Although seventeenth-century Dutch art shares many stylistic features in common with other European art of the period, its subjects differ distinctly due to the Netherlands’ evolution as a Protestant rather than Catholic country. Its citizens’ eager participation in the Reformation greatly diminished the Catholic Church’s impact as a patron for the arts and their taste for Catholic subjects. The economic success of the Netherlands’ rapidly growing merchant classes also created extensive private patronage that led to the dominance of portraiture, landscape, still-life, and so-called genre painting (scenes from everyday life). Despite the overtly secular nature of most of these subjects, however, moral overtones can be discerned in many of them, suggesting that these works of art could be understood on different levels by their contemporary viewers. Paintings by Hendrick Terbrugghen, Gerrit von Honthorst, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan de Bray, Abraham van Beyeren, and Ferdinand Bol are on view in this gallery.