Reference materials on European painting of the seventeenth century are generally restricted to a roster of a few dozen great masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Caravaggio, and Velazquez, but this Golden Age produced hundreds of prodigiously talented painters. Almost 300--mainly Dutch, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish--are here given biographical coverage based on an extensive bibliography of contemporaneous, later, and recent scholarship. Attention is focused on training, travel, commissions, stylistic influences and legacy, and pupils. For each artist, the oeuvre is analyzed with reference to major works, and a detailed list of additional works with museum holdings is appended. References are keyed to the backmatter bibliography, and museum citations refer to a list of 183 collections around the world. An appendix groups the featured artists by nationality, and an index completes the volume.
