Works by Dirck Hals, Gerard ter Borch, Frans van Mieris, Jan Vermeer van Delft, and many lesser masters show these new profits turned into tiled floors, glass windows, well-made furniture, thick tablecloths, and musical instruments.[21] Some have argued that this can all be dismissed because this genre of painting depicted a fantasy world that never existed in reality.[22] Exaggeration and stylization were certainly present, but, as historian Jan de Vries makes clear, what he calls the “New Luxury” (generated by urban society) was real: not striving for grandeur and excess, but evinced in
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