Even the separation of the northern from the southern parts of the Netherlands by the religious wars did nothing to change the way that art was practised there from the start of the fifteenth century. On the contrary, painting had such an upsurge from the beginning of the seventeenth century that the building and sculptural arts remained much further behind than in earlier times. And this despite the fact that a man such as Rubens interested himself intensely in the architecture of his home town and sought to renew it according to the examples seen in Italy. During his stay in Genoa he had gathered a large number of drawings of the villas and palaces there which he later published as copper engravings. His influence is seen in the Antwerp and Leuven Jesuit Churches, as the latter was built by Rubens’ pupil, the architect and sculptor Lucas Faydherbe.
The sculptural arts did not escape from the decorations of the Italian Baroque style during the whole of the period. The only notable sculptor of the period was Artus Quellinus the Elder, who converted Rubens’ majestic form language into sculpture. He worked mostly in Amsterdam, where in the years 1650 to 1664 he decorated the then City Hall (today the Royal Palace) inside and outside with sculptures in which the figure-rich compositions of both tympanums and the female caryatids in the great hall are certainly the most outstanding. This city hall is also the main work of the northern Netherlands architecture of the seventeenth century.
Many advantageous circumstances had to occur in order that Netherlands painting could develop into a unique and elemental force in the history of art and on a scale that was in no proportion to the size of the country and its small population. The physical endurance and moral courage of this nation is shown in its long battle for its beliefs and its freedom from the Spaniards. When finally a truce was arranged and freedom was achieved, the victors were in possession of an impoverished and half-destroyed land. With the joy of an ensured possession, the labour of the burghers who returned to their crafts after the war was quickly awakened. Their welfare grew visibly and this again awakened an interest in the arts, especially painting.
The climatic conditions first led to a new perception of nature thanks to the development of landscape ambience painting as one of the most beautiful achievements of seventeenth century painting. This awakened pictorial sense brought about by the observation of nature was also alive in figure painting, and it is not at all clear whether this or the landscape painting was first in this discovery and application and thus the foundation of colourism. However, one thing is fairly certain: landscape painters were less revered by their contemporaries than the figure painters and among these, again, the portraitists were more admired than the delineators of the life of the people.
The fight against the Spaniards had engendered a large amount of self-confidence, and this, together with a certain vanity, led the portrait paintings to their highest flowering. Not only were there portraits of individuals and their families, but also group portraits of numerous corporations, especially, of course, the shooting guilds in their convivial gatherings. These “Guild Pieces” engaged many painters and motivated them to create works in which the best Dutch painters measured their strengths against each other. Right at the top were Frans Hals and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; these two men were the poles about which painting in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century rotated. Only landscape painting went in a direction which was not influenced by one of the leading Masters.
Architecture developed in the Netherlands somewhat less independently than in Germany. That the south-western part, the Belgium of today, was almost completely under French influence and the north-eastern part, the Netherlands of today, followed German examples, can be explained as well by their geographic position as the origin and history of the population. On a still greater scale and with still more energy than the German cities, the trading towns of Brabant and Flanders were determined to display their wealth in grand market halls and municipal buildings. It was never permitted to omit the landmark of municipal power, the belfry (beffroi), a square, usually marked by a slim, airy tower with a point. The municipal buildings of Bruges, Brussels and Leuven and the hall of the cloth merchants, the Lakenhal (Cloth Hall) in Ypres are memorials of proud citizenship; through their brilliant pictorial effects and the unmistakable richness of their decor, they are evidence of the love of magnificence and the strongly developed artistic sense of their builders.