Jean-Baptiste Lully, Italian-born French composer. He was court composer to Louis XIV, founding the national French opera and producing court ballets for Molière's plays. Clearly the most successful musician of his time, in terms of power a...

Nicolaes Maes, also known as Nicolaes Maas was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre and portraits. In about 1648 he went to Amsterdam, where he entered Rembrandt's studio. Before his return to Dordrecht in 1653 Maes painted a few Rembrandtes...

Frans van Mieris, the elder, was a Dutch Golden Age genre and portrait painter. The leading member of a Leiden family of painters, his sons Jan (1660–1690) and Willem (1662–1747) and his grandson Frans van Mieris the Younger (1689–1763) wer...

Robert Hooke, natural philosopher, inventor, architect, chemist, mathematician, physicist, engineer. Robert Hooke is one of the most neglected natural philosophers of all time. The inventor of, amongst other things, the iris diaphragm in ca...

Gerrit Battem was a superior Dutch landscape painter. Houbraken mentions drawings by Battem in the house of his patron Jonas van Witsen of Amsterdam, who bought them for 1300 guilders along with colored drawings by Adriaen van Ostade in...

Dieterich Buxtehude was a German-Danish organist and a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. His organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services. He...

Gerrit Adriaenszoon Berckheyde was a Dutch Golden Age painter, active in Haarlem, Amsterdam, and The Hague, who is best known today for his cityscapes. He was also known for his Italianate landscapes as well as portraits and cavalry pieces....

Jean Racine was a French dramatist, one of the "big three" of 17th century France (along with Molière and Corneille), and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition. Racine was primarily a tragedian, though he did w...

"Night Watch", 1642; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Night Watch is misnamed because of a very dark varnish that covered it until the 1940's. It should be titled The Company of Captain Frans Cocq. It is a group portrait of a company of civil gu...

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and violinist. Born in the small Bohemian town of Wartenberg, Biber worked at Graz and Kromeriz before he illegally left his Kremsier employer (Prince-Bishop Carl Liechtenstein...

Antonio Stradivari was an Italian luthier, a crafter of stringed instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Strad...

Maria Sibylla Merian was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator, a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family. Merian was one of the first naturalists to observe insects directly. Merian received her artis...

Arcangelo Corelli was an Italian violinist and composer of the Baroque era. His music was key in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto, in establishing the preeminence of the violin, and as the first coalescing of mode...

Agostino Steffani was an Italian ecclesiastic, diplomat and composer. Steffani stands somewhat apart from contemporary Italian composers (e.g., Alessandro Scarlatti) in his mastery of instrumental forms. His opera overtures, etc., show a re...

Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, and is most remembered for inventing what would become the modern-day piano. He was born in Padua and became known as a harpsichord and spinet maker. In 1690 he...