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.
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.
Rogier van der Weyden or Roger de la Pasture was an early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces, and commissioned single and diptych portraits. He was highly successful in his lifetime; his paintings were exported to Italy and Spain, and he received commissions from, amongst others, Philip the Good, Netherlandish nobility, and foreign princes. By the latter half of the 15th century, he had eclipsed Jan van Eyck in popularity. However his fame lasted only until the 17th century, and largely due to changing taste, he was almost totally forgotten by the mid-18th century. His reputation was slowly rebuilt during the following 200 years; today he is known, with Robert Campin and van Eyck, as the third of the three great Early Flemish artists, and widely as the most influential Northern painter of the 15th century.
Hans Memling was a painter active in Flanders, who worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. Born in the Middle Rhine region, he probably spent his childhood in Mainz. During his apprenticeship as a painter he moved to the Netherlands and spent time in the Brussels workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. In 1465 he was made a citizen of Bruges, where he became one of the leading artists and the master of a large workshop. A tax document from 1480 lists him among the wealthiest citizens. Memling's religious works often incorporated donor portraits of the clergymen, aristocrats, and burghers who were his patrons. These portraits built upon the styles which Memling learned in his youth.
Adriaen Isenbrandt or Adriaen Ysenbrandt was a painter in Bruges, in the final years of Early Netherlandish painting, and the first of the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting of the Northern Renaissance. Documentary evidence suggests he was a significant and successful artist of his period, even though no specific works by his hand are clearly documented. Art historians have conjectured that he operated a large workshop specializing in religious subjects and devotional paintings, which were executed in a conservative style in the tradition of the Early Netherlandish painting of the previous century. By his time, the new booming economy of Antwerp had made this the centre of painting in the Low Countries, but the previous centre of Bruges retained considerable prestige.
Josephus Maria Van der Veken was a Belgian art restorer, copyist, and art forger who mastered the art of reproducing the works of early Netherlandish painters.
Hugo van der Goes was one of the most significant and original Flemish painters of the late 15th century. Van der Goes was an important painter of altarpieces as well as portraits. He introduced important innovations in painting through his monumental style, use of a specific colour range and individualistic manner of portraiture. From 1483 onwards, the presence of his masterpiece, the Portinari Triptych, in Florence played a role in the development of realism and the use of colour in Italian Renaissance art.
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.
Jan Provoost, or Jean Provost, or Jan Provost was a Belgian painter born in Mons.
Dieric Bouts was an Early Netherlandish painter. Bouts may have studied under Rogier van der Weyden, and his work was influenced by van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck. He worked in Leuven from 1457 until his death in 1475.
Pieter Jansz. Pourbus was a Flemish Renaissance painter, draftsman, engineer and cartographer who was active in Bruges during the 16th century. He is known primarily for his religious and portrait paintings.
Lancelot Blondeel, also Lanceloot, was a Flemish painter, designer of sculptures, tapestries and jewelry, architect, city planner, surveyor and cartographer who was active in Bruges.
Sisamnes was, according to Herodotus' Histories, a corrupt royal judge active in the Persian empire during the reign of Cambyses II of Persia. When Cambyses learned that Sisamnes had accepted a bribe to influence a verdict, he had him promptly arrested and sentenced him to be flayed alive. He had the skin of the flayed Sisamnes cut into leather strips. Cambyses then appointed Otanes, the son of the condemned Sisamnes, as his father's judicial successor. In order to remind Otanes what happens to corrupt judges and not forget the importance of judicial integrity, Cambyses ordered that the new judge's chair be draped in the leather strips made from the skin of the flayed Sisamnes. Otanes later became a satrap in Ionia. Cambyses warned Otanes to continually keep in mind the source of the leather of the chair upon which he would be seated to deliberate and deliver his judgment. The story was also referred to by the first century Latin author Valerius Maximus in his Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX. Whereas in Herodotus' version Sisamnes' skin is cut into strips, Maximus has the skin stretched across the chair.
The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele is a large oil-on-oak panel painting completed around 1434–1436 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It shows the painting's donor, Joris van der Paele, within an apparition of saints. The Virgin Mary is enthroned at the centre of the semicircular space, which most likely represents a church interior, with the Christ Child on her lap. St. Donatian stands to her right, Saint George—the donor's name saint—to her left. The panel was commissioned by van der Paele as an altarpiece. He was then a wealthy clergyman from Bruges, but elderly and gravely ill, and intended the work as his memorial.
Till-Holger Borchert is a German art historian and writer specialising in 14th and 15th-century art. He has been the chief curator of the Groeningemuseum and Arentshuis museums in Bruges, Belgium, between 2003 and 2014. In December 2014, he was appointed as director of the Municipal Museums in Bruges. In this role he initiated a radical reorganisation of the institution and laid the foundation for the renewal of infrastructure like the ticketing facility of the Gruuthusemuseum, a new storage, and the exhibition park BRUSK designed by architect Paul Robbrecht. In November 2021 he was appointed as new director of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen, a position he resumed in April 2022.
Jacob van Oost or Jacob van Oost the Elder (1603–1671) was a Flemish painter of history paintings and portraits. He was the most important painter of Bruges in the 17th century through his portraits of members of the local bourgeois and his many altarpieces made in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. He also created genre paintings of musicians and card players for the open market.
The Last Judgment is a triptych of disputed authorship, either by Hieronymus Bosch, his workshop, or a collaboration between artist and workshop. It was created after 1486.
The Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges was an art exhibition of paintings by the so-called Flemish Primitives held in the Provinciaal Hof in Bruges between 15 June and 5 October 1902.
The Flemish Art Collection is a consortium or partnership between three museums in Flanders, Belgium: the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent.
The Moreel Triptych is the name given to a 1484 panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It was commissioned by the prominent Bruges politician, merchant and banker Willem Moreel and his wife Barbara van Vlaenderberch, née van Hertsvelde. It was intended as their epitaph at the chapel of the St. James's Church, Bruges, an extension they paid for, to the funerary church of Willem's family, where the couple intended to be interred in an underground tomb before the altar.
