History of Dutch and Flemish painting |
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The art of the Low Countries consists of painting, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, pottery, and other forms of visual art produced in the Low Countries, and since the 19th century in Belgium in the southern Netherlands and the Netherlands in the north.
From the late Middle Ages until about 1700 the Low Countries were a leading force in the art of northern Europe, thereafter becoming less important. In the earlier High Middle Ages Mosan art, from an area partly in the Low Countries, had had a similar role.
The art of the Low Countries includes the traditions of Early Netherlandish painting and the Renaissance in the Low Countries, before the political separation of the region. After the separation, a protracted process lasting between 1568 and 1648, Dutch Golden Age painting in the north and Flemish Baroque painting, especially the art of Peter Paul Rubens, were the cornerstones of art.
Early Netherlandish art, traditionally called Flemish Primitives, flourished during the 15th and early 16th centuries in the Low Countries, especially in the flourishing cities of Bruges and Ghent. It begins approximately with the careers of Robert Campin and Hubert and Jan van Eyck around 1400 and ends with Gerard David about 1520. Other major figures include Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, and Petrus Christus. [1]
The 16th century was a period of response to Italian Renaissance art and the development of several distinctly Netherlandish themes. At the start of the century, Hieronymus Bosch painted fantastic images, often for courtly viewers, that left a long legacy. Jan Mabuse, Maarten van Heemskerck, and Frans Floris were all instrumental in adopting Italian models and incorporating them into their artistic language. The spread of Mannerism throughout Europe produced important forms of Northern Mannerist art in the Low Countries. Finally, Joachim Patinir was a recognized innovator of landscape painting, while Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Aertsen helped establish genre painting as a popular subject matter.
The 17th century was a period dominated by the distinct individuals Peter Paul Rubens in the Southern Netherlands and Rembrandt van Rijn in the newly independent Dutch Republic. [3] Dutch and Flemish painters both followed many of the same themes, including still life, genre, landscape, portraiture and classicism. Other artistic tendencies clearly differentiated art in the south from the north: the Counter-Reformation, which spurred on patronage for large altarpieces in the south, was absent from the Dutch Republic, while Flemish painting did not see the development of the types of calm, single-figure genre paintings championed by the likes of Jan Vermeer. [2]
The most famous painter from the region in the late 17th and early 18th century is Antoine Watteau, whose hometown of Valenciennes had been annexed by France a decade before he was born. Otherwise, few painters from about 1700 until the end of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 have been incorporated into the art historical discourse. [4] [5] Dutch painters such as Jacob de Wit adopted a lofty Rococo style, indebted somewhat to Rubens, for ceiling decorations, but there was little work available. [6] Other painters, such as Cornelis Troost, looked to England and especially the works of William Hogarth, for inspiration. [7]
Art after 1830 in Belgium and the Netherlands follow separate paths as the countries further develop their own identities. James Ensor is an important figure from Belgium, while Vincent van Gogh, from the Netherlands, posthumously reached the level of modern superstar painter.
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural or human-made.
In art history, "Old Master" refers to any painter of skill who worked in Europe before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period. The term "old master drawing" is used in the same way.
Early Netherlandish painting is the body of work by artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period, once known as the Flemish Primitives. It flourished especially in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen, Leuven, Tournai and Brussels, all in present-day Belgium. The period begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the 1420s and lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, although many scholars extend it to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568–Max J. Friedländer's acclaimed surveys run through Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Early Netherlandish painting coincides with the Early and High Italian Renaissance, but the early period is seen as an independent artistic evolution, separate from the Renaissance humanism that characterised developments in Italy. Beginning in the 1490s, as increasing numbers of Netherlandish and other Northern painters traveled to Italy, Renaissance ideals and painting styles were incorporated into northern painting. As a result, Early Netherlandish painters are often categorised as belonging to both the Northern Renaissance and the Late or International Gothic.
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.
Gonzales Coques was a Flemish painter of portraits and history paintings. Because of his artistic proximity to and emulation with Anthony van Dyck he received the nickname de kleine van Dyck. Coques was also active as an art dealer.
Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century, gradually becoming distinct from the painting of the rest of the Low Countries, especially the modern Netherlands. In the early period, up to about 1520, the painting of the whole area is typically considered as a whole, as Early Netherlandish painting. This was dominated by the Flemish south, but painters from the north were also important. Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, of which Antwerp became the centre, covers the period up to about 1580 or later, by the end of which the north and south Netherlands had become politically separated. Flemish Baroque painting was especially important in the first half of the 17th century, dominated by Rubens.
Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.
The Renaissance in the Low Countries was a cultural period in the Northern Renaissance that took place in around the 16th century in the Low Countries.
Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th-century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries, as well as many continuities with the preceding Early Netherlandish painting. The period spans from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the 16th century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim Wtewael at the end. Artists drew on both the recent innovations of Italian painting and the local traditions of the Early Netherlandish artists.
Clara Peeters was a Flemish still-life painter from Antwerp who worked in both the Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic.
Genre painting, a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively, thus distinguishing it from history paintings and portraits. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person—a member of his family, say—as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
Pieter van Lint or Peter van Lint (1609–1690) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and designer of tapestries. He excelled in history paintings, genre scenes and portraits in the Flemish Baroque style with some Classisizing influence. He worked in Antwerp and Italy.
Simon de Vos was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and art collector. He started his career making small-format cabinet pictures of genre scenes, in particular of Caravaggesque merry companies. Later he switched to history painting, working on larger formats in a Flemish Baroque style which was influenced by Rubens and van Dyck.
Flemish Baroque painting was a style of painting in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with the Spanish recapturing of Antwerp in 1585 and goes until about 1700, when Spanish Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens, was the artistic nexus, while other notable cities include Brussels and Ghent.
A tronie is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits or caricatures but as studies of expression, type, physiognomy or an interesting character such as an old man or woman, a young woman, the soldier, the shepherdess, the "Oriental", or a person of a particular race.
Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism found in the visual arts north of the Alps in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Styles largely derived from Italian Mannerism were found in the Netherlands and elsewhere from around the mid-century, especially Mannerist ornament in architecture; this article concentrates on those times and places where Northern Mannerism generated its most original and distinctive work.
Despite its size, Belgium has a long and distinguished artistic tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, considerably pre-dating the foundation of the current state in 1830. Art from the areas making up modern Belgium is called in English Netherlandish up to the separation with the Netherlands from 1570 on, and Flemish until the 18th century.
The world landscape, a translation of the German Weltlandschaft, is a type of composition in Western painting showing an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings. The subject of each painting is usually a Biblical or historical narrative, but the figures comprising this narrative element are dwarfed by their surroundings.
Merry company is the term in art history for a painting, usually from the 17th century, showing a small group of people enjoying themselves, usually seated with drinks, and often music-making. These scenes are a very common type of genre painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque; it is estimated that nearly two thirds of Dutch genre scenes show people drinking.
The Golden Age of Flanders, or Flemish Golden Age, is a term that has been used to describe the flourishing of cultural and economic activities of the Low Countries around the 16th century. The term Flanders in the 16th century referred to the entire Habsburg Netherlands within the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire. It was inclusive of modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Its political capital was Brussels, while the financial-economic centre was Antwerp. Other major artistic and cultural centres of the period included Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen and Leuven. It is also grouped with the Dutch Golden Age, a more common term used primarily in reference to the Dutch Republic, and typically dated from 1588 to 1672, within a "Flemish and Dutch golden age" covering the period from the late 15th to the 17th century.