The World's Largest Public Domain Media Search Engine
Pieter van der Heyden - The Fall of the Magician

Similar

Pieter van der Heyden - The Fall of the Magician

description

Summary

Public domain scan of Dutch print from Metropolitan Museum of Art, free to use, no copyright restrictions - Picryl description

The roots of the Flemish school are usually placed in Dijon, the capital of the dukes of Burgundy where Philip the Bold (reigned 1363–1404) established a tradition of art patronage. Philip the Good (reigned 1419–67) moved the Burgundian capital to Brugge (Bruges). The largest county in the Southern Netherlands was Flanders and the term Flanders is often used to refer to the whole of the Southern Netherlands. Flanders produced many famous artists of Northern Europe. Arts flourished in the County of Flanders and neighboring Brabant, Hainaut, Picardy, Artois, and Tournaisis, from the early 15th century until the 17th century. In the 15th century and up to 1520 Flaundry was a part of Early Netherlandish art with the center in Antwerp. It gradually became distinct from the art of the rest of the Low Countries, especially the modern Netherlands by the end of the 16th century, when the north and the south Netherlands were politically separated. During the last quarter of the 16th century, political unrest between the northern and southern parts of the Netherlands brought a decline in Flemish art. Many Flemish artists left the Southern Netherlands for Rome, Germany, or the Dutch Republic. After Twelve Year Truce, Flemish art revived.

The term "Northern Renaissance" refers to the art development of c.1430-1580 in the Netherlands Low Countries and Germany. The Low Countries, particularly Flanders with cities Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges, were, along with Florence, the most economically advanced region in Europe. As in Florence, urban culture peaked here. The common understanding of the Renaissance places the birth of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. Rennaisance's ideas migrated to Germany from Italy because of the travels of Albrecht Dϋrer. Northern artists such as Jan van Eyck remained attached to Medieval traditions. In their paintings, Low Countries painters attempted to reproduce space, color, volume, and light as naturalistically as possible. They achieved the perfection of oil paint in the almost impossible representation of things and objects. Rather than draw upon Classical Greek and Roman aesthetics like their Italian counterparts, Northern European Renaissance artists retained a Gothic sensibility of woodblock printing and illuminated manuscripts which clearly distinguished Northern Rennaisance art from Italian. Unlike Italian artists, northern painters were not interested in rediscovering the spirit of ancient Greece. Instead, they sought to exploit the full potential of oil paint, and capture nature exactly as they found it. Unlike their Italian counterparts, who embraced a mathematically calculated linear perspective and constructed a picture from within, Dutch artists used an empirical perspective with precise observation and knowledge of the consistency of light and things. They painted as they saw and came very close to the effect of central perspective. Long before Leonardo, they invented aerial and color perspectives. More, as with real-world human vision, their far-away shapes lose contours, and the intensity of the colors fades to a bluish hue. Robert Campin (c.1378-1444), was noted for works like the Seilern Triptych (1410) and the Merode Altarpiece (1425); Jan van Eyck (1390-1441) was noted for the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and The Arnolfini Marriage (1434); Jan Eyck's pupil Petrus Christus (c.1410-75), best known for his Portrait of a Young Girl (1470, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin); Roger Van der Weyden (1400-64) noted for his extraordinary realism as in his masterpiece Descent From the Cross (Deposition) (1435), for the Church of Notre Dame du Dehors (now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid); Dieric Bouts (1420-75) for his devotional pictures; Hugo Van Der Goes (1440-82) famous for The Portinari Altarpiece (1475) which influenced the Early Renaissance in Florence; Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) noted for The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510-15) and other moralizing works; Joachim Patenier (1485-1524) the pioneer landscape painter; and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569) known for landscape narratives such as The Tower of Babel (1563).

date_range

Date

1565
create

Source

Metropolitan Museum of Art
copyright

Copyright info

Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication ("CCO 1.0 Dedication")

Explore more

pieter bruegel the elder
pieter bruegel the elder