Western Art: 1624 to 1636

Atlantic West Europe (1624–1635): Renewed Conflict, Centralization, and Baroque Cultural Ascendancy

The period 1624–1635 in Atlantic West Europe—comprising northern France, the Low Countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg), and Atlantic-facing regions—was dominated by renewed military conflict, political centralization, economic prosperity coupled with financial stress, and a vivid flourishing of Baroque art and culture. Intensified involvement in the Thirty Years' War significantly impacted political alliances, while culturally, the region embraced vibrant artistic creativity and scientific inquiry.

Political and Military Developments

France: Richelieu and Centralized Authority

• Cardinal Richelieu rose to prominence as Louis XIII's chief minister (1624), initiating far-reaching reforms aimed at consolidating royal power and diminishing noble influence.

• Richelieu’s anti-Habsburg policies increasingly drew France into the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), supporting Protestant states and weakening Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs. His decisive intervention (1635) openly committed France to war, reshaping European political dynamics.

Dutch Republic: Resumption of Conflict with Spain

• With the expiration of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621, hostilities resumed between the Dutch Republic and Spain. During 1624–1635, the Republic reinforced military capabilities, especially naval power, intensifying the war against Spanish forces.

• Frederick Henry of Orange, Stadtholder (r. 1625–1647), led successful military campaigns, capturing strategic cities such as 's-Hertogenbosch (1629) and Maastricht (1632), significantly consolidating Dutch territorial security.

Spanish Netherlands: Ongoing Military and Religious Pressures

• The Spanish Netherlands continued as a critical theater in the wider European conflict. Spanish forces under Governor-General Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (d.1633) struggled to defend southern provinces from Dutch incursions, maintaining firm Catholic rule through military strength and religious uniformity.

• Following Isabella’s death (1633), direct rule by the Spanish Crown resumed, intensifying local discontent amid heavy taxation, military demands, and ongoing conflicts.

Economic Developments: Prosperity, Strains, and Maritime Dominance

Dutch Golden Age and Financial Pressures

• The Dutch Republic maintained economic dynamism, particularly in Amsterdam, Europe's financial and commercial capital, facilitated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the rapidly expanding Dutch West India Company (WIC), established in 1621.

• However, sustained military campaigns strained Dutch financial resources. Rising public debt became an issue, even amid continued trade prosperity and industrial productivity, highlighting the economic tensions of war financing.

French Economic Expansion and Maritime Trade

• France, under Richelieu’s guidance, promoted economic growth and maritime expansion. The port cities of Bordeaux, Nantes, Le Havre, and La Rochelle prospered, driven by increased trade in wine, salt, textiles, and colonial products from newly established French overseas territories.

• Richelieu significantly strengthened naval power, promoting overseas commerce and colonial expansion, particularly in North America and the Caribbean.

Religious and Intellectual Developments

Intensification of Counter-Reformation and Protestant Conflict

• The renewed war heightened religious tensions. In northern France and the Spanish Netherlands, Counter-Reformation Catholicism intensified through Jesuit-led education and missionary efforts, reinforcing orthodoxy and suppressing Protestantism.

• In the Dutch Republic, the decisive Calvinist orthodoxy following the Synod of Dort (1619) dominated, marginalizing other Protestant groups but fostering religious cohesion amid external threats.

Growth of Intellectual Inquiry and Scientific Thought

• Notable advancements occurred in scientific thought and philosophical inquiry. In France, René Descartes pursued groundbreaking philosophical work in the Netherlands, publishing influential works such as Discourse on Method (1637) (just after this era), fostering rationalist philosophy and scientific method development.

• Dutch and Flemish scholars continued important work in mathematics, optics, navigation, and early experimental science, reflecting broader European scientific advancements.

Cultural and Artistic Developments

Baroque Cultural Flourishing

• Baroque art and architecture flourished spectacularly. In the Spanish Netherlands, Peter Paul Rubens achieved international prominence, executing large-scale commissions for courts across Europe, significantly influencing Baroque artistic expression.

• The Dutch Golden Age of painting continued to blossom, with emerging masters like Rembrandt, whose early works in this period solidified his reputation as one of Europe's foremost artists. Other notable figures included Frans Hals, known for vivid, lifelike portraiture, and landscape specialists such as Jan van Goyen.

French Cultural Patronage

• In France, Richelieu’s patronage bolstered literature, theater, and architecture. Playwrights such as Pierre Corneille began their careers, shaping French drama profoundly. Paris emerged as a vibrant cultural center, increasingly influencing European tastes and artistic standards.

Social and Urban Developments

Urban Growth Amid Economic Prosperity

• Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Rotterdam continued to expand, driven by maritime trade and economic prosperity. Urban growth facilitated significant demographic changes, increased social mobility, and the emergence of influential urban merchant classes.

• In France, coastal cities such as Bordeaux and Nantes flourished, while Paris grew significantly as administrative centralization under Richelieu attracted nobles, officials, intellectuals, and artists.

Continued Rural Struggles and Migration

• Rural areas across northern France and southern Low Countries faced ongoing hardships from warfare, taxation, and poor harvests, prompting widespread migration into expanding urban areas or overseas colonies.

Legacy and Historical Significance

The era 1624–1635 was crucial in shaping Atlantic West Europe’s long-term political, economic, cultural, and social trajectory:

• Politically, Richelieu’s centralizing reforms fundamentally transformed French governance, positioning France as a dominant European power. The Dutch Republic secured territorial gains but faced increasing economic pressure from sustained warfare.

• Economically, Amsterdam’s financial dominance and maritime trade success contrasted with increasing fiscal strains, foreshadowing future economic challenges.

• Religiously, the intensification of Counter-Reformation efforts and entrenched Calvinist orthodoxy further entrenched regional religious identities and divisions.

• Culturally, the extraordinary artistic productivity of the early Baroque era established lasting legacies in European cultural history, influencing artistic standards for centuries.

Thus, by 1635, Atlantic West Europe had navigated renewed conflict, economic prosperity tempered by growing strains, and remarkable cultural and intellectual innovation, setting essential foundations for the complex developments of the later seventeenth century.

Philip IV of Spain is to become famous for his patronage of his court painter Diego Velázquez.

Velázquez originates from Seville and mutual contacts had caused him to become known in 1623 to Gaspar de Guzmán, Count Duke of Olivares, Philip’s principal minister, who comes from the same region; he is summoned to Madrid by the king in 1624.

Despite some jealously from the existing court painters, Velázquez rapidly becomes a success with Philip, being retained for the rest of his career until his death, painting a celebration of the Treaty of the Pyrenees for Philip.

The king and Velázquez share common interests in horses, dogs and art, and in private are to form an easy, relaxed relationship over the years.

Velázquez is to paint at least three portraits of Olivares, his friend and original patron, producing the baroque equestrian portrait along with the standing portraits now at the Hermitage and São Paulo.

Like many contemporaries, Olivares is 'haunted' by Spain's potential decline, and sees part of the solution at least in a reform of the Spanish state.

Olivares sees Catalonia and the other provinces as paying less to the crown than they should, and does not really understand why the inhabitants should object to a fairer distribution of taxes.

He is confident in the intellectual argument for a better defended, better ordered Spain, and never seems to have shown serious doubt that his plans would succeed, or understood the growing hatred against his rule.

These plans take form first in Olivares' Unión de Armas, or 'Union of Arms' concept, put forward in 1624.

This would have involved the different elements of Philip's territories raising fixed quotas of soldiers in line with their size and population.

Despite being portrayed by Olivares as a purely military plan, it reflects Olivares' desire for a more closely unified Spain—although not, it is generally argued, a completely unified kingdom.

Nicolas Poussin's early biographer, his friend Giovanni Pietro Bellori, relates that Poussin had been born near Les Andelys in Normandy and that he had received an education that included some Latin, which would stand him in good stead.

Early sketches had attracted the notice of Quentin Varin, a local painter, whose pupil Poussin became, until he ran away to Paris at the age of eighteen.

There he entered the studios of the Flemish painter Ferdinand Elle and then of Georges Lallemand, both minor masters now remembered for having tutored Poussin.

He found French art in a stage of transition: the old apprenticeship system was disturbed, and the academic training destined to supplant it was not yet established by Simon Vouet; but having met Courtois the mathematician, Poussin had been fired by the study of his collection of engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi after Italian masters.

After two abortive attempts to reach Rome, he had fallen in with Giambattista Marino, the court poet to Marie de Medici, at Lyon.

Marino had employed him on illustrations to his poem Adone (untraced) and on a series of illustrations for a projected edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, taken him into his household, and in 1624 enables Poussin (who had been detained by commissions in Lyon and Paris) to rejoin him at Rome.

It has been suggested that it was this early friendship with Marino, and the commissioning of illustrations of his poetry (which drew on Ovidian themes), that founded, or at least reinforced, the prominent eroticism in Poussin's early work.

Poussin is thirty when he arrives in Rome.

At first he lodges with Simon Vouet.

Through Marino, he had been introduced to Marcello Sacchetti who in turn had introduced him to another of his early patrons, Cardinal Francesco Barberini.

The current title of The Laughing Cavalier (1624) is a famous painting by the Dutch Baroque artist Frans Hals, is a Victorian era invention; the subject does, in fact, sport an enigmatic smile.

The composition is lively and spontaneous, and despite the apparent labor involved in the gorgeous silk costume, close inspection reveals long, quick brush strokes.

The identity of the man is unknown; when the painting was acquired in 1865 by Richard Wallace's father it was simply called "Portrait of a Young Man".

The most likely theory is that the man is in fact a minor Dutch noble from Haarlem.

The painting is famous because of the artist's skill at painting the lace of the costume and that the eyes appear to follow the viewer from every angle.

The Spanish Habsburg rulers had entrusted Rubens with a number of diplomatic missions after the end of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621.

The French ambassador writes in 1624 from Brussels: "Rubens is here to take the likeness of the prince of Poland, by order of the infanta" (Prince Władysław IV Vasa had arrived in Brussels as the personal guest of the Infanta on September 2, 1624).

Pieter Lastman is the son of a town-beadle, who was fired in 1578 because he stayed Catholic; his mother was an appraiser of paintings and goods.

His apprenticeship was with Gerrit Sweelinck, the brother of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

Between approximately 1604 and 1607 Lastman had been in Italy, where he had been influenced by Caravaggio (as were the painters of the Utrecht School a few years later) and by Adam Elsheimer.

Because Rembrandt has never visited Italy (nor will he ever), it is likely that he is influenced by Caravaggio mainly or significantly via Lastman.

Gerard van Honthorst, initially trained at the school of Abraham Bloemaert, who exchanged the style of the Franckens for Italianate models at the beginning of the sixteenth century, had traveled to Italy in 1616, where he had been influenced heavily by the style of Caravaggio.

Returning home in about 1620, after acquiring a considerable practice in Rome, he has set up a flourishing school in Utrecht.

Together with his colleague Hendrick ter Brugghen, he represents the so-called Dutch Caravaggisti.

He was in 1623 president of the Guild of St. Luke in Utrecht, when he also married.

He soon become so fashionable that Sir Dudley Carleton, English envoy at The Hague, recommends his works to the Earl of Arundel and Lord Dorchester.

He hosts a dinner for Rubens in 1626, and paints him as the honest man sought for and found by Diogenes.

His The Matchmaker, painted in 1625, shows the use of Caravaggio-inspired chiaroscuro.

The Queen Mother of France, Marie de' Medici, had commissioned Rubens in 1621 to paint two large allegorical cycles celebrating her life and the life of her late husband, Henry IV, for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris.

The Marie de' Medici cycle (now in the Louvre) is installed in 1625, and although he begins work on the second series it is never completed.

(Marie will be exiled from France in 1630 by her son, Louis XIII, and die in 1642 in the same house in Cologne where Rubens had lived as a child.)

Jan Brueghel the Younger, trained by his father, will spend his career producing works in a similar style.

Along with his brother Ambrosius, he produces landscapes, allegorical scenes and other works of meticulous detail.

Brueghel also copies works by his father and sells them with his father's signature.

His work is distinguishable from that of his parent by being less well executed and lighter.

Jan the Younger is traveling in Italy when his father dies of cholera in 1625 and swiftly returns to take control of the Antwerp studio.

Ernst Casimir I of Nassau-Dietz (Dillenburg, December 22, 1573 – Roermond, June 2, 1632) is the eleventh child of John VI, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg and Elisabeth of Leuchtenberg.

After the death of his father, the county of Nassau had been divided among his five living sons, Ernst Casimir following him as Count of Nassau-Dietz and Stadtholder of Friesland; he had been appointed Stadtholder of Groningen and Drenthe in August 1625.

Primarily known as an outstanding military leader, he has served under Maurice in the siege of the cities of Steenwijk and Oldenzaal, and Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange during the Siege of Groenlo (1627) and the Siege of 's-Hertogenbosch.

As Stadholder of Groningen he founds the Nieuweschans fortress in 1628.

Although he owns little in Friesland, he is popular there, and people grant his heir the right to rule after his death.

The portrait of his wife and children, painted in 1621, is unusual in its lack of modesty.