Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard

~~It is curious that most European languages use the French word genre, which means ‘kind’, ‘sort’, or ‘variety’, to categorize the type of painting that depicts scenes of everyday life. Precisely when or how this special usage became...

~~In many areas of Europe, the period from 1600 to 1750 was an age of grandeur, marked by expansive claims to status and authority expressed through equally exuberant languages of ornament and decoration. Sacred spaces, like St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, offered a symphony for the senses in which colorful hardstone-encrusted...

~Between the years 1648 and 1672 Amsterdam reached its economic and political zenith. For the following discussion of Amsterdam, see Regin 1976; Kistemaker and van Gelder 1983; Israel 1989, passim; Burke...