Gerard David was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color. Only a bare outline of his life survives, although some facts are known. He may have been the Meester gheraet van brugghe who became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1515. He was very successful in his lifetime and probably ran two workshops, in Antwerp and Bruges. Like many painters of his period, his reputation diminished in the 17th century until he was rediscovered in the 19th century.
Trompe-l'œil is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Forced perspective is a comparable illusion in architecture.
Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. 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. 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.
Petrus Christus was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges from 1444, where, along with Hans Memling, he became the leading painter after the death of Jan van Eyck. He was influenced by van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and is noted for his innovations with linear perspective and a meticulous technique which seems derived from miniatures and manuscript illumination. Today, some 30 works are confidently attributed to him. The best known include the Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) and Portrait of a Young Girl ; both are highly innovative in the presentation of the figure against detailed, rather than flat, backgrounds.
Portrait of a Young Girl is a small oil-on-oak panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It was completed towards the end of his life, between 1465 and 1470, and is held in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It marks a major stylistic advance in contemporary portraiture; the girl is set in an airy, three-dimensional, realistic setting, and stares out at the viewer with a complicated expression that is reserved, yet intelligent and alert.
Virgin and Child with Four Angels is a small oil-on-panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Gerard David. Likely completed between 1510 and 1515, it shows the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus, while she is crowned Queen of Heaven by two angels above her, accompanied by music provided by another two angels placed at either side of her. In its fine detail and lush use of colour the work is typical of both David and late period Flemish art.
Lamentation (Pietà) is an oil painting on panel of the common subject of the Lamentation of Christ that is now regarded as by an artist in the "circle" of the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus, rather than by Christus himself. It was painted in c. 1444, and is now in the Louvre in Paris.
The Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych consists of two small painted panels attributed to the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck, with areas finished by unidentified followers or members of his workshop. This diptych is one of the early Northern Renaissance oil on panel masterpieces, renowned for its unusually complex and highly detailed iconography, and for the technical skill evident in its completion. It was executed in a miniature format; the panels are just 56.5 cm (22.2 in) high by 19.7 cm (7.8 in) wide. The diptych was probably commissioned for private devotion.
Portrait of Isabella of Portugal was a betrothal painting by the early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck, one of his earliest works and now lost, known only from copies. It dates to his 1428-29 visit to Portugal on behalf of Philip the Good, when he was sent as part of an embassy to evaluate the then 30-year-old Isabella's suitability as a bride for Philip.
The Cambrai Madonna, produced around 1340, is a small Italo-Byzantine, possibly Sienese, replica of an Eleusa icon. The work on which it is based is believed to have originated in Tuscany c. 1300, and influenced a wide number of paintings from the following century as well as Florentine sculptures from the 1440–1450s. This version was in turn widely copied across Italy and northern Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries; Filippo Lippi's 1447 Enthroned Madonna and Child is a well known example.
Madonna of the Dry Tree or Our Lady of the Barren Tree are names given to a small 14.7 centimetres (5.8 in) x 12.4 centimetres (4.9 in) oil-on-oak panel painting dated c. 1462–1465 by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. Unusually dark and dramatic for the mid-15 century, it shows the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, who holds an orb crowned with a cross, standing on a disembodied dead tree trunk, surrounded by withered branches that encircle them to form a crown of thorns. It was unattributed and largely unknown until 1919, when it was examined by the art historian Grete Ring while in a private collection. She first attributed Christus and through analysis of its iconography, assigned its current title.
The Nativity is a devotional mid-1450s oil-on-wood panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It shows a nativity scene with grisaille archways and trompe-l'œil sculptured reliefs. Christus was influenced by the first generation of Netherlandish artists, especially Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and the panel is characteristic of the simplicity and naturalism of art of that period. Placing archways as a framing device is a typical van der Weyden device, and here likely borrowed from that artist's Altar of Saint John and Miraflores Altarpiece. Yet Christus adapts these painterly motifs to a uniquely mid-15th century sensibility, and the unusually large panel – perhaps painted as a central altarpiece panel for a triptych – is nuanced and visually complex. It shows his usual harmonious composition and employment of one-point-perspective, especially evident in the geometric forms of the shed's roof, and his bold use of color. It is one of Christus's most important works. Max Friedländer definitely attributed the panel to Christus in 1930, concluding that "in scope and importance, [it] is superior to all other known creations of this master."
A Goldsmith in His Shop is a 1449 painting by Petrus Christus, a leading painter in Bruges. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is an oil painting on an oak panel that measures 100.1 x 85.8 cm overall and the painted surface is 98 x 85.2 cm. An inscription at the bottom of the painting states "m petr[vs] xpi me· ·fecit·ao 1449· ". In addition, the inscription has an emblem of a clock with a mechanical linkage to a heart, Christus's emblem.
Vera Icon is a lost oil-on panel portrait by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, which probably formed half of a since dismantled diptych. The original is known through three contemporary copies from his workshop. They were completed in 1438, 1439 and 1440; with the first and last in Bruges, and the 1439 version in Munich.
The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine is a c. 1480 oil-on-oak painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The panel shows an enthroned Virgin holding the Child. St Catherine of Alexandria and St Barbara are seated alongside. Angels playing instruments flank the throne, while the male figure to left is presumably the person who commissioned it as a devotional donor portrait.
Maryan Ainsworth, who often publishes as Maryan Wynn Ainsworth, is an American art historian, author and curator specializing in 14th, 15th and 16th century Northern European painting, particularly in Early Netherlandish painting.
Portrait of Maria Portinari is a small c. 1470–72 painting by Hans Memling in tempera and oil on oak panel. It portrays Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, about whom very little is known. She is about 14 years old, and depicted shortly before her wedding to the Italian banker Tommaso Portinari. Maria is dressed in the height of late fifteenth-century fashion, with a long black hennin with a transparent veil and an elaborate jewel-studded necklace. Her headdress is similar and necklace identical to those in her depiction in Hugo van der Goes's later Portinari Altarpiece, a painting that may have been partly based on Memling's portrait.
The Madonna of Jan Vos is a small oil panel painting begun by the Early Netherlandish artist Jan van Eyck c. 1441 and finished by his workshop after his death in 1442. As he died during its completion, it is generally considered to be his last work.
The Pagagnotti Triptych is an oil-on-wood triptych by Hans Memling produced circa 1480. The original was disassembled and separated, with the center panel held at the Uffizi gallery in Florence and the two wing panels at the National Gallery in London.
Musca depicta is a depiction of a fly as a conspicuous element of various paintings. The feature was widespread in 15th- and 16th-century European paintings, and its presence has been subject to various interpretations by art historians.
