A Golden Age - Dutch and Spanish Art of the Seventeenth Century The Courtauld Institute of Art

Overview

What you will study

• In spite of their religious and political conflicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Low Countries and Spain both experienced an unparalleled time of cultural blossoming, “a golden age of art” in the words of artists’ biographer Arnold Houbraken.

• The prevailing conditions in these two countries, however, could have not have been more different: governed by absolute rulers from the House of Habsburg, and dominated by the Catholic Inquisition, Spain developed unprecedented religious fervour in its visual imagery. 

• In the prospering Calvinist Dutch Republic, by contrast, artists conveyed moral and religious messages through an elaborate symbolism in land- and seascapes, still life-compositions, allegories, and scenes from daily life. 
• The A Golden Age - Dutch and Spanish Art of the Seventeenth Century course offered by The Courtauld Institute of Art will explore these themes.