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The Fourth Period: 17th Century and After

By the 17th century the development of painting had passed through all its stages, and the picture was no longer a mere silhouette or a transcript of objects against a flat background, but rather an enchanted mirror of the world, in which might be reflected space beyond space in infinite recession. With this transformation of the picture there was connected a complete change in the relation of the artist to nature. Throughout all the earlier epochs of the art the painter had concerned himself not with nature as a whole, but with certain selected aspects of nature that furnished him with his recognized subjects. These subjects were selected on account of their intrinsic beauty or importance, and as representing intrinsic worth they claimed to be delineated in the clearest and most substantial fashion. In the 17th century, not only was the world as a whole brought within the artist’s view, but it presented itself as worthy in every part of his most reverent attention. In other words, the art of the 17th century, and of the modern epoch in general, is democratic, and refuses to acknowledge that difference in artistic value among the aspects of nature which was at the basis of the essentially aristocratic art of the Greeks and Italians.... The artist who was the first to demonstrate convincingly this principle of modern painting was Rembrandt.... Rembrandt in his later work attended to the pictorial effect alone, and practically annulled the objects by reducing them to pure tone and color. Things are not there at all, but only the semblance or effect, or “impression” of things. Breadth is in this way combined with the most delicate variety, and a new form of painting, now called “impressionism,” has come into being.

See: Rubens, by Henri Hymans, author of Rubens: sa vie et son œuvre, and P. G. Konody; Rembrandt, by John Forbes White and P. G. Konody; and Frans Hals, by P. G. Konody. These were the leaders of the great 17th century school—the Dutch. For the more immediate followers of Rembrandt see the articles: Douw, Eeckhout, Flinck, Maes, Hooch, Meer. For Rubens’ great pupil and rival and his successors, the articles Van Dyck and Teniers, both by Henri Hymans and P. G. Konody, Snyders and the great animal painter Fyt. See Brouwer for Hals’ pupil and assistant. For the genre painters, the articles: Ter Borch, Metsu, Steen, Wouwermann, and the Ostade family, by Sir J. A. Crowe and P. G. Konody. On the landscapists see the articles: Koninck, Goyen, Neer, by Sir J. A. Crowe and P. G. Konody; Ruysdael, Hobbema, by Sir J. A. Crowe, and Berchem; and, for animal and landscape, A. Vandevelde, Cuyp, by Sir J. A. Crowe, and Potter, by P. G. Konody. The other important articles for the Dutch school of the 17th century are: Heem, Heda, Hondecoeter, Weenix and Huysum, painters of still life, etc.; W. Vandevelde and Backhuysen, marine painters; and at the close of the period, or marking its decline, Mieris and Netscher.

In the article on Painting this summary follows the outline of the general development of painting through the 17th century:

Kinds of Painting

The fact that the Dutch painters have left us masterpieces in so many different walks of painting, makes it convenient that we should add here some brief notes on characteristic modern phases of the art on which they stamped the impress of their genius. The normal subject for the artist, as we have seen, up to the 17th century, was the figure-subject, generally in some connexion with religion. The Egyptian portrayed the men and women of his time, but the pictures, through their connexion with the sepulchre, had a quasi-religious significance.

Portraiture is differentiated from this kind of subject-picture through stages which it would be interesting to trace, but the portrait, though secular, is always treated in such a way as to exalt or dignify the sitter. Another kind of figure-piece, also differentiated by degrees from the subject-picture of the loftier kind, is the so-called Genre Painting, in which the human actors and their goings-on are in themselves indifferent, trivial, or mean, and even repellent; and in which, accordingly, intrinsic interest of subject has disappeared to be replaced by an artistic interest of a different kind. Landscape, in modern times so important a branch of painting, is also an outcome of the traditional figure-piece, for at first it is nothing but a background to a scene in which human figures are prominent. Marine Painting is a branch of landscape art differentiated from this, but supplied at first in the same way with figure-interest. The origin of Animal Painting is to be sought partly in figure-pieces, where, as in Egypt and Assyria, animals play a part in scenes of human life, and partly in landscapes, in which cattle, &c., are introduced to enliven the foreground. The Hunting Picture, combining a treatment of figures and animals in action with landscape of a picturesque character, gives an artist like Rubens a welcome opportunity, and the picture of Dead Game may be regarded as its offshoot. This brings us to the important class of Still-life Painting, the relation of which to the figure-piece can be traced through the genre picture and the portrait.

The article then proceeds to sketch the history and development of different kinds of painting:

Portraiture:

It is Gentile and Giovanni Bellini ... who may be regarded as the fathers of modern portrait painting. Venetian art was always more secular in spirit than that of the rest of Italy, and Venetian portraits were abundant.... Some of the finest portraits in the world are the work of the great Venetians of the 16th century, for they combine pictorial quality with an air of easy greatness which later painters find it hard to impart to their creations. Though greatly damaged, Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V. at Madrid (fig. 26, Plate VIII.) is one of the very finest of existing works of the kind. It is somewhat remarkable that of the other Italian painters who executed portraits the most successful was the idealist Raphael, whose papal portraits of Julius II. and Leo X. are masterpieces of firm and accurate delineation. Leonardo’s “Monna Lisa” is a study rather than a portrait proper.