NORTHERN EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE

An interesting thing happened at the beginning of the fifteenth century: People became as interested in the world around them as they had previously been in the world beyond them. Explorers were sailing ships to the farthest reaches of the planet, thanks to advances in mapmaking; scholars began to unearth the classical teachings of the early Greeks and Romans; and intellectuals turned from studying theology—the study of religious faith, practice, and experience—to pursuing the study of human activities. We call this change in worldview humanism. This philosophical outlook helped spur a Renaissance of the arts.

Everyone was looking for adventure, for an escape from the confines of the systems and traditions of the times. Artists in all fields were seeking avenues of pursuit that included new ways to understand the world around them.

According to Frederick Edwards, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association: Renaissance Humanism developed toward the later stages of the Middle Ages. It is marked by a revival of classical letters and embodies a spirit of learning. The underlying philosophy includes man’s determination to discover truth for themselves. It went hand in hand with the emergence of secularism, which is the idea that people should be more interested in advancing their lives on earth than worrying about getting to heaven.

Here are your goals for this lesson:

OBJECTIVES

• Describe the impact of humanism and religious reform on the Renaissance.

• Explain the work of four Flemish painters.

• Identify the characteristics of Renaissance art in Northern Europe.

• List artistic innovations produced in Europe.

VOCABULARY

THE RENAISSANCE — A REBIRTH

For approximately two hundred years (between 1400 and 1600), Europe witnessed a flowering of the arts, including painting, sculpture, and architecture.

There are two main aspects of the Renaissance style:

• revival of the classical Greek and Roman forms

• emphasis on human activities rather than on purely religious concerns (humanism)

The Renaissance is most often associated with Italy, where it was born, and Italian artists, which we will examine in the next lesson, but in Northern Europe there were also important changes in approaches to art.

People in the Renaissance liked the idea of individualism. You were no longer just part of the crowd; instead, you were a person from a specific family, with talents of your own and the ability to determine the truth for yourself. Individualism was an important aspect of Renaissance art as well. Artists were no longer anonymous members of an artisan team; they became celebrated individuals, recognized for their talents. A signature of the individual artist on his work became the norm rather than the exception.

With this focus on humanistic values, artists examined this world and the lives of ordinary people for their inspiration rather than looking to heaven and the lives of saints and holy figures. This does not mean that religion was no longer of importance. It still had a place in the world of art, as you will see. For example, monumental altarpieces were still quite predominant, and religious symbols were integral to many paintings. But religion's role was more often relegated to its position in the lives of individual people, and some paintings were simply about the daily lives of people.

Three things rose to prominence during the Renaissance and can be seen as important themes in Renaissance art:

• fame (not so different from today!)

• fashion (clothes were elaborate works of art in themselves)

• feasting (forks were finally invented)

While men such as Columbus and Magellan were exploring the world, artists were also exploring new territories. For one thing, they turned to new materials, such as oil paint, which allowed for greater flexibility. In the Middle Ages, painters used tempera — a paint that dries quickly and must be applied with a light coat, because if it is applied too thickly, it tends to crack or flake. Oil paint, on the other hand, dries slowly so that an artist can rework areas while the paint is still wet, and it can be applied thickly, creating a deeper and richer look. The Flemish artists you will study below were among the first to use oils extensively. They superimposed glazes on a layer of underpainting. With oil paint, artists could create the illusion of glowing light and a newfound clarity of detail.

Painters in the Renaissance paid more attention to nature and to landscapes than ever before. In the images of the Middle Ages, the backgrounds were very general or artificial. In the Renaissance, painters were concerned with how light affects how we see. They put their efforts into depicting plants, the sky, and geographical formations. While portrait-painting was popular in the Renaissance, those pictures that usually hold the most interest for viewers today are those that tell a specific story. These stories often came from classical mythology or from the Bible. They were usually placed against a natural or architectural backdrop where the artist could render the subjects in any pose. The artist worked hard to capture a wide range of emotion as well.

Perspective

Perhaps the most important thing that happened in of the Renaissance era was the sudden concern with perspective. Like the Greeks many centuries earlier, artists of the Renaissance were interested in creating lifelike pictures. The painted surface became a reflection of the natural world. Suddenly, it became the job of the artist to depict the natural world in their art, and the painted surface was regarded as a window on the natural world. All objects were now required to relate to each other in proportion and rationality.

Perspective is an approximate representation on a flat surface, such as a canvas, of an image seen by the eye. The first characteristic of perspective is that objects are drawn smaller as their distance from the observer increases. This can be expressed in a painting by using orthogonal lines. These lines are not parallel on the canvas, but they are parallel in the real world.

Artists during the Renaissance learned to use these imaginary lines, which recede into the distance, to help draw the viewer's eye into the depth of the picture. The orthogonal lines would intersect at the vanishing point, which is the single point in a picture where all parallel lines that run from the viewer to the horizon line appear to converge. That point is usually placed at the viewer's eye level.

The second characteristic of perspective is the illusion of an object receding into the distance when the object points toward the viewer (called foreshortening). An example would be how a set of railroad track rails appear to move toward each other the farther away they are from the viewer.

FLEMISH ART OF THE RENAISSANCE –VAN EYCK AND VAN DER GOES

Humanism originated in Italy, but in the Netherlands (modern-day Flanders) and Germany, change was driven by the fervor of religious reform and the revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church—the Protestant reformation, led by Martin Luther. Luther criticized the immorality and corruption he saw in the Catholic Church. He wanted people to be able to study the Bible themselves, so he translated it from Latin into German and used the new technology of the printing press to spread his ideas. Many new believers then started churches of their own.

So now let's turn to Flanders to find out what the artists in that small country contributed to the Renaissance.

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck is credited as the founder of the Renaissance painting in the Netherlands. His artwork lacks all references to classical antiquity, or the Greco-Roman world. This is really what sets it apart from his Italian contemporaries.

The characteristics he is most noted for include:

• realism

• use of light

Jan van Eyck's portraits are known for their non-idealized realism. They're very true to life.

Read this article from the National Museum of London, and make note of the portrait in your online notebook: Jan van Eyck. 

Now look at this reproduction of the Arnolfini Portrait. Click on the image to enlarge it. You can zoom in on this picture for a closer look.

There are three innovative aspects of this painting that you should note:

• the convex mirror between the couple, which actually shows the reflection of the artist

• the artist's signature in Latin on the wall above the mirror, which reads "Jan van Eyck was here"

• symbolism: the objects in the painting can be interpreted as symbols:

  • the dog — faithfulness

  • the fruit — fertility

  • the solitary candle in the chandelier — the bridal candle or God's eye

Hugo van der Goes

Hugo van der Goes, creator of the Portinari Altarpice, was heavily influenced by Jan van Eyck. The Portinari Altarpiece, created in 1476, shocked all who saw it due to its realistic portrayal of a newborn infant lying on the ground.

The work was commissioned by the House of Medici in Bruges. (You will learn more about the Medici family when you learn about the Italian Renaissance.)

Things to note in this painting:

• variety of ornament and detail

• the organization of the figure groups

• sense of spatial depth

• emotional expressions of the individual figures

Notes

Below is the The Portinari Altarpiece.  

Look at this portion of the painting and consider what you notice about what is happening.

FLEMISH ART OF THE RENAISSANCE – BOSCH AND BRUEGHEL

Hieronymus Bosch was a highly original and unconventional painter, whose works are difficult to interpret. His most famous painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights, represents sin and redemption, and places on display a surreal world in which reality unfolds in nightmare.

The painting is a triptych more than seven feet high and more than twelve feet wide when opened. The central themes of the work are marriage, sex, and procreation. In the left-hand panel, God is presenting Eve to Adam. A strange fountain surrounded by weird images of animals can be seen in the background. The right panel depicts the horrors of hell. In the middle in the large central panel are images of nude figures enjoying themselves in a most unusual landscape.

Notes

Study The Garden of Earthly Delights, then write a paragraph in your notes, answering the question: What do you think it means?

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Later, many Flemish artists of the 16th century were following the lead of the Italians, but Pieter Brueghel the Elder, like Hieronymus Bosch, was an original. He adapted the early style of Flemish painters in his own paintings and included images representing folk proverbs and satire.

He was also known for his landscapes and genre works—scenes of peasants and events from daily life.

Brueghel's painting The Triumph of Death certainly shows aspects of everyday life in the 16th century, from the clothing to the pastimes such as playing cards and backgammon. But in a satirical twist, it also shows armies of skeletons, lead by Death (in the foreground), that eventually kill everyone. The message is that no one escapes death, and that when faced with it, humanity is not heroic. Bosch's influence on Brueghel is apparent in the profusion of scenes and sense of morality (and mortality) in the painting.

Brueghel had been to Italy, and he lived and worked in Antwerp and Brussels. He is known as a master of genre. And his paintings are said to display a virtuoso ability. Notice in his painting The Peasant Wedding how the detail nearly makes each person an individual portrait.

RENAISSANCE ART IN GERMANY - DÜRER

Albrecht Dürer

Dürer's engravings were immensely influential and highly imaginative. As you can see from the example, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), he developed a keen ability to use perspective.

Dürer is considered the first great Protestant painter, incorporating religious themes into his works. He also created art using allegorical and classical subject matter. One of his later pieces is the Four Apostles (c. 1526).

LET'S REVIEW!

In this lesson, you have covered the following topics:

• the innovations in painting and print-making during the Renaissance in Northern Europe

• Jan van Eyck's role in the introduction of oil painting

• early examples of symbolism in painting

• the emotional qualities of Hugo van der Goes' work

• the first Protestant painter, Albrecht Dürer

• the attention paid to perspective and proportion by painters.

Complete the quiz before moving on.