dutch naturalism

Dutch naturalism was the artistic expression of a vast cultural and social shift taking place in northern Europe. Rapidly expanding global trade and rising prosperity, particularly in the Netherlands and England, was weakening the influence of the Renaissance on these non-Mediterranean countries. An increasingly wealthy commercial class had little use for worshipping an idealized past. At the same time, empirical science entered the cultural mainstream. The latter's objective, fact-based ethos was quite inimical to the idealism of Italian post-Renaissance painting.