The seventeenth century in western Europe is sometimes called the Age of Absolutism because rulers wanted complete control of their subjects. The most important of these monarchs—Louis XIV of France, Philip IV of Spain, and Charles I of England—used the arts in the service of their political agenda. With Europe now split into Catholic and Protestant countries, the prevailing Baroque style varied according to national tastes. In Protestant Holland, art tended to be more secular than in Catholic countries. New art genres—notably, landscape and still life—evolved in Holland and elsewhere. Trade with India produced cross-cultural motifs, especially under the Mughal dynasty, which, contrary to Islamic tradition, encouraged figurative painting.
The eighteenth century, called both the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, boasted new discoveries in science, a wealth of musicians—including Bach, Haydn, and Mozart—and political philosophers who challenged the divine right of kings. With the death of Louis XIV, the center of French patronage moved from the court at Versailles to Paris, and the predominant art style became Rococo—a fussy, frivolous version of Baroque with occasional undercurrents of serious satire. The so-called Bourgeois Realism of Chardin emphasized the virtues of everyday hard work. At the end of the eighteenth century, two great revolutions—the American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789—shattered the age-old notion that kings rule by divine right.