← Fame through time1600-1699
The 17th century
Whose working lives fell in the 17th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 17th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Rembrandt22 decades - 2
Caravaggio22 decades - 3
Johannes Vermeer3 decades - 4
Peter Paul Rubens22 decades - 5
Diego Velázquez20 decades - 6
Gian Lorenzo Bernini13 decades - 7
Artemisia Gentileschi18 decades - 8
Anthony van Dyck4 decades - 9
Nicolas Poussin22 decades - 10
Francisco de Zurbarán12 decades - 11
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo20 decades - 12
Georges de La Tour9 decades - 13
Frans Halsnot measured- - 14
Jusepe de Ribera18 decades - 15
Guido Reni22 decades - 16
Claude Lorrain18 decades - 17
Charles Le Brun22 decades - 18
Guercino22 decades - 19
Jan Brueghel the Elder0 decades - 20
Philippe de Champaigne22 decades - 21
Hyacinthe Rigaud19 decades - 22
Carel Fabritius0 decades - 23
Salvator Rosa22 decades - 24
Jan Steen22 decades - 25
Pietro da Cortona22 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.