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The Dutch Golden Age: Origins

By: hoakley
6 August 2025 at 19:30

The Renaissance modernised the art of the late Middle Ages with realistic images that strived to resemble what we actually see, rather than presenting a world of stereotypes and symbols. This is best seen by comparing paintings of a common theme spanning the period, here those of the Madonna and Child.

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Cimabué (1240–1302), Santa Trinita Maestà (1280-90), tempera on panel, 385 x 223 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Cimabué’s Maestà was painted in egg tempera for the main altar of the church of Santa Trinita in Florence, between 1280-90. Little attempt is made to distinguish surface textures, although some use is made of lightness and pattern in fabrics to depict their folds. Faces are uniform and devoid of expression or emotion, most turned in directions determined by its structured composition. There’s no sign of any landscape or other background, and no impression of reality.

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Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), Madonna and Child (c 1470-75), tempera on panel transferred to hardboard, dimensions not known, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

While Ghirlandaio’s Madonna and Child from about 1470-75 was still painted in egg tempera, it’s much more realistic in its approach to the figures and the folds in fabrics. Modelling of the figures is still restrained, and there’s no natural background, but its intent is clearly to resemble a real mother and her infant.

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Raphael (Rafael Sanzio de Urbino) (1483–1520), Madonna della Sedia (Seated Madonna with the Child on her Lap and the Young Saint John) (1513-14), oil on panel, diameter 71 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia (Madonna of the Chair) from 1513-14 shows a thoroughly real and natural mother with two infants, every surface texture rendered as in life, with wisps of hair, differentiation between types of fabric, and convincing expressions and postures.

Many of the changes seen here in the Renaissance can be elaborated as follows:

  • surface texture of skin, hair and fabrics;
  • individual faces expressing emotions;
  • telling stories using body language;
  • individual natural posture;
  • realistic landscape backgrounds;
  • three-dimensional perspective projection with controlled vanishing points;
  • varied composition;
  • the air of reality;
  • use of oil paints;
  • increasing production of easel paintings;
  • references to both secular and classical literature;
  • introduction of new genres such as landscapes and secular paintings;
  • direct patronage;
  • independent and secular masters.

Technically the Renaissance provided the painter with all the tools for painting anything that might be seen in life. However, the great majority of paintings were commissioned for religious use, so depicted motifs drawn from the Bible and other Christian writing.

One of the early and most skilled practitioners of oil painting was the brilliant but short-lived Venetian master Giorgione, who has the added distinction of painting what was probably the first landscape painting of the southern Renaissance.

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Giorgione (1477–1510), The Tempest (c 1504-8), oil on canvas, 83 × 73 cm, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Wikimedia Commons.

Giorgione’s revolutionary landscape The Tempest from just after 1500 remains enigmatic today, and may have religious references, but it marked the start of a new and wholly secular genre.

Late in the Italian Renaissance, emphasis shifted from its birthplace Florence to other centres such as Bologna and, most of all, Venice, where the effects of colour (Italian colore) came to dominate form and design (Italian disegno).

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), The Crucifixion (1565), oil on canvas, 536 x 1224 cm, Albergo, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Jacopo Tintoretto’s Crucifixion from 1565 is over 5 metres (17 feet) high, and 12 metres (40 feet) across, larger than many frescoes of the Renaissance. He makes use of this space with a narrative technique based on the popular ‘multiplex’ form: its single image shows events at more than a single point in time, in an ingenious and modern manner.

Naturally, the painting centres on Christ crucified, but the two thieves executed beside him are not shown, as would be traditional, already hanging from their crosses. Instead, to the right of Christ, the ‘bad’ thief is still being attached to his cross, which rests on the ground. To the left of Christ, the ‘good’ thief is just being raised to the upright position.

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Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594), The Annunciation (E&I 264) (c 1582), oil on canvas, 440 x 542 cm, Sala terrena, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Tintoretto’s Annunciation is thought to have been painted even later, in about 1582. Its composition is unusual by any contemporary standards, with natural rendering of brickwork, a wicker chair, and a splendidly realistic carpenter’s yard at the left. This is coupled with an aerial swarm of infants, at the head of which is the dove of the Holy Ghost in a small mandorla. Christ’s origins are here very real, tangible, and contemporary, in stark contrast to most traditional depictions of this scene.

If any single workshop brought the Renaissance to a close and moved on to what has become termed the Baroque it’s that of the Carraccis, initially in Bologna, then in Rome.

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Annibale Carracci (1560–1609), Latona and the Lycian Peasants (date not known), oil on canvas, 90.6 x 78 cm, Arcidiecézní muzeum Kroměříž, Olomouc Museum of Art, Kroměříž, The Czech Republic. Wikimedia Commons.

Annibale Carracci’s Latona and the Lycian Peasants, probably from 1590-1620, is the first truly masterly painting of this myth told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and for once an easel painting on canvas rather than a fresco. Although not a religious theme, this drew on the other acceptable source of narratives at the time, classical myth.

If there’s one artist who clearly defined the start of a new era it was Caravaggio, who began his career in Milan, but transformed art when he was painting in Rome.

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Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) (1571–1610), Narcissus (1594-96), oil on canvas, 110 × 92 cm, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome. Wikimedia Commons.

His portrait of Narcissus from 1594-96 demonstrates how the tools of realism could be used in thoroughly secular paintings, but still of classical myth.

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Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614), Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1600), oil on canvas, dimensions and location not known. The Athenaeum.

Caravaggio wasn’t alone. Among those who adopted and developed his style, the Caravaggists, was Lavinia Fontana, who came from Bologna and worked at the height of her career in Rome. Her Judith with the Head of Holofernes from 1600 also contrasts completely with the tondo Madonna by Raphael at the start of this article.

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Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) and Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri) (1581-1641), Perseus and Phineas (1604-06), fresco, dimensions not known, Palazzo Farnese, Rome. Wikimedia Commons.

There was, of course, much more to the Baroque than Caravaggism. In 1604-06, Annibale Carracci and Domenichino (also from Bologna) joined forces in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome to paint this fresco of Perseus and Phineas. As Perseus stands in the centre brandishing the Gorgon’s face towards his attackers, Andromeda and her parents shelter behind, shielding their eyes for safety. The Renaissance was in the past, and Florence was no longer the beacon that it had been.

Signs of change occurred earlier in the north, where the first tentative steps were made towards a broadening of genres.

Hans Memling (c 1430-1494), Flowers in a Jug (c 1485), oil on panel (verso of Portrait of a Young Man Praying), 29.2 x 22.5 cm, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.

It was probably Hans Memling (c 1340-1494) who painted one of the first still lifes, on the back of a panel bearing a portrait of a young man praying, in about 1485. It has been proposed that this was part of a diptych or triptych, and could have formed its back cover when folded.

His choice of jug and flowers confirms its religious nature: Christ’s monogram is prominent on the body of the jug, and each of the flowers has specific references. Lilies refer to the purity of the Virgin Mary, the irises to her roles as Queen of Heaven and in the Passion, and the small aquilegia flowers have associations with the Holy Spirit. The eastern pattern on the rug is so distinctive of the artist that these became referred to as Memling rugs.

Coming closer to what was soon to become the Dutch Republic, Pieter Bruegel the Elder founded a dynasty of Flemish artists who broke from the Renaissance mould and started depicting the everyday.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c 1525–1569), The Harvesters (1565), oil on panel, 119 x 162 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Two of his major paintings from 1565 were formative influences on what was to come in the Dutch Golden Age. The Harvesters is a complete account of the grain harvest in the Low Countries, and Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap below is a pure landscape.

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Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569), Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap (1565), oil on panel, 37 x 55.5 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Wikimedia Commons.

There are no figures particularly close by, and those on the ice are not demonstrating the many different activities they could be undertaking. It also happens that this was one of the first paintings to show Netherlandish people on the ice in the winter, a theme that shortly became very popular, and whose influence extended throughout Europe, across centuries and styles.

By 1600 the techniques of depicting the real world were well understood, and all it required was an abundant trade in art materials including drying oils and pigments, an increasingly wealthy population, seemingly insatiable demand for paintings, and an army of painters. Those all came in the Dutch Republic.

Reading Visual Art: 210 Parrot B

By: hoakley
14 May 2025 at 19:30

Parrots, parakeets, cockatoos and the humble budgerigar (a small parakeet) have long been popular domestic pets in Europe, and are featured in many paintings. In this second look at a selection of paintings including these birds, I start with still lifes from the Dutch Golden Age.

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Pieter Boel (–1674), Still Life with a Globe and a Parrot (c 1658), oil on canvas, 313 x 168 cm, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.

From the days of the Northern Renaissance, artists in the Low Countries had pursued the accurate depiction of optical effects in their paintings. Pieter Boel’s Still Life with a Globe and a Parrot from about 1658 continues that tradition, with its outstanding three-dimensional effects in the plate and goblet in the foreground.

The globe shows the Pacific Ocean and the north-west coast of America, with the ‘Dutch’ East Indies at its left edge. The bas-relief plate shows a scene from mythology, in which male and female deities are riding in a chariot. The two porcelain bowls at the far right appear Chinese, and there’s a white parrot or cockatoo, together with a small dog at the bottom left corner.

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Jakob Bogdani (1658–1724), Capuchin squirrel monkey, two guinea pigs, a blue tit and an Amazon Saint Vincent parrot with Peaches, Figs and Pears in a landscape (c 1710-20), oil on canvas, 54.7 x 107 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

After Hungaro-British painter Jakob Bogdani (1658–1724) moved to London via Amsterdam in 1688, he painted several works featuring animals and birds. Those included Capuchin squirrel monkey, two guinea pigs, a blue tit and an Amazon Saint Vincent parrot with Peaches, Figs and Pears in a landscape towards the end of his career, in 1710-20.

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Johann Amandus Winck (1748–1817), Still life with a Parrot, Game Fowl, Guinea Pigs and Fruit (date not known), oil on copper, 20.9 x 27.3 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Johann Amandus Winck’s Still life with a Parrot, Game Fowl, Guinea Pigs and Fruit must have been painted in the late eighteenth century.

Parrots also appear in some more curious contexts.

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Agostino Carracci (1557–1602), Hairy Harry, Mad Peter and Tiny Amon (1598-1600), oil on canvas, 101 x 133 cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Painters have long been attracted to the spectacle of humans who look different. In Agostino Carracci’s case, he combined three strange examples in his Hairy Harry, Mad Peter and Tiny Amon, completed between 1598-1600, not long before his death. From the left are Tiny Amon (Rodomonte) the dwarf, Arrigo Gonzalez the hirsute (Hairy Harry) from the Canary Islands, and Mad Peter (Pietro the buffoon). Accompanying them are a large parrot, a couple of dogs, and two monkeys.

Since then, parrots and their relatives have continued to appear sporadically in paintings.

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Frank Duveneck (1848–1919), The Turkish Page (1876), oil on canvas, 106.7 × 148 cm, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1876, Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase painted a young boy carefully posed with a parrot, in Chase’s Munich studio. Duveneck’s The Turkish Page, above, is technically brilliant, and an ambitious work for someone within seven years of starting their training. It was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York the following year, but had a mixed response. Viewers found its still life approach lost narrative, and were puzzled by the depiction of the child. By the time it was displayed at the Pennsylvania Academy in its 1893-4 exhibition, changing taste brought it acclaim, and it sold.

Chase’s version, below, was surprisingly different in many respects. I leave it to you to decide which you prefer, although I think the parrot seems happy with both.

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William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), The Turkish Page (Unexpected Intrusion) (1876), oil on canvas, 104.8 × 94.5 cm, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH. Wikimedia Commons.

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Henry Tonks (1862-1937), Summer (1908), oil on canvas, 94 x 94 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Mrs F.J. Weldon 1931), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tonks-summer-n04565

Henry Tonks’ Summer (1908) is a dazzlingly rich and intricate view of the garden at Arfleet, near Corfe Castle, Dorset, England. Using a real mother and her son as models, the boy’s rocking horse and a cockatoo are unusual objects to see in an English garden in summer.

Wings over Water 1930 by Frances Hodgkins 1869-1947
Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), Wings over Water (1930), oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.4 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Geoffrey, Peter and Richard Gorer in memory of Rèe Alice Gorer 1954), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hodgkins-wings-over-water-n06237

The expatriate New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins painted Wings over Water during the winter of 1931-32. It shows a view from her rooms in Bodinnick, Cornwall. Carefully placed in the foreground is a still life consisting of three large seashells with floral and plant arrangements. Sitting on the fence in the middle of the view is her landlady’s parrot, beyond which is the expanse of the nearby River Fowey.

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Woman with Parrot (1910), oil on canvas, 104 x 122 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Finally, for Pierre Bonnard parrots came by chance. His Woman with Parrot is set in le Midi in 1910, with intensely bright and hot colours, against which the large blue parrot, some pots, and foliage make contrast. This was painted in Saint Tropez during Bonnard’s visit in September that year, and was based on an experience that the artist wrote about in a letter to his mother, in which he had passed a young dark-haired girl with an enormous blue parrot. As you do.

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