Art Ownership in Leiden in the Seventeenth Century

This article originally appeared as “Kunstbezit in Leiden in de 17de eeuw” in Th. H. Lunsingh-Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5b, (Leiden: Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1990), 3–36. The larger publication comprises eleven volumes on the architecture, interior decoration, residents’ histories, and contents of the houses in this section of the Rapenburg, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Fock’s chapter centers on art owned by collectors and others living on Leiden’s famous canal—their professions, social status, the kinds of art that they had in their possession, and the positioning of those works within their households. Works have been identified with the aid of auction catalogues and public notarial inventories.