Jan Miense Molenaer

The Frans Hals Museum is a hofje and municipal museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. The museum was founded in 1862 in the newly renovated former cloister located in the back of the Haarlem city hall known as the Prinsenhof. The collection is based on the wealthy collection of the city hall itself,... including more than a dozen paintings by Frans Hals, for whom it is named, but also contains other interesting Haarlem art from the 15th century up to the present day. The collection moved to the present location in 1913, and the modern collection is located in the two buildings on the town square called the Hallen, for the former occupations of the buildings, the Fish Hall and the Meat Hall. The main collection, including the Frans Hals paintings, is currently located on the Klein Heiligland, across the street from the Haarlem historical museum. The classical collection is housed in the old Oudemannenhuis , a home for elderly men founded in 1609. The residential rooms were situated around a courtyard in the style of contemporary Haarlem Hofjes.
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The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of... Europe. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word "barroco", Spanish "barroco", or French "baroque", all of which refer to a "rough or imperfect pearl", though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain.
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Judith Jans Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter. She was one of three significant women artists in Dutch Golden Age painting; the other two, Rachel Ruysch and Maria van Oosterwijk, were specialized painters of flower still-lifes, while Leyster painted genre works, a few portraits, and a single... still life. The number of surviving works attributed to her varies between fewer than 20 and about 35. She largely gave up painting after her marriage, which produced five children. Leyster was born in Haarlem as the eighth child of Jan Willemsz Leyster, a local brewer and clothmaker. While the details of her training are uncertain, in her teens she was well enough known to be mentioned in a Dutch book by Samuel Ampzing titled Beschrijvinge ende lof der stadt Haerlem, originally written in 1621, revised in 1626-27, and published in 1628. She learned to paint from Frans Pietersz de Grebber, who was running a respected workshop in Haarlem in the 1620's. Her first known signed work is dated 1629, four years before entering the artist's guild. By 1633, she was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St.
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