1 Fine Large Early 17th Century Oil Painting Portrait Important Dutch Golden Age Merchant Gentleman. Three quarter length front profile view portrait of a wealthy bearded Dutch Merchant Gentleman.He is wearing an elaborate wide white ruff lace collar cuffs and having a sumptuous black costume which is the highest fashion for the period and indicated the sitter is of significant importance and wealth in Dutch society. He has such a powerful pose by his standing posture with 1 arm leaning over a table and his other hand placed on his hip, he is looking directly at the viewer. He has a well groomed brown beard & hair. You can see he is wearing a gold ring on his little finger and is wearing a chained loop belt. Furthermore to the top right section of the painting is a fabulous cartouche containing winged cherubs on either side with a pictorial of a key, which is so unusual & intriguing.Oil on canvas.Hanging wire thread on the back ready for immediate home wall display.Latin inscription Atatis Suae 39, Ani 1625`.Unsigned by A Dutch School artist.Circa 17th century dated 1625, the sitters age is also stated as being 39 in his prime when he was painted.Provenance formally from a large mansion home in Cheshre and purchased from a fine art auction label verso.A great conversation & statement work of art. In just over one hundred years, the provinces of the Northern Netherlands went from relative obscurity as the poor cousins of the industrious and heavily urbanized Southern Netherlands provinces of Flanders and Brabant to the pinnacle of European commercial success. Taking advantage of a favorable agricultural base, the Dutch achieved success in the fishing industry and the Baltic and North Sea carrying trade during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before establishing a far-flung maritime empire in the seventeenth century.In many respects the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic inherited the economic successes of the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands. For centuries, Flanders and to a lesser extent Brabant had been at the forefront of the medieval European economy. An indigenous cloth industry was present throughout all areas of Europe in the early medieval period, but Flanders was the first to develop the industry with great intensity. A tradition of cloth manufacture in the Low Countries existed from antiquity when the Celts and then the Franks continued an active textile industry learned from the Romans.Industries also developed as a result of overseas colonial trade, in particular Amsterdam’s sugar refining industry. During the sixteenth century, Antwerp had been Europe’s most important sugar refining city, a title it inherited from Venice once the Atlantic sugar islands began to surpass Mediterranean sugar production. Once Antwerp fell to Spanish troops during the Revolt, however, Amsterdam replaced it as Europe’s dominant sugar refiner. The number of sugar refineries in Amsterdam increased from a...