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A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718
Mariët Westermann
An outstanding short introduction to the art of the Dutch Golden Age. Mariët Westermann sets the great century of Dutch painting — Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, the landscapes and still lifes and domestic scenes — squarely inside the peculiar society that produced it: a new Protestant republic, mercantile, relatively tolerant, without a royal court to set taste. Rather than a parade of masterpieces, she asks why this culture wanted these particular pictures, and what they meant to the people who bought and lived with them. Written for students and general readers and richly illustrated, it is widely regarded as one of the best brief accounts of the subject — smart, compact, and genuinely illuminating.
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The author
Mariët Westermann is a distinguished historian of Dutch art and an influential figure in the museum and foundation world, having held senior roles at the Mellon Foundation, NYU Abu Dhabi, and the Guggenheim. She writes with unusual clarity, and this book shows her gift for making deep scholarship accessible.
The book
First published in 1996 in Harry N. Abrams's Perspectives series — a line of smart, illustrated introductions for students and general readers — and later kept in print by Yale University Press. With more than a hundred color plates, it surveys the art of the Dutch Republic from roughly 1585 to 1718.
How it has aged
Very well: it remains a standard first book on Dutch Golden Age art precisely because its approach is social and interpretive rather than a mere catalogue of names. Its central question — why this society made and wanted these images — has only become more central to the field.
For more context
Svetlana Alpers's The Art of Describing and Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches — two influential, contrasting accounts of the same world.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Mariët Westermann
- Publisher
- Abrams (Perspectives)
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1996
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Maine