Joost van den Vondel (, 17 November 1587 – 5 February 1679) was a Dutch writer and playwright. He is considered the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright of the 17th century. His plays are the ones from that period that are still most frequently performed, and his epic Joannes de Boetgezant (1662), on the life of John the Baptist, has been called the greatest Dutch epic.
Performances of his theatre pieces occur regularly. The most visible was the annual performance, on New Year's Day from 1637 to 1968, of Gijsbrecht van Aemstel.
Vondel stayed productive until a very old age. Several of his most notable plays like Lucifer and Adam in Ballingschap were written after 1650, when he was already 65.
Famous quotes containing the words van and/or den:
“It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after van Gogh’s stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.””
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 19:45,46.