"Kolakowski, as we will see, has clearly depicted the religious life and the forms of community constructed by the cultured strata of the Dutch bourgeoisie. Spinoza lives in this world, with a vast network of simple and sociable friendships and correspondences. But for certain determinate strata of the bourgeoisie the sweetness of the cultured and sedate life is accompanied, without any contradiction, by an association with a capitalist Power ('potestas'), expressed in very mature terms. This is the condition of a Dutch bourgeois man. We could say the same thing for the other genius of that age, Rembrandt van Rijn. On his canvases the power of light is concentrated with intensity on the figures of a bourgeois world in terrific expansion. It is a prosaic but very powerful society, which makes poetry without knowing it because it has the force to do so."
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Quote of Antonio Negri (1991), in Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics, translated from the Italian original by Michael Hardt
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rembrandt
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Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in history.
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