ies passed into the possession of the King of Spain,
who remained a Catholic, whilst the northern portion of the Netherlands
became sturdily Protestant. Their struggle, under the leadership of
William the Silent, against the yoke of Spain, is one of the stirring
pages of history. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, seven
of the northern states of the Netherlands, of which Holland was the
chief, had emerged as practically independent. The southern portion
of the Netherlands, including the old province of Flanders, remained
Catholic and was governed by a Spanish Prince who held his court at
Brussels.

When peace came at last, there was a remarkable outburst of painting
in each of the two countries. Rubens was the master painter in Flanders.
Of him and of his pupil Van Dyck we shall hear more in the next chapter.
In Holland there was a yet more wide-spread activity. Indomitable
perseverance had been needed for so small a country to throw off the
rule of a great power like Spain. The long struggle seems to have called
into being a kindred spirit manifesting itself in every branch of the
national life. Dutch merchants, Dutch fishermen, and Dutch colonizers
made themselves felt as a force throughout the world. The spirit by
which Dutchmen achieved political success was pre-eminent in the
qualities which brought them to the front rank in art. There were
literally hundreds of painters in Holland, few of them bad. That does
not mean that all Dutchmen had the magical power of vision belonging
to the greatest artists, the power that transforms the objects of daily
view into things of rare beauty, or the imagination of a Tintoret that
creates and depicts scenes undreamt of before by man. Many painted
the things around them as they looked to a commonplace mind, with no
glamour and no transforming touch. When we see their pictures, our
eyes are not opened to new effects. We continue to see and to feel
as we did before, but we admire the honest work, the pleasant colour,
and the efficiency of the painters. In default of Raphaels, Giorgiones,
and Titians, we should be pleased to hang upon our walls works such
as those. But towering above the other artists of Holland, great and
small, was one Dutchman, Rembrandt, who holds his own with the greatest
of the world.

He was born in 1606, the son of a miller at Leyden, who gave him the
best teaching there to be had. Soon he became a good painter of
likenesses, and orders for portr