The Northern Renaissance
You can just call it the Renaissance for the test

The Northern Renaissance

• Also has a humanist agenda: places value on human life and emotion, values the lower classes, reveal the inner workings of the mind, include emotion and imagination.
• Frequent use of symbols.
• Very detailed realism.
• Usually painted with oils.

Jan Van Eyck: 1385 1441

• Uses layers of oils to achieve a luminous effect
• Makes paintings with symbolic objects to help tell the story
• Presents nature more fully than it actually exists to the human eye

(slide) The Madonna and Chancellor Rolin

• Given by the high official of the duchy of Burgundy to the Cathedral of Autun when his son was made Bishop in 1437.
• Van Eyck was titled: Varlet de Chambre of Phillip the Good of Burgundy.

(slide) Ghent Altarpiece: 1432

• 20 panels
• Frame destroyed by Protestant Iconoclasts in 1566
• Pictures the story of Christ, from Annunciation to Crucifixion
• Includes Biblical prophets and Greek sibyls foretelling Christs birth

(slide) The Mystical Lamb Centerpiece

(slide) Van Eyck: The Arnolfini Wedding 1434

Symbols:

• The Nuptial Candle
• Foreshadowing
• Symbols: Fidelity
• Symbols: Holy Ground
  Symbols: Fertility

Hieronymus Bosch: 1450 1516

• Works of amazing personal imagination
• Later used as fertile ground for surrealism
• Illustrated dreams and visions; the inner workings of the mind
• Apocalyptic
• Sometimes really, really weird

(slide) Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights 1505-1510
(slide) Garden of Earthly Delights
(slide) Bosch: Second Coming

• Bosch believed that he was living during the time of the apocalypse; the Last Days.
• Bosch was interesting current events and pictured them in his works.
• He saw the plague, wars and depravity of culture at its height, and believed that the apocalypse was here.

(slide) Bosch: Blessed of the Last Judgement

Matthias Grunewald: 1480-1528

• Court Painter and decorator
• Hydraulic Engineer, Superintendent of works
• Created images of Catholic Belief
• Humanized Christ's suffering.

(slide) Isenheim Altarpiece: 1510-1515

(slide) Isenheim Altarpiece

• For a hospital that specialized in treating skin diseases
• Pictures Christ's suffering, and the suffering of the saints, as well as miraculous cures and the transfiguration

(slide) Raphael Crucifixion: 1503

Albrecht Durer: 1471-1528

• First artist to leave a record of his life through self-portraits, correspondence and a journal
• First commercial artist/printmaker
• Supports Lutheran beliefs
• Traveled to Italy

(slide) Durer at 26
(slide) Durer at 28
(slide) Pain in the Spleen
(slides) Various travel/journal images
(slide) Praying hands
(slide) Durer: The Fall of Man, Engraving 1504
(slide) Adoration of the Magi
(slide) Apocalyptic engravings
(slide) Death and the Horseman (the cycle of life)

Hans Holbein: 1497-1543

Note: At the beginning of the Renaissance, artists begin as laborers. Over time, they become members of the courts. Toward the end of the Renaissance, artists like Holbein have become court painters.

• Escaped the Reformation by becoming court painter to Henry VIII of England
• Learned from both the Northern and Italian Renaissance masters
• Completed the transformation of artists from laborers to royalty

(slide) Wife and Kids
(slide) Henry VIII
9slide) Portrait of Erasmus

(slide) Catherine of Aragon

• Princess of Spain
• Married as a teenager to Arthur (son of Henry VII), who is still a child
• Arthur dies
• Henry VII dies
• Henry VIII marries Katherine and they are crowned king and queen of England

(slide) Sir Thomas Moore

• Opposes the Kings divorce, subsequent remarriage and creation of the Church of England
• Is executed

(slide) Anne Boleyn

• Henry became infatuated with Anne
• Divorced Catherine
• Anne gave birth to Elizabeth
• Anne had 2 or 3 miscarriages
• Oliver Cromwell and others plotted against her

(slide) Jane Seymour

• Lady in waiting to both Catherine and Anne
• Eventually gave birth to Edward, Prince of Wales
• Died a few days after the birth
• Is the only one of Henrys wives to be buried beside him

(slide) Anne of Cleves

• Holbein was sent out to see and paint Anne and her sister to help Henry decide who to marry
• Henry never liked her much, called her his Flanders Mare
• Divorced her after 6 months
• Gave her a nice house

(slide) Katheryn Howard

• Henry is 42, fat, gouty and has sores on his legs
• Katheryn is 19 and finds him irresistibly handsome
• After 2 years of marriage she is executed for having an affair with a musician, and others

(slide) Holbein: The Ambassadors
(slide) Ambassadors: Details

(slide) Pieter Bruegel: 1528 1569

• Late Renaissance
• Traveled to Italy to see the works of the ninja turtles
• Celebrated peasant life
• Gave importance to the cycle of life and the earth

(slide) Children at Play
(slide) Peasant Wedding (interesting picture of wedding customs)
(slide) Winter Scene A (excellent painter of winter scenes)
(slide) Winter Scene B
(slide) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (cycle of life; life goes on even though terrible things happen)
(Slide) Mad Meg (look inside a mad person's mind)
(slide) Magpie and Gallows (cycle of life)
(slide) Plague painting
(slide) Massacre of the Innocents (reference to Herod killing children in Bethlehem; anti-Spanish propaganda)
(slide) Adoration of the Magi
(slide) Blind leading blind
(slide) Harvest time.