(Series) Dutch Art and the City: Commerce, Trade, and Art in the 17th Century
Wed, Oct 21
|Online and Replay
In five sessions, explore how trade, finance, and maritime power shaped Dutch art from the sea paintings of van de Velde to Rembrandt's merchant portraits.
Time & Location
Oct 21, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Online and Replay
About the Event
Session 2: 21/10/2026
The First Capitalists
The Dutch Republic invented tools of capitalism that the world is still using — the publicly traded company, the stock exchange, the central bank, futures trading, and sophisticated systems of credit and insurance. Alongside these financial innovations ran a manufacturing sector of remarkable efficiency, from Delft pottery to Leiden textiles to the vast shipbuilding yards of the Zaan. This talk asks how this machinery of prosperity made itself visible in art — in the images of the Amsterdam Exchange, the great warehouses and weighhouses, the maps and printed broadsides of a society that measured, recorded, and pictured everything it owned.
delivered by Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff in partnership with New York Y92 Roundtable. You will be redirected to their website for booking.