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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ARTISTIC INNOVATIONS IN FIFTEENTH–
CENTURY NORTHERN EUROPE
Closer Look:
Jan and Hubert van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece (closed)
Jan and Hubert van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece (open)
Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife
Courtly Art: The International Gothic
Key Images
Claus Sluter, The Well of Moses, p. 471, 14.1
Melchior Broederlam, Infancy of Christ panels, wings of the altarpiece of the Chartreuse
were made for an elite audience who would have understood the complex imagery.
Urban Centers and the New Art
Key Images
Façade of Bruges Town Hall, p. 477, 14.7
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Materials and Techniques: Panel Paintings in Tempera and Oil, p. 479
Primary Source: Cyriacus of Ancona (1449), p. 485
Artists in the urban centers of the Southern Netherlands made works that were
legible to the viewer. These images were often oil on wood, and the sacred
figures resembled everyday people.
Portraits were very naturalistic with extreme detail.
Late Fifteenth-Century Art in the Netherlands
Key Images
Gerard Loyet, Statuette of Charles the Bold, p. 488, 14.17
Mary of Burgundy Painter, page with Mary at Her Devotions, from the Hours of Mary of
: Scientific and Technical Study of Paintings
Primary Source: Fray José de Sigüenza (1544?-1606), from The History of the Order of
St. Jerome, p. 494
world of fantasy and challenging interpretations.
Regional Responses to the Early Netherlandish Style
Key Images
Jean Fouquet, Étienne Chevalier and St. Stephen, left wing of the Melun Diptych, p. 495,
14.24
Primary Source: From the Contract for the St. Wolfgang Altarpiece, p. 499
The technical and stylistic innovations of the Netherlands were adopted by artists in
other regions.
Printing and the Graphic Arts
Key Images
Buxheim St. Christopher, p. 500, 14.29
Jacques Daret, woodcut of St. Christopher, Annunciation (detail), p. 501, 14.30
Martin Schongauer, The Temptation of St. Anthony, p. 502, 14.31
Scholar in Study Ship of Fools, p. 502, 14.32
The new technology of printmaking contributed to the spread of these variations on
Key Terms/Places/Names
diptych
glazes
impasto
atmospheric perspective
woodcuts
block books
Discussion Questions
1. How would you define the use of artistic imagination in the works of Hieronymus
Bosch and Martin Schongauer?
2. In what ways did the advent of printmaking affect Western culture in the fifteenth
century?
6. Under Emperor Charles IV, what city became a center of learning?
7. What is one interpretation of why Claus Sluter have added the detail of bronze
spectacles to one of the prophets in The Well of Moses (14.1)?
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Resources
Books
Dhanens, Elizabeth. Van Eyck: The Ghent Altarpiece. New York: Viking, 1973.