Jan Lievens was a Dutch painter, usually associated with Rembrandt, working in a similar style. In his early years he was a student of Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. After two years he began his career as an independent artist at age of fourt...

Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter is the most famous and one of the most skilled admirals in Dutch history. De Ruyter is most famous for his role in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century. He fought the English and French in these wars and s...

Anna Maria van Schurman was a German-born Dutch painter, engraver, poet, and scholar, who is best known for her exceptional learning and her defense of female education. A highly educated woman by seventeenth century standards, she excelled...

Ferdinand III of Hapsburg, Holy Roman emperor (1637 – 57), archduke of Austria (1621 – 57), king of Hungary (1625 – 57) and king of Bohemia (1627 – 57). Denied command of the Habsburg armies in the Thirty Years' War, Ferdinand conspired to...

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. He was a scholarly man of letters, a polemical writer, and an official serving under Oliver Cr...

Frederick III was king of Denmark and Norway from 1648 until his death. He also governed under the name Frederick II as diocesan administrator (colloquially referred to as prince-bishop) of the Prince-Bishopric of Verden (1623–29 and again...

Jacob, Banner Lord of Wassenaer, Lord Obdam, Hensbroek, Spanbroek, Opmeer, Zuidwijk and Kernhem, was a Dutch Lieutenant-Admiral, and supreme commander of the confederate Dutch navy. The name Obdam was then also spelled as Opdam. British con...

Peter Stuyvesant served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York. He was a major figure in the early history of...

Adriaen van Ostade was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre works. He and his brother were pupils of Frans Hals and like him, spent most of their lives in Haarlem. In 1662 and again in 1663 he is registered as deacon of the St. Luke guild...

Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard and died at the Siege of Maastricht in the Franco-Dutch War. A fictionalized account of his life by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandr...

Pope Innocent XI, born Benedetto Odescalchi, was Pope from 1676 to 1689. Odescalchi was a strong papal candidate after the death of Pope Clement IX (1667–69) in 1669, but the French government rejected him. After Pope Clement X (1670–76) di...

Bartholomeus van der Helst was a Dutch portrait painter. In Amsterdam Van der Helst was a contemporary of Rembrandt. He soon became the most popular painter of portraits in that city, his flattering portrayals in the style of Anthony van Dy...

Gerrit Dou, also known as Gerard and Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly-polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe l'oeil "niche" pain...

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, le Prince de Marcillac, was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. He was born in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time whe...

André Le Nôtre (or Le Nostre) was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. Most notably, he was the landscape architect who designed the park of the Palace of Versailles, and his work represents t...