The Master of the Humble Hearth In the golden light of the seventeenth-century Netherlands, where grand maritime triumphs and aristocratic portraits often commanded the gaze of history, there existed a quieter, more profound beauty found in the shadows of a village cottage. Adriaen Jansz Hendricx, known to the world by his adopted name Adriaen van Ostade, was the preeminent chronicler of this modest existence. Born in Haarlem around 1…