To compare the House of Orange to the Barberini as patrons of the arts may seem more than a little preposterous. The Barberini were after all legendary patrons and the House of Orange is still considered by most a perpetual disappointment in that regard. Even the most old-fashioned histories of art, with their systematic non-coverage of patronage, exalt the Barberini, while none even mention the House of Orange. How could those Dutch Calvinist minor-league aristocrats match up to the most extravagant princes of the world-church Rome had ever seen except in pathetic inferiority?... [This is a chapter excerpted from "Medieval Renaissance Baroque: A Cat's Cradle for Marilyn Aronberg Lavin," edited by David A. Levine and Jack Freiberg (Italica Press, New York, 2010).]