tch Middle Class which formed the foundation of its society due to the fact that leadership was maintained throughout the revolt by the patricians at heads of towns. It was hatred of the tyrannical rule of Spain, symbolised by Alva’s council of troubles which temporarily united the bourgeois. As a result of this, there was a great deal of local autonomy in the way that the provinces were ruled and a democratic structure prevailed, which seemed far from the centrally controlled absolute monarchies of other European countries. In terms of art, the fact that political power and patronage rested in the hands of the landowning classes ensured that the types of paintings commissioned would reflect not large dynastic values and aristocratic allegory but the values and beliefs of the middle class, and thus a certain verisimilitude which was not present previously. This realism stems from the humanitarian political outlook of the revolt, which ensured that paintings would attempt to represent truth. Pictures were often smaller in size, and a domestic necessity to be displayed in the houses of most Dutch classes, as a reminder of their political successes achieved and the egalitarian nature of their society. To exemplify these types of painting see figures. It seems that the revolt acted as a catalyst in allowing what were seen as traditional Dutch rights of political freedom to be truly articulated, and once the Dutch felt that this freedom was established, there could be an unleashing of unparalleled economic prosperity, mostly from the mercantile elite who took advantage of the trading opportunities produced as an outcome of the revolt.The revolt directly allowed the firm economic basis of the republic to be established, and it is for this reason that contemporaries viewed Dutch society as experiencing a golden age. There are two main events of the revolt which allowed Amsterdam to be viewed as an entrepot of European trade: firstly the ...
