JAN VAN EYCK AND THE BIRTH OF THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE
Jan van Eyck, (bef. 1395 -1441) is widely considered as one of the most important artists of the Northern Renaissance. His naturalistic panel paintings, mostly portraits and religious subjects, made extensive use of disguised religious symbols. His best known work is the altarpiece in the cathedral at Ghent, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also called the Ghent Altarpiece 1432) – possibly executed in collaboration with his brother Hubert van Eyck. No less famous is the Arnolfini Portrait from the National Gallery in London, whose dense symbolism has led to wide-ranging interpretations about its meaning. In this series of three lectures, we will explore his ways or thinking, composing, and painting by a closer examination of these, as well as numerous other of his exquisitely crafted masterpieces.
1. The Art of Devotion
2. The Ghent Altarpiece
3. Portraits - Arnolfini and Beyond
ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN
Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1399–1464) was one of the most influential Early Netherlandish painters, renowned for his emotionally charged and technically refined religious works. A master of oil painting, he combined the detailed naturalism of Jan van Eyck with a powerful sense of drama and pathos. His figures, often set against shallow, gold-toned or architectural backgrounds, are noted for their graceful forms, delicate features, and expressive gestures. Unlike some contemporaries, he rarely signed his works, yet his style—marked by clarity, realism, and devotional intensity—was widely imitated. Van der Weyden played a key role in shaping Northern Renaissance art, bridging the Gothic tradition with a new, more personal vision of religious experience.
Rogier van der Weyden and the Art of Portraiture
Paintings and Prayers: Objects for Private Devotion
The Great Altarpieces
PAINTING MIRACLES: NORTHERN RENAISSANCE ART AFTER VAN EYCK
Jan van Eyck (ca, 1390?-1441) is widely regarded as the father of the Northern Renaissance. While we do not know much about his disciples, his artistic explorations were continued by a host of equally remarkable painters of the following generation. In this course, we look more closely at several of these great masters and their seminal works.
1. Rogier van der Weyden
2. Petrus Christus
3. Hugo van der Goes
4. Hans Memling
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE "NORTHERN LEONARDO"
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is widely considered as the greatest artist of his generation in the northern Renaissance. In many respects, he is the closest equivalent of the idea of a “universal man” typically associated with his older Italian contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).
Like Leonardo, he had an inexhaustible curiosity about the world, which resulted in a rich body of visual records: from close studies to plants and animals, landscapes and city views, or diverse human beings he encountered on his various travels. Like his Italian counterpart, he saw the art of visual representation as a mode of knowledge – as demonstrated both by his attention to observation and fine detail, and by his various theoretical writings.
Last but not least, he was one of the most self-conscious artists of his generation. Though he repeatedly wrote that the highest goal of any artist is to honor God, he was deeply invested in his self-fashioning as a practitioner of the noble art of painting. In this series of lecture, we look more deeply at the variety of his artistic accomplishments.
Dürer - Private and Public Life
Artist, Scientist, Philosopher
Dürer and Religion
Dürer on Paper - drawings and prints
HOLBEIN AND HIS TIME
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) is one of the finest and most inventive artists of the 16th century. Best remembered for his portraits of courtiers, merchants, scholars, and statesmen, he was active mostly in Switzerland and England, where he served as a court painter to Henry VIII (1491–1547). Though his portraits are often praised for their incredible life-like qualities, they are also sophisticated statements about the personal idetity of the sitters, as well as their social and cultural aspirations. In addition to his remarkable skills at capturing character in painting, he was also a prolific draughtsman, as well as a designer of prints for books and personal emblems. Our four-part series takes closer look both at works in this exhibition and those that he is best known for, such as The Ambassadors, as well as many other portraits of humanists, merchants, and courtiers.
1. Holbein and the Humanist Culture
2. The Tudor Court
3. Merchants and Ambassadors
4. Holbein on Paper
Painting on the cusp of the medieval and Renaissance worlds, Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) continues to fascinate us with his fantastic imagery and densely symbolic messages. Though little is known about his background, this Netherlandish painter seems both to express the spiritual dilemmas of his generation and to exist in a timeless world of his own. His most famous painting, Garden of Earthly Delights, has been interpreted in myriads of ways, none of them conclusive or mutually exclusive. So have many of his other works, which offer countless imaginative perspectives on human foibles and temptations, and, more rarely, hint at the possibility of salvation. Even after the recent exhibitions and publications prompted by the 400th anniversary of his death, many of his masterpieces remain as perplexing as they probably appeared to their original viewers. This four-session mini course examines some of the most important facets of his work and legacy.
1. The World out of Joint
2. Paintings as Moral Lessons
3. The Garden of Earthly Delights
4. Bosch, his Imitators, and his Legacy
PIETER BRUEGEL
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569) came from a Netherlandish family of artists that spanned several generations. Wonderfully inventive as a painter and printmaker, he gained particular esteem among his contemporaries for his scenes of daily life. Yet the “peasant” Bruegel, as he was called on account of his repeated return to the mores of the rural folk, was also steeped in the humanist culture of his era. In this four-session course, we explore the various facets of his artistry that have secured this painter and printmaker such a special place in our collective memory.
Creation of an Artistic Identity
Bruegel and the humanist culture of his time
Bruegel on paper – drawings and prints
Bruegel’s followers and interpreters
JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIC PAINTING
These days, Jan Brueghel the Elder is most often mentioned in the context of discussions of the work of his famous father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Yet, during his life (1568-1625), he was widely regarded as one of the finest living artists in Flanders and beyond - especially in the genres of landscape painting, flower still lifes, and learned allegories.
Like his father, he imbued his paintings with formal and symbolic complexity, which invite careful looking and deep consideration. The high esteem in which he was held is also attested by his frequent collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens, with whom he created one of the most sophisticated cycles of paintings on the subject of the five senses.
In this series of three lectures, we explore the ways in which he fashioned his works as veritable pictorial encyclopedias of the ever expanding world of the late Renaissance.
Brueghel and the Flowers of the World
Landscape and Allegory
Representing Knowledge through the Senses
ANATOMY OF A MASTERPIECE: THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE
Some works of art become famous because they seem to provide a memorable expression of the cultural ideals of a particular society. Some gain their place within the canon because of the ways in which they subvert those very ideals. Still others become important not merely on account of their “quality”, if one can even use that term, but also because of the many questions they continue to raise and leave frustratingly open-ended. We may know their authors and the circumstances of their creation, but are unable to reach conclusions regarding their “meanings,” or how they would have been understood by contemporary viewers. In this series of lectures, we explore three works of art from the Northern Renaissance – highlighting both what makes them exceptional, and how they fit within their broader social and cultural context.
1: Jan van Eyck - The Ghent Altarpiece
2: Hans Holbein - The Ambassadors
3: Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus