Master Strokes: Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Golden Age review – a lust for life

Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Flemish are precise and the Dutch are florid – but they all share a Falstaffian appetite for life. Innkeeper, more beer!

Related: Rubens, Rubens, everywhere

Dutch and Flemish art are as different as gouda and pancakes – at least it seems that way, looking at oil paintings. In the Renaissance, these regions of northern Europe were divided by war and religion. The birth of the Dutch Republic in 1581 created a Protestant but tolerant culture whose merchants rapidly spanned the globe and brought wealth and energy to Amsterdam. Meanwhile, the Flemish region that would become modern Belgium remained Catholic and under Spanish rule.

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