to specific paintings.
