Restrained Grandeur.

As in England, a severe classicism free from a great deal of ornamentation was typical of most Dutch architecture in the seventeenth century. As a trading empire, the country's merchants were in frequent contact with the world that lay beyond their canals, dikes, and interior seas. Dutch traders and architects were frequent visitors to Italy, France, and England, although they generally shunned the elaborately ornamented spaces of the Roman Baroque as well as the severe grandeur of the court culture of nearer Versailles. During this Golden Age in the country's history, a fondness for classical design, much of it influenced by the relative severity of figures like Inigo Jones and Andrea Palladio, prevailed. The country's ethos—shaped by Calvinism and the sixteenth-century fight for independence from Catholic Spain—meant that the seventeenth century was...