Aensien Doet Ghedencken. Patronage of Dutch Maritime Art in the Golden Age

Abstract

The culture and history of The Netherlands has been deeply indebted to its close relation to the sea. Dutch painters, led by Hendrick Vroom, were the first to bring the maritime subject matter into a specialized genre in the arts. Meanwhile, the admiralties and other governmental institutes were willing to spend a large sum of money for the commissioning of maritime art works. For this research, four different case studies will be discussed, containing the commission of battles at sea that the Dutch had fought during their revolt against Spain (1568-1648). With the aid of the original minutes from the admiralties and other commissioning parties, this thesis looks for the motives behind the Dutch seventeenth-century large-scale commissions of marine art in relation to the founding of the Dutch Republic as a legitimate state and its cultural identity. The four case studies will show that the separate regions within the Dutch Republic (i.e. Zeeland, Holland and West Friesland) were predominantly focused on their own achievements in the war, thereby each maintaining a local understanding of what the “fatherland” of the newly formed Republic should entail.