Why Are There So Many Soldiers in Dutch Genre Painting? | Amor Sciendi 

Hi! As an Artist and art Historian, I can actually give you the real reason for the “inverted” colours of the map: *the land portions were not originally blue*. This is a case of what’s called “blue sickness” or “green sickness”. The original colour of the land was green, but the orpiment yellow that Vermeer (and everyone else who wanted exceptionally vibrant greens) used to achieve that luxurious green shade has faded, leaving the blue alone. You can see this phenomenon in many Dutch golden age paintings (notably vermeer’s view of an alley and willem van aelst’s flower still-life with a watch). It’s actually a testament to the higher quality of the painting in the estimation of its contemporaries than the reverse: you couldn’t get such rich greens without it.

This was… wow. What a wonderful deep dive. I’m blown away. Thank you for this.

Super enjoyable video. Well done sir! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Amazingly great content, so insightful. Thank you very much for sharing 👏

Fascinating backstory. That was a real deep dive! If only we had written documents from that time, to learn about how these painting were seen/interpreted by people back then. It wasn't not even all that long ago, after all.

I love it when you you review art from my home region! :) The Dutch word "Burger" just means "Civilian". Also "Stad" means "City", so "Stadhouder" translates literally to "City holder", but "Governor" is probably the more appropriate translation. I think in that time Dutch boys/men at a certain age had to go through mandatory military service, hence why there are so many soldiers, but I am uncertain about this, so don't quote me on that and please check with a Dutch historian, who is experienced in that time period. The Netherlands abolished mandatory military service only three decades ago, mostly because in the 1980s it was considered a joke and waste of time back then. Also I have heard the paint colour blue was very difficult to obtain in the Middle Ages, so if a painting depicts something as blue, it might not have been blue in real life and it was only used to show off wealth in the trend of "look at me, I can afford a painting with blue colours" or it might have been embarrassing if the painting didn't have any blue colours or something like that. Again, not certain about this and I have only heard about this from hearsay , please check with a Dutch historian to be completely sure. More Dutch and Belgian paintings please, they are fascinating! :)

Agree with you about not making a "taste of the burghers" joke - that would have been far too cheesy. On a less silly note - I really liked this! Thankyou for making it.

Fascinating. Thank you.

the woman with the letter looks pregnant to me