The Baroque was an intensely exciting period in human history. Its art reflects new discoveries and ways of thinking about mankind’s relation to the expanding world, now comprising the Americas, and new tendencies in religious, philosophical, scientific and political thought. This focused but wide-ranging exhibition demonstrates the role the graphic arts played in disseminating and shaping the seventeenth-century worldview. Eleven thematic sections examine how both well-known artists such as Rembrandt but also lesser-known but equally vital names depicted such major subjects as portraits, landscapes and cityscapes, subjects from contemporary history and antiquity, as well as pure creations of the human imagination.

Selected from the Frank Raysor Collection and the Harnett Print Study Center Collection, the exhibition features works by more than thirty artists, such as Jan Both (Dutch, 1618-1652), Jacques Callot (French, 1592-1635), Stefano della Bella (Italian, 1610-1664), Hendrick Goudt (Dutch, 1583-1648), Wenceslaus Hollar (Bohemian, 1607-1677), Claude Lorrain (French, 1604-1682), and Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628-1682).