Fear, sadness, surprise, anger, lust and love - virtually nothing was more important in the paintings of the Golden Age than convincingly depicting human emotions. In this publication, the Frans Hals Museum and Rembrandt expert Gary Schwartz present a selection of masterpieces in which these emotions are sublimely portrayed.

According to seventeenth-century connoisseurs, the beauty of a painting was not even half as important as the passions that could be seen in that painting; they formed the 'soul' of the work. Painters such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Maerten van Heemskerck and Cornelis van Haarlem were masters at depicting a range of emotions. Their works are presented in a new context - the emotional life - and with a focus on the flourishing scientific study of emotions in our own time. Emotions will be published in conjunction with the first exhibition in the Netherlands to present this essential component of painting.