Adriaen van de Venne

Adriaen van de Venne worked in Middelburg, a port right on the fault line of the Eighty Years' War, where the Protestant north and Catholic south of the Low Countries were tearing apart. In 1614 he turned that conflict into a picture called Fishing for Souls, where rival boatloads of clergy haul converts out of a river, a wry comment on the whole religious contest that ran past his own front door.

Born in Delft in 1589, he trained first with a goldsmith, then learned engraving, and settled in Middelburg where the example of the Brueghels shaped his crowded, story-filled scenes. Later he moved to The Hague and joined the painters' guild there.

For much of his life his fame rested on grisailles, pictures painted almost entirely in shades of grey and brown, full of peasants, beggars and fools acting out proverbs, many of them drawn from the popular verses of the poet Jacob Cats. He also helped found Confrerie Pictura, an early society meant to raise the standing of painters as more than tradesmen.