The Dutch painter Frans Hals displays exceptional brilliance in his group portraits, including several of the civic guards of Haarlem

The battle of the White Mountain, to the west of Prague, ends the brief reign of Frederick V in Bohemia

Delft becomes the centre for tin-glazed earthenware in nothern Europe, specializing in the blue-and-white Chinese style

In his Novum Organum Francis Bacon introduces a modern philosophy of experimental science

The Dutch West India Company is chartered to trade and found colonies anywhere along the entire American coast

John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's

Bernini's youthful Pluto and Proserpina, suggesting soft flesh in cold marble, introduces the lively tradition of baroque sculpture

The Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck begins a five-year stay, and a successful career as a portrait painter, in Genoa

John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio

Diego Velazquez becomes court painter to the king of Spain - a post which he will hold for the remaining thirty-seven years of his life

Nicolas Poussin arrives in Rome, where he develops the tradition of French classicism

Gustavus II, king of Sweden, conscripts and trains an army far more mobile than those of his rivals

Ordnance factories in Sweden begin producing light but powerful field artillery, easy to move on the battlefield

Rubens completes a great narrative sequence of twenty-one paintings to celebrate the achievements of Marie de Médicis

On the death of his father, James VI and I, Charles I becomes king of England and Scotland

The English parliament attempts to clip the wings of the new king, Charles I, by placing an annual limit on his power to raise taxes

Claude Lorrain, basing himself like Poussin in Rome, paints classical landscapes suffused in light

William Harvey publishes a short book, De Motu Cordis, proving the circulation of the blood

The English parliament's Petition of Right emphasizes the right of the citizen to be protected from royal tyranny

The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn develops a life-long interest in self-portraiture

After years of warfare, the truce of Altmark gives Estonia and most of Latvia to Sweden

The sculptor and architect Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini is given the task of adding the drama of baroque to the newly completed St Peter's in Rome

John Winthrop, appointed governor of the new Massachusetts Bay Company, sails from England with 700 settlers

Gustavus II and the Swedish army win a conclusive victory over the imperial forces at Breitenfeld

Rembrandt moves from his home town of Leiden to set up a studio in Amsterdam