The 17th century

Pluto and Proserpina, marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1621–22; in the Borghese Gallery, Rome.

Anderson—Alinari/Art Resource, New York

Rivalries between powerful papal families such as the Barberini, the Borghese, and the Farnese were an important impetus for artistic patronage and collecting in 17th-century Rome. Some of the most notable commissions came from worldly cardinals such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s patron, Scipione Borghese, who was also an avid collector of Classical antiquities and Old Master paintings.

Rome was comparatively slow to develop a free market for contemporary art, though Caravaggio started his career by creating still-life paintings for the open market in the 1590s. By 1635 picture dealers were sufficiently numerous to be worth taxing, and by the 1650s the Neapolitan painter and etcher Salvator Rosa was exhibiting his works for sale in his own studio. By the end of the 17th century, a variety of annual sales exhibitions had been established in Rome.

The rise of Antwerp and Amsterdam

Jagd auf Nilpferd und Krokodil (“Hunt for Hippopotamus and Crocodile”), oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1616; in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Alte Pinakothek, Munich; photograph, Joachim Blauel/Artothek

Despite the prestige of Rome, the center of gravity in the 17th-century art world shifted increasingly toward the northern cities of Antwerp and Amsterdam. During the 16th century, Antwerp had been a major center of artistic production, exporting paintings throughout Europe. It was similarly renowned for the manufacture of luxury items such as collectors’ cabinets. The city was also home to a number of important merchants, such as Peter Paul Rubens’s friends Cornelis van der Geest and Nicholas Rockox, whose collections were recorded in the “gallery pictures” in which artists such as Frans Francken II (1581–1642) specialized. Within this lively collectors’ circle Rubens himself played a prominent part, building a magnificent Italianate house in Antwerp and filling it with an impressive collection of paintings and antique sculpture. By about 1640, however, Flanders was in decline artistically and economically. Its swansong was the aforementioned collection of paintings assembled by Archduke Leopold William.

Christ Healing the Sick (Hundred Guilder Print), detail of an etching by Rembrandt showing the use of chiaroscuro, c. 1643–49.

Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

During the 1630s, Amsterdam had begun to rival Antwerp as a center of the art trade. Because there was little in the way of court or church patronage in northern Europe, most Dutch artists painted for the open market and an essentially middle-class clientele. Having moved to Amsterdam in 1631, Rembrandt van Rijn was shrewd in the sale of his own prints, appealing to the era’s collectors’ market and selling copies of Christ Healing the Sick for 100 guilders or more, a considerable sum at the time; the work thus acquired the alternative title The Hundred Guilder Print. He was himself an avid collector, spending such large sums at art auctions that the habit contributed to his eventual bankruptcy.

London

Charles I at the Hunt, oil on canvas by Anthony van Dyck, c. 1635; in the Louvre, Paris.

Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

When Rubens visited London in 1629, he was astonished by the quantity and quality of art he saw. Outstanding pieces were featured in the collection of Charles I, whom Rubens described as a great connoisseur of paintings. Other important collections included that of Thomas Howard, 2nd earl of Arundel—the first serious English collector of classical antiquities and Old Master drawings—and those of the late George Villers, 1st duke of Buckingham; the earl of Pembroke; and James Hamilton, 3rd marquess and 1st duke of Hamilton.

The outbreak of the English Civil Wars (1642–51) cut short this flowering of connoisseurship, and many of the great English collections were dispersed as quickly as they had been formed. Following Charles I’s execution in 1649, Parliament arranged for the sale of his collection. Held at Somerset House (which now houses the Courtauld Institute Galleries), the disappointing results highlighted the fact that there was no appropriately developed mechanism for selling art in London. During the reign of Charles II this began to change, especially when a huge influx of Netherlandish artists gave a boost to the production and distribution of art. Booksellers and printsellers from the Low Countries introduced innovations such as auctions and spurred the development of an active retail market in the Covent Garden neighborhood of London.

Spain and France

Philip IV, oil on canvas by Diego Velázquez, 1624–27; in the Prado Museum, Madrid.

The Spanish royal collection was one of the greatest in 17th-century Europe. The product of 200 years of patronage and collecting, it included masterpieces by Titian that had been commissioned by Philip II and Charles V, as well as an unusually fine representation of Flemish 15th- and 16th-century paintings. Philip IV, who became Charles I’s principal rival as a collector, continued to add to this collection through purchases and through his enlightened patronage of Diego Velázquez, who was sent on two important missions to Italy to acquire paintings and antique sculpture for the Spanish royal collection. Other important Spanish collectors were Don Luis de Haro, Don Gasparo de Haroy y Guzman (the Spanish viceroy to Naples), and the marquis de Leganes.

Dying Slave, marble sculpture by Michelangelo, 1513–15; in the Louvre, Paris.https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010091872 AZ 5/23/2025

In France, by contrast, there had been very few additions made to the royal collection since the time of Francis I in the early 16th century. In 1630 the collection comprised barely 200 paintings—a number hardly comparable to the inventory of more than 5,500 paintings in the Spanish royal collection at the end of the 17th century. France’s pioneers of change were two enormously acquisitive cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin. The former acquired many of the paintings that Charles I failed to secure from Mantua, the two Michelangelo slave sculptures (The Dying Slave and The Rebellious Slave) now in the Louvre, and an enormous quantity of jewelry and smaller precious objects. Mazarin’s acquisitiveness was such that even exile by the Fronde did not keep him from procuring several prize paintings from Charles I’s collection after the monarch’s execution.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, detail of a bust by Antoine Coysevox, 1677; in the Louvre, Paris.

Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

The collections of both Mazarin and Richelieu passed to the Crown. During the 1660s Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a favorite of Mazarin’s and by that time a statesman in his own right, was directed by Louis XIV to take charge of the development and expansion of the arts in France. Colbert instigated the foundation of the French academies of painting, sculpture, and architecture and brought the patronage of the arts firmly under state control, appointing painter Charles Le Brun as artistic dictator.

European trade with East Asia

Linglong porcelain perfume bowl and cover, Wanli period (1572–1620), Ming dynasty; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The foundation of the English and Dutch East India companies in 1600 and 1602, respectively, brought a huge increase in trade between Europe and East Asia. This relatively sudden increase in demand had a particular impact on the market for porcelain and lacquerwork; during China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644), large factories were created to supply the market for linglong (pierced porcelain) and other wares. Although approximately 3.2 million pieces of porcelain were shipped to Holland between 1604 and 1657, the trade was not a simple pipeline from East to West: the greater proportion of what the Dutch shipped out of East Asia was in fact destined for their warehouses in Southeast Asia and thence to India and the Islamic countries of the Middle East.

The arrival of so much imported porcelain had a seminal impact on European ceramic production at centers such as Meissen (Germany). It also affected interior decoration: a fashion for massed displays of porcelain, started by the Dutch in the 1670s, led to a vogue for “rooms of porcelain.” Among the most amazing displays of the fashion was the so-called Trianon de porcelaine, built by Louis XIV for his mistress Mme de Montespan on the site now occupied by the Grand Trianon (see Palace of Versailles). It was faced with faience tiles of a blue-and-white chinoiserie pattern. Augustus II, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, was another aficionado of porcelain. Not only did he trade a regiment of dragoons for a shipment of Chinese porcelain, but he also built a “Japanese” palace in Dresden to house his collection, which had grown to more than 50,000 pieces.