The start of the seventeenth century in Europe is marked by the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48). The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, as well as France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Poland were all engaged in the conflict. Although there were many local reasons for the war, the primary one was the disagreement between the Catholics and the Protestants. The war ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which essentially provided religious choice in much of Europe and also gave rise to new nation states. By the seventeenth century most geographical exploration had taken place and the expanding mercantilism led to refinements in trading practices, such as holding money on account, as instituted by the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609. Cartography, ship building, and the expansion of the slave trade all led to increased prosperity in European markets, thereby expanding the incomes of a new wealthy class who patronised the arts and sought luxury goods through conspicuous consumption.
The seventeenth century is widely known under the umbrella term of the Baroque, although there were local and national specifics to the art of the Baroque period. Italian Baroque was still heavily patronised by the Catholic Church, as were Spanish and Flemish Baroque works. Yet the Northern Baroque, leaning heavily towards a new Protestant wealthy class, favoured secular scenes and group portraits based on guild memberships or companies of citizen militias, which protected the north from Spanish rule in the period of separatist revolt in the Netherlands.
In Italy, the Baroque period was characterized by the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation movement and the edicts of the Council of Trent (1545-63) in which the Church insisted on the use of images in religious teaching. The Jesuit Order was highly influential in Baroque art, due to the canonisation of St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1622 and the popularity of his important text, the Spiritual Exercises. Theatricality, sensuousness, passionate faithfulness, motion, and a dramatic impact on the viewer were all principles of Catholic Baroque art. The Church had lost a great deal of power during the Reformation and was ardently trying to regain the masses by welcoming the faithful with building campaigns designed to expand the Church’s body, often quite literally by expanding the nave plans to accommodate more people, such as at St. Peter’s in Rome and the Jesuit mother church of Il Jesu.
The Dutch Republic, established after the United Provinces of the Netherlands were officially formed following the Treaty of Westphalia, was predominantly protestant, if not largely Calvinist.
Therefore, while the Netherlands was incredibly economically successful, there was a puritanical prohibition on art in churches. Consequently, there were far fewer religious commissions than in France, Italy, or Spain in the Baroque period. Dutch genre scenes were far more common.
In France, the Age of Absolutism created a powerful environment in which the French Classicism formed under the patronage of Louis XIV (r. 1661-1715). The park and buildings of Versailles displayed his preference for rationalism and control. The French classical style was established by the founding of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648.
Scientifically, the period is important because of Galileo’s telescope invention in 1609, which helped Johannes Kepler establish his laws of planetary motion from 1609-1619. Meanwhile, René Descartes’ Discourse on Method was published in 1637 while Blaise Pascal was founding statistics and probability studies. After the Royal Society was founded in London in 1662, Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation were elaborated in 1687.