Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. According to Vasari and other art historians including Ernst Gombrich, he invented oil painting, though most now regard that claim as an oversimplification.
Hubert van Eyck or Huybrecht van Eyck was an Early Netherlandish painter and older brother of Jan van Eyck, as well as Lambert and Margareta, also painters. The absence of any single work that he can clearly be said to have completed continues to make an assessment of his achievement highly uncertain, although for centuries he had the reputation of being an outstanding founding artist of Early Netherlandish painting.
Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio, was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the so-called "third generation" of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio, the Pollaiolo brothers and Sandro Botticelli. Ghirlandaio led a large and efficient workshop that included his brothers Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi from San Gimignano, and later his son Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaio's workshop, including the famous Michelangelo. His particular talent lay in his ability to posit depictions of contemporary life and portraits of contemporary people within the context of religious narratives, bringing him great popularity and many large commissions.
Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, science, and technology. Renaissance art took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Along with Renaissance humanist philosophy, it spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. For art historians, Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early Modern age.
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.
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.
Saint Jerome in His Study is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Antonello da Messina. The painting depicts human, natural, and divine knowledge, and is filled with architectural qualities. It was the property of Antonio Pasqualino and afterwards of Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook; since 1894 it has been in the collection of the National Gallery, London.
Joos van Cleve was a leading painter active in Antwerp from his arrival there around 1511 until his death in 1540 or 1541. Within Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, he combines the traditional techniques of Early Netherlandish painting with influences of more contemporary Renaissance painting styles.
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.
Saint Augustine in His Study is a fresco painting of Augustine of Hippo executed in 1480 by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. It is in the church of Ognissanti in Florence.
The Tornabuoni Chapel is the main chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy. It is famous for the extensive and well-preserved fresco cycle on its walls, one of the most complete in the city, which was created by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop between 1485 and 1490.
Saint Jerome in His Study may refer to the following artworks depicting Saint Jerome:
Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The figures are positioned in a bourgeois interior which leads out towards a courtyard, river, town and landscape. The enclosed garden, illusionistic carvings of Adam and Eve on the arms of Mary's throne, and attributes of St Luke are amongst the painting's many iconographic symbols.
Saint Jerome in His Study is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, executed in 1480 and located in the church of Ognissanti, Florence.
Madonna in the Church is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–1440, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the neckline of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon. Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose. Erwin Panofsky sees the painting composed as if the main figures in the panel are intended to be the sculptures come to life. In a doorway to the right, two angels sing psalms from a hymn book. Like other Byzantine depictions of the Madonna, van Eyck depicts a monumental Mary, unrealistically large compared to her surroundings. The panel contains closely observed beams of light flooding through the cathedral's windows. It illuminates the interior before culminating in two pools on the floor. The light has symbolic significance, alluding simultaneously to Mary's virginal purity and God's ethereal presence.
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.
Portrait of Baudouin de Lannoy is a small oil-on panel portrait by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, completed c. 1435. It shows Baldwin of Lannoy, a contemporary Flemish statesman and ambassador for Philip the Good at the court of Henry V of England. From surviving documents it is known that the work was commissioned to mark his entry into the order Baudouin de Lanno.
Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata is the name given to two unsigned paintings completed around 1428–1432 that art historians usually attribute to the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. The panels are nearly identical, apart from a considerable difference in size. Both are small paintings: the larger measures 29.3 cm x 33.4 cm and is in the Sabauda Gallery in Turin, Italy; the smaller panel is 12.7 cm x 14.6 cm and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The earliest documentary evidence is in the 1470 inventory of Anselm Adornes of Bruges's will; he may have owned both panels.
Study for Cardinal Niccolò Albergati is a silverpoint drawing attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, made in preparation for his Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati of 1431. Niccolò Albergati was traditionally identified as the subject of the drawing and portrait, but modern scholarship suggests that Henry Beaufort is more likely to be their subject. The drawing is held in the collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden.
St. Jerome and the Lion is an oil on oak panel painting by Rogier van der Weyden or his studio from c. 1450–1465, showing Jerome and a lion. It is now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. This painting was part of a renewed interest in depictions of St. Jerome.
