Works in this gallery represent two important regions in seventeenth-century European art, Flanders and France. Both were largely Catholic and church patronage remained strong long after the Reformation. Flanders, consisting essentially of present-day Belgium, had its center in Antwerp. There, around 1600, Peter Paul Rubens rose to international fame as an artist and diplomat, gaining commissions from nearly every European court. His two portraits in this gallery reveal his mastery of rendering both human form and expression. Works by Rubens’ fellow Antwerp artists Frans Francken, Jan Brueghel the Younger, and Hendrick van Balen demonstrate the wide variety of religious and mythological subjects that attracted Flemish artists and patrons.

French art developed two distinct esthetics during the seventeenth century: the robust, dynamic style of the baroque, as seen in works here by Simon Vouet and Claude Vignon, and the more restrained classical tendencies as seen in a painting by Sebastian Bourdon.