Christian IV was the king of Denmark-Norway from 1588 until his death. With a reign of more than 59 years, he is the longest-reigning monarch of Denmark, and he is frequently remembered as one of the most popular, ambitious and proactive Da...

Philip III, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Naples and Sicily was the king of Spain and Portugal and Algarves (as Philip II Portuguese: Filipe II), from 1598 until his death. His chief minister was the Duke of Lerma. Philip III mar...

Hugo Grotius, also known as Hugo de Groot, was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, theologian, Christ...

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contra...

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a respo...

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of King Charles I of England and Scotland and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that...

Witte Corneliszoon de With was a famous Dutch naval officer of the 17th century. On his first sea voyage to the Dutch East Indies on 21 January 1616 when he was sixteen, as a cabin boy on Captain Geen Huygen Schapenham's ship the Gouden...

Philip IV of Castille (Felipe IV) was the king of Spain, from 1621 until his death, and king of Portugal as Philip III (Filipe III) until 1640. The eldest son of Philip III (and his wife Margaret), Philip IV was born at Valladolid. His chie...

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...

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...

Father of Peter the Great. Alexey Mikhailovich Romanov was a Tsar of Russia during some of the most eventful decades of the mid-17th century. The son of Tsar Mikhail I and Eudoxia Streshneva, he was sixteen years old at the time of his fath...

Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician and scientist. He is known particularly as an astronomer, physicist, probabilist and horologist. Huygens was a leading scientist of his time. His work included early telescopic studi...

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...

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...

Catherine I, the second wife of Peter I of Russia, reigned as Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death. The life of Catherine I was said by Voltaire to be nearly as extraordinary as that of Peter the Great himself. There are no documents...