From the early 1400s to the late 1600s, the cities of the Low Countries (now Belgium and Holland) were the most exciting urban centers of Northern Europe. Bruges in the fifteenth century, Antwerp in the sixteenth, and Amsterdam in the seventeenth laid the foundations of modern capitalism and produced some of the most dazzling art of any period. This course examines how politics and religion shaped the Low Countries in this period of extraordinary growth, which produced artists of the caliber of Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Vermeer, Judith Leyster, and Rembrandt van Rijn. The Worcester Art Museum has a superb collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Northern European art, so we will visit multiple times during the semester.