To dwell here upon the Italianizing versifiers, moralists and pastoral romancers who attempted to refine the vernacular of the Romancero would be superfluous.
France had already absorbed the earlier Renaissance in an Italianizing spirit before the Reformation made itself felt as a political actuality.
The animal vigour and carnal enjoyment of Rubens, the refined Italianizing beauty of Vandyck, the mystery of light and gloom on Rembrandt's panels, the love of nature in Ruysdael, Cuyp and Van Hooghe, with their luminously misty skies, silvery daylight and broad expanse of landscape, the interest in common life displayed by Ter Borch, Van Steen, Douw, Ostade and Teniers, the instinct for the beauty of animals in Potter, the vast sea spaces of Vanderveldt, the grasp on reality, the acute intuition into character in portraits, the scientific study of the world and man, the robust sympathy with natural appetites, which distinguish the whole art of the Low Countries, are a direct emanation from the Renaissance.
