Pietro Antonio Locatelli was an Italian composer and violinist. A child prodigy on the violin, he was sent to study in Rome under the direction of Arcangelo Corelli. Little is known of his subsequent activities except that he finally settle...

Grigory Dmitriyevich Stroganov was a Russian landowner and statesman, the most notable member of the prominent Stroganov family in the late 17th century-early 18th century, a strong supporter of the reforms and initiatives of Peter the Grea...

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....

Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (le Roi-Soleil), was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1643 until his death. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest...

The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts, as well as the deadliest European religious war, in history. It took place in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648 and resulted in eight million casualties. Ini...

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...

Bonaventura Francesco Cavalieri was an Italian mathematician. He is known for his work on the problems of optics and motion, work on the precursors of infinitesimal calculus, and the introduction of logarithms to Italy. Cavalieri's principl...

Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp was an officer and later admiral in the Dutch navy. Born in Den Briel, Tromp sailed the seas from the age of nine, and joined the Dutch navy as a lieutenant in 1621. His first distinction was being Piet Hein's fla...

Robert Blake was one of the most important military commanders of the Commonwealth of England and one of the most famous English admirals of the 17th century, whose successes have "never been excelled, not even by Nelson" according to one b...

Pieter Jansz. Saenredam was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his distinctive paintings of whitewashed church interiors. Saenredam's paintings show medieval churches, usually Gothic, but sometimes late Romanesque, which had been...

Jan Josephszoon van Goyen was a Dutch landscape painter. Van Goyen was an extremely prolific artist; approximately twelve hundred paintings and more than one thousand drawings by him are known. Typically, a Dutch painter of the 17th cent...

Jacob van Campen was a Dutch artist and architect of the Golden Age. Van Campen's first known building was the Coymans house built in 1625 in Amsterdam. In the 1630s Van Campen and Pieter Post designed the Mauritshuis in The Hague, a palace...

Andreas Cellarius was a Dutch-German cartographer, best known for his Harmonia Macrocosmica of 1660, a major star atlas, published by Johannes Janssonius in Amsterdam. He was born in Neuhausen (now a part of Worms), and was educated in H...

Constantijn Huygens was a Dutch poet and composer, Secretary to two Princes, and the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens. He is often considered a member of what is known as the Muiderkring, a group of leading intellectuals gathered...

Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan's many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is b...