Alpha Book

It must be remembered that Holland, while
following her national career of independence, commerce, and colonial
undertaking, had become stanchly Protestant. Neither the immoral
paganism of antiquity nor the medieval legends of Catholicism would
longer appeal to the Dutch people as fit subjects of art. Rembrandt,
prototype of a new school, therefore painted the actual life of the
people among whom he lived and the things which concerned them--lively
portraits of contemporary burgomasters, happy pictures of popular
amusements, stern scenes from the Old Testament. His Lesson in Anatomy
and his Night Watch in their somber settings, are wonderfully realistic
products of Rembrandt's mastery of the brush.
[Sidenote: Rembrandt]
[Sidenote: Music]
Thus painting, like architecture and sculpture, was perfected in
sixteenth-century Italy and speedily became the common property of
Christian Europe. Music, too, the most primitive and universal of the
arts, owes in its modern form very much to the sixteenth century.


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