Frans Hals was the great 17th-century portraitist of the Dutch bourgeoisie of Haarlem, where he spent practically all his life. Hals evolved a technique that was close to impressionism in its looseness, and he painted with increasing freedo...

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft - Knight in the Order of Saint Michael - was a Dutch historian, poet and playwright from the period known as the Dutch Golden Age. Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, often abbreviated to P.C. Hooft, was born in Amsterdam...

Massasoit Sachem or Ousamequin was the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag confederacy. Massasoit means Great Sachem. Massasoit's people had been seriously weakened by a series of epidemics and were vulnerable to attacks by the Narraganset...

Orlando Gibbons was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. He was a leading composer in the England of his day. Gibbons wrote a quantity of keyboard works, around thirty fantasias for vio...

Robert Johnson was an English composer and lutenist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras. He is sometimes called "Robert Johnson II" to distinguish him from an earlier Scottish composer. Johnson worked with William Shakespeare providin...

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...

Frederick Henry, prince of Orange; son of William the Silent by Louise de Coligny. He became stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands upon the death (1625) of his brother Maurice of Nassau. As a minor prince heading a federati...

Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero is considered the major Dutch poet of his generation, particularly for his spontaneous love sonnets. The first Dutch master of comedy, Bredero was an important innovator; he drew upon classical elements as well as...

Cardinal Richelieu was extremely intelligent and at the age of nine was sent to College de Navarre in Paris. In 1602, at age seventeen he began studying theology seriously. In 1606 he was appointed Bishop of Luçon, and in 1622 Pope Gregory...

Jacques Specx was a Dutch merchant, who founded the trade on Japan and Korea in 1609. Jacques Specx received the support of William Adams to obtain extensive trading rights from the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu on August 24, 1609, which allowed h...

Heinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and is often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claud...

Jan Pieterszoon Coen was an officer of Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General in the Dutch East Indies. He was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, for provi...

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...

Johannes (Jan) Symonsz van der Beeck was a Dutch painter also known by his alias Johannes Torrentius. ("Torrentius" is a Latin equivalent of the Beeck surname, meaning "of the brook" or "of the river".) Despite his reputation as a still...

Gerard van Honthorst, also known as Gerrit van Honthorst and in Italy as Gherardo delle Notti for his nighttime candlelit subjects, was a Dutch Golden Age painter from Utrecht. Honthorst's works are numerous, and amply represented in Englis...