IN XVcentury the most significant cultural center of Northern Europe -Netherlands , a small but rich country that includes the territory of present-day Belgium and Holland.
Dutch artistsXVcenturies, they mainly painted altars, painted portraits and easel paintings commissioned by wealthy citizens. They loved the scenes of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Infant Christ, often suffering religious scenes into a real life situation. The numerous household items filling this environment had an important symbolic meaning for a person of that era. For example, a washbasin and a towel were perceived as a hint of cleanliness and purity; shoes were a symbol of fidelity, a burning candle - marriage.
Unlike their Italian counterparts, Dutch artists rarely depicted people with classically beautiful faces and figures. They poeticized the ordinary, “average” person, seeing his value in modesty, piety and integrity.
At the head of the Dutch school of paintingXVcenturies worth of geniusJan van Eyck (around 1390-1441). Its famous"Ghent Altarpiece" opened new era in the history of Dutch art. Religious symbolism is translated into reliable images of the real world.
It is known that the Ghent Altarpiece was started by Jan van Eyck's elder brother, Hubert, but the main work fell on Jan.
The doors of the altar are painted inside and outside. From the outside, it looks restrained and strict: all images are designed in a single grayish color scheme. The scene of the Annunciation, figures of saints and donors (customers) are depicted here. On holidays, the doors of the altar were thrown open and before the parishioners, in all the splendor of colors, paintings appeared, embodying the idea of atonement for sins and future enlightenment.
The nude figures of Adam and Eve are executed with exceptional realism, the most Renaissance in spirit images of the “Ghent Altarpiece”. The landscape backgrounds are magnificent - a typical Dutch landscape in the Annunciation scene, a sun-drenched flowering meadow with varied vegetation in scenes of the worship of the Lamb.
The surrounding world is recreated with the same amazing observation in other works of Jan van Eyck. Among the most striking examples is the panorama of the medieval city in"Madonna of Chancellor Rolin."
Jan van Eyck was one of the first outstanding portrait painters in Europe. In his work, the portrait genre acquired independence. In addition to paintings that represent the usual type of portrait, van Eyck’s brush belongs to a unique work of this genre,"Portrait of the Arnolfini couple." This is the first paired portrait in European painting. The couple are depicted in a small cozy room, where all things have a symbolic meaning, hinting at the sanctity of the marriage vow.
Tradition also associates the improvement of oil painting techniques with the name of Jan van Eyck. He applied layer after layer of paint onto the white primed surface of the board, achieving a special transparency of color. The image began to glow, as it were, from within.
In the middle and in the 2nd halfXVcenturies, masters of exceptional talent worked in the Netherlands -Rogier van der Weyden And Hugo van der Goes , whose names can be placed next to Jan van Eyck.
Bosch
On the edge XV- XVIcenturies, the social life of the Netherlands was filled with social contradictions. In these conditions complex art was bornHieronymus Bosch (near I 450- I 5 I 6, real name Hieronymus van Aken). Bosch was alien to the foundations of the worldview on which the Dutch school relied, starting with Jan van Eyck. He sees in the world a struggle between two principles, divine and satanic, righteous and sinful, good and evil. The products of evil penetrate everywhere: these are unworthy thoughts and actions, heresy and all kinds of sins (vanity, sinful sexuality, devoid of the light of divine love, stupidity, gluttony), the machinations of the devil, tempting holy hermits, and so on. For the first time the sphere of the ugly as an object artistic comprehension The painter is so captivated that he uses its grotesque forms. His paintings on the themes of folk proverbs, sayings and parables ("Temptation of St. An-toniya" , "Cart of Hay" , "Garden of Delights" ) Bosch populates with bizarre and fantastic images, at the same time creepy, nightmarish, and comical. Here the centuries-old tradition of folk laughter culture and motifs of medieval folklore come to the artist’s aid.
In Bosch's fiction there is almost always an element of allegory, an allegorical beginning. This feature of his art is most clearly reflected in the triptychs “The Garden of Pleasures,” which show the disastrous consequences of sensual pleasures, and “A Wagon of Hay,” the plot of which personifies the struggle of humanity for illusory benefits.
Bosch's demonology coexists not only with deep analysis human nature and folk humor, but also with a subtle sense of nature (in the vast landscape backgrounds).
Bruegel
The pinnacle of the Dutch Renaissance was creativityPieter Bruegel the Elder (around 1525/30-1569), closest to the sentiments of the masses during the era of the upcoming Dutch Revolution. Bruegel in highest degree possessed what is called national originality: all the remarkable features of his art were grown on the soil of original Dutch traditions(he was greatly influenced, in particular, by the work of Bosch).
For his ability to draw peasant types, the artist was called Bruegel “The Peasant.” All his work is permeated with thoughts about the fate of the people. Bruegel captures, sometimes in an allegorical, grotesque form, the work and life of the people, severe public disasters (“The Triumph of Death”) and the inexhaustible people’s love of life ("Peasant Wedding" , "Peasant Dance" ). It is characteristic that in paintings on gospel themes(“Census in Bethlehem” , "Massacre of the innocents" , "Adoration of the Magi in the Snow" ) he presented the biblical Bethlehem in the form of an ordinary Dutch village. With a deep knowledge of folk life, he showed the appearance and occupation of peasants, a typical Dutch landscape, and even the characteristic masonry of houses. It is not difficult to see modern, and not biblical history in the “Massacre of the Innocents”: torture, executions, armed attacks on defenseless people - all this happened during the years of unprecedented Spanish oppression in the Netherlands. Other paintings by Bruegel also have symbolic meaning:"Land of Lazy People" , "Magpie on the Gallows" , "Blind" (a terrible, tragic allegory: the path of the blind, drawn into the abyss - isn’t this life path of all humanity?).
The life of the people in Bruegel’s works is inseparable from the life of nature, in conveying which the artist showed exceptional skill. His"Snow Hunters" - one of the most perfect landscapes in all world painting.
As in other countries of Western Europe, the emergence of the Renaissance worldview in the Netherlands, which was under the rule of Burgundy until 1447 and then the Habsburgs, is associated with the development of production and trade, as well as with the growth of cities and the formation of the burghers. At the same time, feudal traditions were still strong in the country, so new things were introduced into Dutch art much more slowly than in Italian.
IN Dutch painting of the Northern Renaissance, features existed for a long time gothic style. Religion played a much larger role in the life of the Dutch than of the Italians. Man in the works of the Dutch masters did not become the center of the universe, as was the case with the artists of the Italian Renaissance. During almost the entire XV century. people in the paintings of the Netherlands were depicted in a gothic way as light and ethereal. The characters in Dutch paintings are always dressed, there is no sensuality in them, but there is also nothing majestic or heroic. If the Italian masters of the Renaissance painted monumental fresco paintings, the Dutch viewer preferred to admire easel paintings small size. The authors of these works worked very carefully on every, even the smallest, detail of their canvases, which made these works interesting and very attractive to viewers.
In the 15th century in the Netherlands the art of miniature continued to develop, but already in the early 1420s. The first paintings appeared, the authors of which were Jan van Eyck and his early deceased brother Hubert van Eyck, who became the founders of the Dutch art school.
Jan van Eyck
It was not possible to accurately determine the time of birth of Jan van Eyck, one of the most prominent representatives of the Dutch school of Renaissance painting. There is only speculation that van Eyck was born between 1390 and 1400. In the period from 1422 to 1428, the young painter fulfilled the order of Count of Holland John of Bavaria: he painted the walls of the castle in The Hague.
From 1427 to 1429 van Eyck traveled around the Iberian Peninsula. In 1428, after the death of John of Bavaria, the artist entered the service of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good. The latter was able to appreciate not only the gift of the master painter, but also to reveal his diplomatic talent. Soon Van Eyck finds himself in Spain. The purpose of his visit was an order given by the Duke of Burgundy to arrange a wedding and paint a portrait of the bride. The artist, who also plays the role of a diplomat, brilliantly coped with the responsibilities assigned to him and completed the assignment. After some time, the portrait of the bride was ready. Unfortunately, this work of the famous painter has not survived.
From 1428 to 1429 van Eyck was in Portugal.
Van Eyck's most significant work was the painting of the altar of the Church of St. Bavo in Bruges, completed together with his brother Hubert. Its customer was a rich man from Ghent, Jodocus Veidt. Later called Ghent, the altar, painted by the famous master, has a difficult fate. During the religious wars, in the 16th century, in order to save it from destruction, it was taken apart and hidden. Some fragments were even taken from the Netherlands to other countries of the world. And only in the 20th century they returned to their homeland, where they were collected. The altar again decorated the Church of St. Bavo. However, not all parts of the work were preserved. Thus, one of the original fragments stolen in 1934 was replaced with a good copy.
The general composition of the Ghent Altarpiece is made up of 25 paintings, the heroes of which are more than 250 characters. On the outer side of the altar doors in the lower part there are images of the customer, Jodocus Veidt and his wife, Isabella Borlut. The figures of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist are also located here. In the middle row the scene unfolds on the famous biblical story: Archangel Gabriel brings the good news to the Holy Virgin Mary about the imminent birth of Christ. The composition is distinguished by the unity of the color scheme used by the author: all the paintings are designed in pastel grayish tones.
Distinctive feature This painting is that the artist surrounds biblical characters with everyday realities. So, from the window of Mary’s chambers a city is visible that is completely different from Bethlehem. This is Ghent, on one of the streets of which the master painter’s contemporaries could easily recognize the house of the rich man Veidt. The household items surrounding Mary are not only filled with symbolic meaning (the washbasin and towel appear here as symbols of Mary’s purity, the three casements of the window are a symbol of the eternal Trinity), but are also intended to bring what is happening closer to reality.
During religious holidays, the doors of the altar are opened, and the viewer is presented with an amazing picture, telling about the structure of the world in the understanding of man of the 15th century. Thus, in the uppermost tier there are images of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, depicted in papal robes embroidered with gold, at his feet lies a crown - a symbol of Jesus Christ, in the center of the row is a dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit. The faces of the Mother of God and John the Baptist are turned to them. Angels sing songs of praise to the Trinity. In Van Eyck's works they are depicted by young men dressed in richly decorated vestments. This series is closed by the figures of the ancestors of the human race - Adam and Eve.
The top row of the painting depicts a wide green meadow along which saints, prophets, apostles, warriors, hermits and pilgrims march towards the sacrificial Lamb. Some characters represent real people. Among them you can find the artist himself, as well as his brother Hubert and Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good. The landscape here is also interesting. All trees and small plants were painted by the master with extraordinary precision. It seems as if the artist decided to show off his knowledge of botany to the viewer.
In the background of the composition is the heavenly city of Jerusalem, symbolizing Christianity. However, for the master here it is more important to convey the similarity of architectural structures fabulous city with real buildings that existed at the time of van Eyck.
The overall theme of the composition sounds like a glorification of the harmony of the human world order. Scholars suggest that the possible literary source of this work famous artist there was either “The Revelation of John Chrysostom” or “The Golden Legend” by Jacopo da Varagina.
Whatever the theme of van Eyck’s works, the main thing for the artist is to depict the real world as accurately and objectively as possible, as if transferred to the canvas, while conveying all its features. It was precisely this principle that turned out to be leading in the formation of a new technique of artistic representation. It manifested itself especially clearly in the artist’s portrait works.
In 1431, the papal legate Cardinal Niccolo Albergati arrived in Burgundy on a visit. At the same time, Jan van Eyck sketched a portrait of the cardinal. During the work, corrections and additions were made to the drawing. It should be noted that the master here was more concerned not with the display of a person’s inner experiences, but with the most accurate rendering of his appearance, individual characteristics and lines of the face, figure, posture and facial expressions.
In the later oil portrait of Cardinal Albergati, the emphasis in the image shifts from detailing the person’s appearance to depicting his inner world. Now the character’s eyes, the mirror of the human soul, which reflects feelings, experiences, and thoughts, become dominant in revealing the image.
How van Eyck's artistic method developed can be seen by comparing his earlier works with famous portrait“Timothy,” written in 1432. The viewer is presented with a thoughtful man with a gentle character. His gaze is directed into emptiness. However, it is precisely this view that characterizes van Eyck’s hero as an open, modest, pious, sincere and kind person.
An artist's talent cannot be static. The master must always be in search of new solutions and ways of expressing and depicting the world, including the inner world of man. That was Van Eyck. The next stage in the development of his work was marked by a portrait work called “The Man in a Red Turban” (1433). Unlike the character in the painting “Timofey,” the hero of this painting is endowed with a more expressive look. His eyes are turned to the viewer. The unknown person seems to be telling us his sad story. His look expresses very specific feelings: bitterness and regret about what happened.
“Timofey” and “The Man in the Red Turban” are significantly different from the works created by the master earlier: they present a psychological portrait of the hero. At the same time, the artist is interested not so much in the spiritual world of a particular person, but in his attitude to reality. So, Timofey looks at the world thoughtfully, but the man in the turban perceives it as something hostile. However, this principle of depicting a person has long
time could not exist within the framework of Renaissance art, where the main idea was to clearly identify the individual features of the image and show its inner world. This idea becomes dominant in van Eyck's subsequent works.
Jan van Eyck. Portrait of a man in a red turban. 1433
In 1434, the artist painted one of his most famous works- “Portrait of the Arnolfini couple,” which, according to art historians, depicts the merchant from Lucca, representative of the House of Medici in Bruges Giovanni Arnolfini with his wife Giovanna.
In the background of the composition there is a small round mirror, the inscription above which states that one of the witnesses to the ceremony was the artist himself, Jan van Eyck.
The images created by the artist are extremely expressive. Their significance is highlighted more clearly by the fact that
that the author places his heroes in the most ordinary, at first glance, setting. The essence and meaning of the images is emphasized here through objects surrounding the characters and endowed with secret meaning. Thus, apples scattered on the windowsill and table symbolize heavenly bliss, crystal rosary on the wall - the embodiment of piety, a brush - a symbol of purity, two pairs of shoes - a sign of marital fidelity, a lit candle in a beautiful chandelier - a symbol of the deity who overshadows the sacrament of the wedding ceremony. A small dog standing at the feet of its owners also suggests the idea of fidelity and love. All these symbols of marital fidelity, happiness and longevity create a feeling of warmth and spiritual closeness, love and tenderness that unites spouses.
Of particular interest is van Eyck’s painting “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin,” created in 1435. Small in size (0.66 × 0.62 m), the work gives the impression of the scale of space. This feeling is created in the painting due to the fact that through the arched vaults the artist shows the viewer a landscape with city buildings, a river and mountains visible in the distance.
As always with van Eyck, the setting (in in this case landscape) surrounding the characters plays an important role in revealing their characters, even though the characters, interior and landscape do not form an integral unity here. The landscape with residential buildings placed opposite the figure of the chancellor is a secular principle, and the landscape with churches located behind Mary is a symbol of the Christian religion. The two banks of the wide river are connected by a bridge along which pedestrians walk and horseback riders pass. The personification of the reconciliation of spiritual and secular principles is the infant Christ sitting on Mary’s lap, blessing the chancellor.
The work that completed the period of formation creative method van Eyck, it is considered to be the altar composition “Madonna of Canon van der Paele”, created in 1436. A distinctive feature of the images is their monumentality. The figures of the heroes now fill the entire space of the picture, leaving almost no space for the landscape or interior. In addition, in “The Madonna of Canon van der Paele” the main character is not the Madonna at all, but the customer of the painting himself. It is to him that Mary and St. turn. Donatus, with a pointing gesture, introduces St. to the audience. Georgy.
The method of depicting the main character also changes here.
This is no longer a simple contemplator expressing his attitude to the world. The viewer sees a person withdrawn into himself, deeply thinking about something very important. Similar images will become leading in Dutch art of subsequent times.
In his later works, van Eyck depicts even more specific images. An example of this is the painting “Portrait of Jan van Leeuw” (1436). The person depicted in the portrait is open to us. His gaze is directed at the viewer, who can easily recognize all the feelings of the hero. One has only to look into his eyes.
The last portrait of his wife, Margaret van Eyck, painted in 1439, is considered the pinnacle of the master’s work. Here, behind the heroine’s finely drawn appearance, her character is clearly visible. Never before has Van Eyck's image been so objective. The colors used are also unusual for the artist: the red-violet fabric of the clothes, the smoky fur of the edge, the pink skin of the heroine and her pale lips.
Jan van Eyck died on July 9, 1441 in Bruges. His work, which influenced many subsequent masters, marked the beginning of the formation and development of Dutch painting.
A contemporary of the van Eyck brothers was Robert Campin, the author of decorative and pictorial works, the teacher of many painters, including the famous artist Rogier van der Weyden.
Altar compositions and portraits of Campin are distinguished by their desire for authenticity; the master tries to depict all objects so that they look like in reality.
The largest Dutch artist of the 15th century. there was Rogier van der Weyden, who painted dramatic altar scenes (“The Descent from the Cross,” after 1435) and expressive, spiritual portraits (“Portrait of Francesco d’Este,” 1450; “Portrait of a Young Woman,” 1455). Rogier van der Weyden opened the first large workshop in the Netherlands, where many studied famous artists Renaissance. The painter was widely known not only in his homeland, but also in Italy.
In the second half of the 15th century. in the Netherlands worked such artists as Jos van Wassenhove, who did a lot for the development of Dutch painting, the incredibly talented Hugo van der Goes, author of the famous Portinari altar, Jan Memling, in whose work the features of the Italian Renaissance appear: garlands and putti, idealization of images, clarity and clarity of compositional structure (“Madonna and Child, Angel and Donors”).
One of the most brilliant masters of the Northern Renaissance of the late 15th century. was Hieronymus Bosch.
Hieronymus Bosch (Hieronymus van Aken)
Hieronymus van Aken, later nicknamed Bosch, was born between 1450-1460. in 's-Hertogenbosch. His father, two uncles and brother were artists. They became the first teachers of the aspiring painter.
Bosch's work is distinguished by grotesqueness and caustic sarcasm in the depiction of people. These tendencies are already evident in the artist’s early works. For example, in the painting “Extracting the Stone of Folly,” which depicts a simple operation performed by a healer on the head of a peasant, the painter ridicules the clergy, the insincerity and pretense of the clergy. The peasant's gaze is fixed on the viewer, turning him from an outside observer into an accomplice of what is happening.
Some of Bosch's works are original illustrations of folk tales and Christian legends. Such are his paintings “Ship of Fools”, “Temptation of St. Anthony”, “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, “The Adoration of the Magi”, “The Mockery of Christ”. The subjects of these works are typical for the art of Flanders in the 15th-16th centuries. However, the grotesque figures of people and fantastic animals depicted here are unusual architectural structures, presented by the painter, distinguish Bosch’s paintings from the works of other masters. At the same time, the features of realism are clearly visible in these compositions, which was alien to the fine arts of the Netherlands at that time. With precise strokes, the master makes the viewer believe in the reality and authenticity of what is happening.
In paintings dedicated to religious themes, Jesus almost always finds himself surrounded by people smiling maliciously and ambiguously. The same images are presented in the painting “Carrying the Cross”, the coloring of which is composed of pale and cold shades. From the monotonous mass of people, the figure of Christ stands out, painted in slightly warmer colors. However, this is the only thing that distinguishes it from others. The faces of all the characters have the same expression. Even the bright face of St. Veronica hardly distinguishes the heroine from other characters. In addition, the combination of bright, poisonous blue and yellow colors of her headdress enhances the sense of ambiguity.
Of particular interest in Bosch’s work is the altar composition called “Haystack”. An allegorical picture unfolds before the viewer human life. People are riding on a carriage: being between an angel and a devil, in full view of everyone they are kissing, having fun, playing musical instruments, singing songs. The cart is followed by the pope and the emperor; the column is closed by people from the common people. The latter, wanting to become participants in the celebration of life, run ahead and, falling under the wheels of the cart, find themselves mercilessly crushed, never having time to understand the taste of human joys and pleasures. The overall composition is crowned by little Jesus, sitting on a cloud and raising his hands to the sky in prayer. The impression of realism of what is happening is created with the help of a landscape that is specific and authentic.
Hieronymus Bosch. Mockery of Christ
Bosch always introduces fantastic elements into his paintings. They are the main ones and reveal the artist’s intention. These are birds soaring in the sky with sails instead of wings; fish with horse hooves instead of fins; people born from tree stumps; heads with tails and a lot of other phantasmagoric images. Moreover, they are all unusually mobile in Bosch. Even the smallest creature is endowed with energy and is directed somewhere.
When looking at Bosch’s paintings, one gets the impression that the master decided to show everything that is base, gloomy, and shameful in this world. Humor has no place in these paintings. It is replaced by poisonous mockery and sarcasm, which clearly highlights all the shortcomings of the human world order.
In works dating back to the late period of the artist’s work, the dynamics weaken somewhat. However, the same boundlessness of the represented space and the multi-figure nature of the picture remain. This is exactly how one can characterize the painting, called “John on Patmos.” Particularly interesting is the fact that on the reverse side the master placed a wonderful landscape, striking in its beauty. The artist surprisingly managed to accurately convey here the transparency of the air, the curves of the river banks, and the soft blue color of the high sky. However, bright colors and precise contour lines give the work a tense, almost tragic character.
Home distinctive feature Bosch's creativity is a focus on man and his world, the desire to objectively express people's lives, their feelings, thoughts and desires. This was most fully reflected in the altar composition called “The Garden of Delights,” where human sins are shown without embellishment. The work is unusually dynamic. Entire groups of people pass in front of the viewer, which the author places in several tiers for better viewing. Gradually, the impression of continuously repeating, unidirectional movement of the figures is created, which enhances the tragic feeling and reminds the viewer of the seven circles of hell.
Bosch's artistic style was born from the conflict between reality and the ideals of medieval art. Many artists of that time, due to an understandable desire to embellish a gloomy life full of contradictions, created ideally beautiful images that were far from the harsh reality. Bosch's work, on the contrary, was aimed at an objective depiction of the surrounding reality. Moreover, the artist sought to turn the world of people inside out and show its hidden side, thereby returning art to its deep philosophical and worldview meaning.
In The Adoration of the Magi, landscape plays one of the main roles. The main characters are shown here as part of a whole; they do not have independent meaning. More important for revealing the artist’s intention is what is located behind the figures of the characters - landscape paintings: horsemen, trees, a bridge, a city, a road. Despite its scale, the landscape creates the impression of emptiness, silence and hopelessness. However, this is the only thing that still has life and some meaning. The human figures here are static and insignificant, their movements, recorded at a certain moment, are suspended. Main actor It is precisely the landscape that appears, spiritualized and therefore emphasizing even more sharply the emptiness, aimlessness and futility of human life.
In the composition “Prodigal Son”, pictures of nature and the main character form a certain unity. Means of expression here
The similarity of colors used by the author serves as a basis: the landscape and the human figure are painted in shades of gray.
In Bosch's later works, fantastic creatures are no longer given as much space as in earlier works. Only here and there some strange figures still appear. However, these are not those energetic half-animals scurrying everywhere. Their size and activity are significantly reduced. The main thing now for the painter is to show the loneliness of a person in this world of cruel, soulless people, where everyone is busy only with themselves.
Hieronymus Bosch died in 1516. His work influenced the formation of the artistic method of many remarkable masters, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The fantastic images of Bosch's works largely predetermined the emergence of the paintings of surrealist artists.
At the beginning of the 16th century. 15th century masters continued to live and work in the Netherlands. - Hieronymous Bosch and Gerard David, but already at this time features of the High Renaissance appeared in Dutch painting (albeit to a lesser extent than in Italian).
During this period, the Dutch economy experienced unprecedented prosperity. Industry developed rapidly, guild craft was replaced by manufacturing. The discovery of America made the Netherlands a major center of international trade. The self-awareness of the people grew, and along with it, national liberation tendencies intensified, which led to revolution in the last third of the 15th century.
One of the most significant masters of the first third of the 16th century. there was Quentin Masseys. The author of numerous altarpieces, he became perhaps the first creator of a genre work in Dutch painting, writing his famous painting“Changed with my wife” (1514). Masseys's brushes include wonderful portraits in which
the artist makes an attempt to convey the depth of a person’s inner world (portraits of Etienne Gardiner, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Peter Aegidius).
At the same time as Masseys in the Netherlands they were working on the so-called. novelist artists who turned to the work of Italian masters. In their works, novelists did not strive to reflect reality; their main goal was to create a monumental image of a person. The most significant representatives of this trend were Jan Gossaert, nicknamed Mabuse, and Bernard van Orley.
In the first third of the 16th century. have worked famous master of his era, one of the founders of European landscape painting Joachim Patinir. His paintings of sweeping plains, rocky peaks and tranquil rivers included religious scenes with small human figures. Gradually, biblical motifs occupy less and less space in his landscapes (“Baptism”, “Landscape with the Flight to Egypt”). Patinir's painting had a great influence on artists of subsequent generations.
A contemporary of Patinir was the greatest master of this time, Luke of Leiden, who worked in the technique of engraving. His works are distinguished by their realism and compositional integrity, as well as deep emotionality (“Mohammed with the Murdered Monk,” 1508; “David and Saul,” 1509). Many of his engravings feature elements everyday genre(“The Game of Chess,” “The Wife Brings Joseph’s Clothes to Potiphar”). The portrait images of Luke of Leiden are authentic and lifelike (“ Portrait of a man", OK. 1520).
The everyday genre became widespread in painting in the second third of the 16th century. Artists who continued the traditions of Massys worked in Antwerp - Jan Sanders van Hemessen, who created many versions of “The Money Changers,” and Marinus van Roemerswaele, the author of “The Merry Society.” With their grotesque images, they also changed girls of easy virtue, these masters practically erased the line separating everyday and religious compositions.
The features of the everyday genre also penetrated into portraiture, largest representatives which included Amsterdam artists Dirk Jacobs and Cornelis Teunissen. Natural poses and gestures make portrait images lively and convincing. Thanks to Jacobs and Teunissen, Dutch painting was enriched with a new, original genre, which became the group portrait.
During these years, Romanism continued to develop, the masters of which were Peter Cook van Aelst and Jan Scorel, who had numerous talents and abilities. He was not only a painter, but also a clergyman, musician, rhetorician, engineer, and custodian of the art collection of Pope Adrian VI.
The crisis of the Renaissance worldview that gripped the art of the Italian Renaissance in the second half of the 16th century also affected the Netherlands. In the 1550-1560s. In Dutch painting, the realistic direction continues its development, acquiring national features. At the same time, Romanism became more active, in which elements of mannerism began to predominate.
Manneristic features are present in the paintings of the Antwerp artist Frans Floris. His biblical compositions amaze with excessive drama, complex angles and exaggerated dynamics (“The Deposition of Angels”, 1554; “The Last Judgment”, 1566).
A prominent representative of realistic painting of this time was the Antwerp master Peter Aertsen, who painted mainly large-figured genre scenes and still lifes. He often combines both of these genres in his works, but one of them always prevails over the other. In the painting “Peasant Festival” (1550), still life plays a secondary role, and in “The Butcher Shop” (1551) objects have pushed the person into the background. Artsen's canvases are distinguished by great authenticity, although the artist strives to present the images of peasants as monumental and majestic (“Peasants at the Market”, 1550s; “Peasants at the Hearth”, 1556; “Dance Among the Eggs”, 1557). In the paintings “The Cook” (1559) and “The Peasant” (1561), with their obvious idealization of images, one can feel the author’s sincere sympathy for the common man.
The most significant master of realistic Dutch painting of the 16th century. became Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel (Breugel), nicknamed the Elder, or Muzhitsky, was born between 1525 and 1530. In the early 50s. XVI century he lived in Antwerp, where he studied painting with P. Cook van Aelst. In the period from 1552 to 1553 the artist worked in Italy, and from 1563 in Brussels. While in the Netherlands, the painter met democratic and radical thinkers of the country. This acquaintance, perhaps, determined the thematic direction of the artist’s work.
Bruegel's early works are marked by the influence of the Mannerists and the artistic method of Hieronymus Bosch. For the most part, they are landscapes that embody the artist’s impressions of traveling through Italy and the Alps, as well as pictures of the nature of the Netherlands, the artist’s homeland. In these works, the author’s desire to show a large-scale, grandiose picture on a small-sized canvas is noticeable. This is his “Neapolitan Harbor”, which became the first seascape in the history of painting.
In his early works, the artist strives to express the infinity of space in which a person gets lost, becomes smaller, and becomes insignificant. Later, Bruegel’s landscape takes on a more actual sizes. The interpretation of a person living in this world also changes. The image of a person is now endowed with a special meaning and is not a figure that randomly appeared on the canvas. An example of this is a painting created in 1557 and called “The Sower.”
In the work “The Fall of Icarus,” the main plot, expressing the idea that the death of one person will not stop the rotation of the wheel of life, is supplemented by several more. Thus, the scenes of plowing and the coastal landscape presented here serve as symbols of the regularity of human life and the majesty of the natural world. Although the painting is dedicated to an ancient myth, almost nothing reminds of the death of Icarus. Only by looking closely can you see the leg of the hero who fell into the sea. No one paid attention to the death of Icarus - not the shepherd admiring the beautiful view, not the fisherman sitting on the shore, not the peasant plowing his field, not the crew of the sailing ship heading to the open sea. The main thing in the picture is not the tragedy of the ancient character, but the beauty of a person surrounded by beautiful nature.
All of Bruegel's works have a deep semantic content. They affirm the idea of orderliness and sublimity of the world order. However, it would be wrong to say that Bruegel’s works are optimistic. The pessimistic notes in the paintings are expressed by the special position taken by the author. It’s as if he is somewhere outside the world, observing life from the outside and detached from the images transferred to the canvas.
A new stage in the artist’s work was marked by the appearance in 1559 of the canvas “The Battle of Carnival and Lent.” The basis of the composition was made up of numerous crowds of revelers, mummers, monks and merchants. For the first time in Bruegel’s work, all attention is focused not on landscape paintings, but on the image of a moving crowd.
In this work, the author expressed a special worldview, characteristic of thinkers of that time, when the natural world was humanized and animated, and the human world, on the contrary, was likened, for example, to a community of insects. From Bruegel’s point of view, the human world is the same anthill, and its inhabitants are as insignificant and insignificant as they are small. The same are their feelings, thoughts, and actions. A painting depicting cheerful people nevertheless evokes gloomy and sad feelings.
The same mood of sadness marks the paintings “Flemish Proverbs” (1559) and “Children’s Games” (1560). The latter depicts children playing in the foreground. However, the perspective of the street shown in the picture is endless. This is what has the main meaning in the composition: people’s activities are as meaningless and insignificant as children’s games. This theme - the question of man's place in life - becomes the leading one in Bruegel's work in the late 1550s.
Since the 1560s. realism in Bruegel's paintings suddenly gives way to a bright and ominous fantasticality, surpassing even the grotesque works of Bosch in the power of expression. Examples of such works are the paintings “The Triumph of Death” (1561) and “Mad Greta” (1562).
The Triumph of Death shows skeletons trying to destroy people. They, in turn, try to escape in a huge mousetrap. Allegorical images are filled with deep symbolic meaning and are intended to reflect the author’s worldview and worldview.
In "Mad Greta" people no longer hope for salvation from evil creatures, whose numbers are increasing. From nowhere, many of these sinister creatures appear, trying to take the place of people on earth. The latter, distraught, mistake the sewage spewed by the giant monster for gold and, forgetting about the impending danger and crushing each other in the crowd, try to take possession of the “precious” bullion.
This composition shows for the first time the artist’s attitude towards people who are overcome by unbridled greed. However, this thought develops in Bruegel into deep discussions about the fate of all humanity. It should also be noted that, despite all the variety of fantastic elements, Bruegel’s paintings evoked an unusually acute sense of the concreteness and reality of what was happening. They were a unique reflection of the events taking place in the Netherlands at that time - the repressions carried out by the Spanish conquerors in the country. Bruegel was the first among artists to reflect on canvas the events and conflicts of his time, translating them into artistic and visual language.
Gradually, strong emotions and tragedy give way to Bruegel’s quiet and sad reflections on the destinies of people. The artist again turns to real images. Now the main place in the composition is given to a large-scale landscape stretching far to the horizon. The author's sarcastic ridicule, characteristic of earlier works, turns here into warmth, forgiveness and understanding of the essence of the human soul.
At the same time, works appeared that were marked by a mood of loneliness, slight sadness and sadness. Among such paintings, “Monkeys” (1562) and “The Tower of Babel” (1563) occupy a special place. In the latter, in contrast to the previously painted painting of the same name, the main place is occupied by the figures of builders. If earlier the artist was more interested in the world of beautiful and perfect nature, now the semantic emphasis shifts to the image of man.
In such works as “The Suicide of Saul” (1562), “Landscape with the Flight into Egypt” (1563), “Carrying the Cross” (1564), the master overcomes the tragedy of the meaninglessness of human activity on earth. Here a completely new idea for Bruegel appears of the intrinsic value of human life. In this regard, the composition “Carrying the Cross” is of particular interest, where the well-known religious and philosophical plot is interpreted as crowd scene with numerous figures of soldiers, peasants, children - ordinary people, watching with curiosity what is happening.
In 1565, a series of paintings was created that became true masterpieces of world painting. The canvases are dedicated to the seasons: “Gloomy day. Spring", "Harvest. Summer", "Return of the Herds. Autumn", "Hunters in the Snow. Winter". These compositions harmoniously present the author’s idea to express the majesty and at the same time the vital reality of the natural world.
With all authenticity, the master manages to capture living pictures of nature on canvas. The feeling of almost tangible reality is achieved through the artist’s use of paints of certain tones, which are original symbols of a particular time of year: reddish-brown shades of earth combined with green tones that form the landscape in the background of “Dark Day”; rich yellow, turning into Brown color in the composition “Harvest”; the predominance of red and all shades of brown in the painting “Return of the Herds”.
Bruegel's cycle is dedicated to the states of nature at different times of the year. However, to say that only the landscape occupies the artist’s main attention here would be incorrect. In all the paintings there are people who are presented by the artist as physically strong, passionate about some kind of activity: harvesting, hunting. A distinctive feature of these images is their fusion with the natural world. Human figures are not opposed to the landscape, they are harmoniously integrated into the composition. Their movement coincides with the dynamics of natural forces. Thus, the beginning of agricultural work is associated with the awakening of nature (“Dark Day”).
Very soon, realistic depictions of people and events became the leading direction in Bruegel’s art. The paintings “Census in Bethlehem”, “Massacre of the Innocents”, “Sermon of John the Baptist” that appeared in 1566 marked a new stage in the development of not only the artist’s work, but also the art of the Netherlands as a whole. The images depicted on the canvas (including biblical ones) were now called upon not only to personify universal concepts, but also to symbolize a specific social world order. Thus, in the painting “The Massacre of the Innocents,” the gospel plot serves as a kind of screen for depicting a real fact: an attack by one of the units of the Spanish army on a Flemish village.
A significant work of the last period of the artist’s work was the painting “Peasant Dance”, created by Bruegel in 1567. The plot of the canvas consists of dancing peasants, depicted by the master on an enlarged scale. It is important for the author not only to convey the atmosphere of the holiday, but also to realistically show the plastic movement of human bodies. Everything about a person interests the artist: his facial features, facial expressions, gestures, postures, and manner of movement. Each figure is drawn by the master with great attention and precision. The images created by Bruegel are monumental, significant and carry social pathos. The result is a picture that represents a huge, homogeneous mass of people, symbolizing the peasantry. This composition will become fundamental in the development of the folk peasant genre in Bruegel’s art.
What is the reason for the appearance folk theme in the artist's work? Art critics suggest that such works of his are a kind of response to the events then taking place in the Netherlands. The time of painting “Peasant Dance” coincides with the time of the suppression of the popular uprising, called “iconoclasm” (the rebels, led by Calvinists, destroyed icons and sculptures in Catholic churches). With this movement, which flared up in 1566, the revolution in the Netherlands began. The events shocked all the famous artist’s contemporaries to the core.
Historians and art critics also associate the appearance of another work by Bruegel, “The Peasant Wedding,” with iconoclasm. The images created here acquire an even larger scale, compared to the figures in the “Peasant Dance”. However, the peasants are endowed with exaggerated strength and power in the composition. Such idealization of the image was not typical for the artist’s earlier works. In the same picture, the author’s extraordinary goodwill towards the people depicted on the canvas was revealed.
The joyful, life-affirming mood of the above-mentioned works is soon replaced by pessimism and a feeling of unfulfilled hopes, reflected in the paintings “The Misanthrope”, “The Cripples”, “The Nest Thief”, “The Blind”. It is noteworthy that they were all written in 1568.
In “Blindness,” the foreground depicts figures of cripples. Their faces are terribly ugly. The souls of these people seem to be the same. These images are the personification of everything that is base on earth: greed, self-interest and malice. Their empty eye sockets are a symbol of the spiritual blindness of people. The canvas takes on a pronounced tragic character. For Bruegel, the problem of spiritual emptiness, human insignificance grows to universal proportions.
The role of the landscape, which is presented by the author as a contrast to the world of people, is also significant in the composition.
The hills rising in the distance, the trees, the church - everything is filled with silence, calm and peace. People and nature seem to change places here. It is the landscape in the picture that expresses the idea of humanity, goodness, and spirituality. And the person himself turns out to be spiritually dead and lifeless here. The tragic notes are enhanced by the author’s use of light, cold colors. Thus, the basis of the color is light lilac colors with a steel tint, which enhance the feeling of hopelessness of the situation in which a person finds himself.
The last work of Bruegel the Elder was a work called “The Dance of the Gallows” (1568). In the picture, the viewer sees figures of people dancing not far from the gallows. This canvas became an expression of the artist’s complete disappointment in the contemporary world order and people; it conveys an understanding of the impossibility of returning to the former harmony.
Pieter Bruegel died on September 5, 1569 in Brussels. The great painter became the founder of the popular, democratic movement in the art of the Netherlands in the 16th century.
It is interesting to note that the first shoots of the new art of the Renaissance in the Netherlands are observed in book miniatures, which would seem to be most associated with medieval traditions.
The Dutch Renaissance in painting begins with the "Ghent Altarpiece" by the brothers Hubert (died 1426) and Jan (c. 1390-1441) van Eyck, completed by Jan van Eyck in 1432. The Ghent Altarpiece (Ghent, Church of St. Bavo) is a two-tiered folding room, on 12 boards of which (when opened) 12 scenes are presented. At the top is Christ enthroned with Mary and John in attendance, angels singing and playing music, and Adam and Eve; below on five boards is the scene of “Adoration of the Lamb.” It contains other features that are no less important for art: the Dutch masters seem to be looking at the world for the first time, which they convey with extraordinary care and detail; Every blade of grass, every piece of fabric represents for them a high piece of art. The Van Eycks improved their oil technique: oil made it possible to convey brilliance, depth, and richness in a more versatile way. objective world, attracting the attention of Dutch artists, its colorful sonority.
Of the many Madonnas by Jan van Eyck, the most famous is the “Madonna of Chancellor Rollin” (circa 1435), so named because the donor, Chancellor Rollin, is depicted in front of the Madonna worshiping her. Jan van Eyck worked a lot and successfully on portraits, always remaining reliably accurate, creating a deeply individual image, but without losing sight of the details general characteristics man as part of the universe (“Man with a Carnation”; “Man in a Turban”, 1433; portrait of the artist’s wife Margaret van Eyck, 1439). Instead of active action, characteristic of portraits of the Italian Renaissance, van Eyck puts forward contemplation as a quality that determines a person’s place in the world, helping to comprehend the beauty of its endless diversity.
The art of the van Eyck brothers, who occupied an exceptional place in contemporary artistic culture, was of great importance for the further development of the Dutch Renaissance. In the 40s of the 15th century. In Dutch art, the pantheistic multicoloredness and harmonic clarity characteristic of Van Eyck are gradually disappearing. But the human soul is revealed deeper in all its secrets.
Dutch art owes much to Rogier van der Weyden (1400?-1464) in solving such problems. At the end of the 40s, Rogier van der Weyden traveled to Italy. "Descent from the Cross" - typical work Vayden. The composition is built diagonally. The drawing is rigid, the figures are presented in sharp angles. The clothes either hang limply or are twisted in a whirlwind. Faces are distorted with grief. Everything bears the stamp of cold analytical observation, almost ruthless observation.
In the second half of the 15th century. accounts for the work of a master of exceptional talent, Hugo van der Goes (circa 1435-1482), whose life was spent mainly in Ghent. The central scene of his grandiose in size and monumental in image Portinari altar (named after the customers) is the scene of the adoration of the baby. The artist conveys the emotional shock of the shepherds and angels, whose facial expressions indicate that they seem to predict the true meaning of the event. The mournful and tender appearance of Mary, the almost physically felt emptiness of space around the figure of the baby and the mother bending towards him, further emphasize the mood of the unusualness of what is happening. The painting of Hugo van der Goes had a definite influence on the Florentine Quattrocento. Later works Gus is increasingly acquiring the features of disharmony, confusion, mental breakdown, tragedy, disunity with the world, being a reflection of the painful state of the artist himself (“The Death of Mary”).
The work of Hans Memling (1433-1494), who made himself famous, is inextricably linked with the city of Bruges lyrical images Madonna Memling's compositions are clear and measured, his images poetic and soft. The sublime coexists with the everyday. One of Memling's most characteristic works is the reliquary of St. Ursula (about 1489)
Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516), creator of dark mystical visions, in which he turns to both medieval allegorism and living concrete reality. In Bosch, demonology coexists with healthy folk humor, a subtle sense of nature with a cold analysis of human vices and with merciless grotesqueness in the depiction of people (“Ship of Fools”). In one of his most grandiose works, “The Garden of Delights,” Bosch creates figurative image sinful life of people. In the works of late Bosch (“St. Anthony”) the theme of loneliness is intensified. The boundary between the 15th and 16th centuries in the art of the Netherlands is much more noticeable than, say, between the Quattrocento and High Renaissance in Italy, which was an organic, logical consequence of the art of the previous era. Art of the Netherlands of the 16th century. is increasingly abandoning the use of medieval traditions, on which artists of the past century relied heavily.
The pinnacle of the Dutch Renaissance was, undoubtedly, the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nicknamed Peasant (1525/30-1569). The name of Bruegel is associated with the final formation of landscape in Dutch painting as an independent genre. “Winter Landscape” from the cycle “The Seasons” (another name is “Hunters in the Snow”, 1565) earned particular fame among descendants: subtle insight into nature, lyricism and aching sadness emanate from these dark brown silhouettes of trees, figures of hunters and dogs against the backdrop of white snow and hills stretching into the distance, tiny figures of people on the ice and from a flying bird that seems ominous in this tense, almost palpably ringing silence.
In the early 60s, Bruegel created a number of tragic works that surpassed all Bosch's phantasmagoria in terms of expressive power. In allegorical language, Bruegel expressed the tragedy of modern life in the entire country, in which the atrocities of the Spanish oppressors reached highest point. He turned to religious subjects, revealing in them the topical events of “Bethlehem Massacre of the Innocents” (1566)
In the Dutch Renaissance there was also an Italianizing movement, the so-called Romanism. Artists of this movement followed (if possible) the traditions of the Roman school and, above all, Raphael. The works of such masters as J. Gossaert, P. Cook van Aalst, J. Scorell, F. Floris and others surprisingly combined the desire for idealization, for Italian plasticity of forms with a purely Dutch love for detail, narrative and naturalism. As it is rightly said (V. Vlasov), only the genius of Rubens was able to overcome the imitativeness of the Dutch novelists - already in the 17th century.
Related information.
Gershenzon-Chegodaeva N. Dutch portrait of the 15th century. Its origins and destinies. Series: From the history of world art. M. Art 1972 198 p. ill. Hardcover, encyclopedic format.
Gershenzon-Chegodaeva N. M. Dutch portrait of the 15th century. Its origins and destinies.
The Dutch Renaissance is perhaps an even more vibrant phenomenon than the Italian one, at least from the point of view of painting. Van Eyck, Bruegel, Bosch, later Rembrandt... Names that certainly left a deep imprint in the hearts of people who saw their canvases, regardless of whether you feel admiration for them, as before “Hunters in the Snow,” or rejection, as before "The Garden of Earthly Delights." The harsh, dark tones of the Dutch masters differ from the light and joyful creations of Giotto, Raphael and Michelangelo. One can only guess how the specifics of this school were formed, why it was there, to the north of prosperous Flanders and Brabant, that a powerful center of culture arose. Let's keep quiet about this. Let's look at the specifics, at what we have. Our source is the paintings and altars of famous creators of the Northern Renaissance, and this material requires a special approach. In principle, this needs to be done at the intersection of cultural studies, art history and history.
A similar attempt was implemented by Natalia Gershenzon-Chegodaeva (1907-1977), the daughter of the most famous literary critic in our country. In principle, she is a fairly well-known person, in her circles, first of all, with her excellent biography of Pieter Bruegel (1983), the above-mentioned work also belongs to her. To be honest, this is a clear attempt to go beyond the boundaries of classical art criticism - not just talk about artistic styles and aesthetics, but try to trace the evolution of human thought through them...
What features do images of humans have in earlier times? There were few secular artists; monks were not always talented in the art of drawing. Therefore, often, images of people in miniatures and paintings are very conventional. Paintings and any other images had to be painted as it should be, in everything obeying the rules of the century of emerging symbolism. By the way, this is why tombstones (also a kind of portraits) did not always reflect the true appearance of a person, but rather showed him as he needed to be remembered.
Dutch portrait art breaks through such canons. Who are we talking about? The author examines the works of such masters as Robert Compen, Jan Van Eyck, Rogier Van der Weyden, Hugo Van der Goes. These were true masters of their craft, living by their talent, performing work to order. Very often the customer was the church - in conditions of illiteracy of the population, painting is considered the most important art; the city dweller and peasant, not trained in theological wisdom, had to explain the simplest truths on their fingers, and artistic representation filled this role. This is how such masterpieces as the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck arose.
The customers were also rich townspeople - merchants, bankers, guild members, and nobility. Portraits appeared, single and group. And then - for that time a breakthrough - it was discovered interesting feature masters, and one of the first to notice it was the famous agnostic philosopher Nikolas of Cusa. Not only did artists, when creating their images, paint a person not conventionally, but as he is, they also managed to convey his inner appearance. A turn of the head, a glance, a hairstyle, clothes, a curve of the mouth, a gesture - all this is amazing and exactly also showed the character of the person.
Of course, this was an innovation, no doubt. The aforementioned Nikola also wrote about this. The author connects painters with the innovative ideas of the philosopher - respect for human personality, knowability of the surrounding world, the possibility of its philosophical knowledge.
But here a completely reasonable question arises: is it possible to compare the work of artists with the thought of an individual philosopher? In spite of everything, Nicholas of Cusa in any case remained in the bosom of medieval philosophy; in any case, he relied on the fabrications of the same scholastics. What about master artists? We know practically nothing about their intellectual life; did they have such developed connections with each other, and with church leaders? That's the question. Without a doubt, they had continuity with each other, but the origins of this skill still remain a mystery. The author does not specialize in philosophy, but rather fragmentarily talks about the connection between the traditions of Dutch painting and scholasticism. If Dutch art original, and has no connection with the Italian humanities, where they came from artistic traditions, and their features? Vague reference to " national traditions"? Which? This is a question...
In general, the author perfectly, as befits an art critic, talks about the specifics of each artist’s work, and quite convincingly interprets the aesthetic perception of the individual. But as for the philosophical origins, the place of painting in the thought of the Middle Ages, it is very sketchy; the author did not find an answer to the question about the origins.
Bottom line: the book has a very good selection of portraits and other works of the early Dutch Renaissance. It’s quite interesting to read about how art historians work with such a fragile and ambiguous material as painting, how they note the smallest features and specific features of style, how they connect the aesthetics of a painting with time... However, the context of the era is visible, so to speak, from a very, very long perspective .
Personally, I was more interested in the question of the ideological and artistic origins of this specific movement. This is where the author failed to convincingly answer the question posed. The art critic defeated the historian; before us is, first of all, a work of art history, that is, rather, for great lovers of painting.
1 – Development of Dutch painting
Painting remained the favorite art of Flanders and Holland in the 16th century. If dutch art of this time, despite the stately, calm and mature flourishing of the 15th century and the even more significant and free further development in the 17th century, it is still a transitional art, looking for ways, then the reason for this, no matter what they say, lies mainly in a powerful but uneven transition to the north of the southern language of forms, the processing of which by the leading Dutch painters of the 16th century was successful in the eyes of only contemporaries, but not in the eyes of posterity. That the Dutch artists of this time were not content, like most German ones, with wanderings to Northern Italy, but went straight to Rome, whose refined style was contrary to the northern nature, became fatal for her. Along with the “Roman” movement, which reached its apogee in 1572 with the founding of the Antwerp brotherhood of novelists, the national movement in the field of painting never dried up. The rare national undertakings in which the fifteenth-century movement found continuation and flourish were followed by decades of Italian predominance. In the second half of the century, when this “Italianism” quickly solidified in an academic manner, there was immediately a strong national rebuff against it, which showed painting new paths. If Germany had previously been ahead in the independent development of genre and landscape in graphics, now these branches have become independent branches of easel painting in Dutch hands. This was followed by a group portrait and an architectural motif in painting. New worlds have opened up. However, there was such a lively exchange of painters between Flanders and Holland throughout the 16th century that the origin of the masters mattered less than the tradition they followed. In the first half of the 16th century we will have to observe the development of Dutch painting in its various main centers; in the second, it will be more instructive to trace the development of individual industries.
In the Netherlands, easel painting now dominated. The art of reproduction, woodcut and copper engraving, is largely influenced by High German graphics. Despite the importance of Luke of Leiden, a painter-engraver with an independent imagination, despite the merits of such masters as Hieronymus Cock, Hieronymus Wiriches and Philippe Galle for disseminating the discoveries of their fellow countrymen and despite the high pictorial completeness that copper engraving acquired in the eclectic hands of Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1616) and his students, copper engraving and wood engraving do not play such an important role in the Netherlands as in Germany. Book miniature and in the Netherlands she lived only as remnants of the former prosperity, the fruits of which we can only point out on occasion. On the contrary, it was here that wall painting, more decisively than anywhere else, ceded its rights and obligations, on the one hand, to carpet fabric, the history of which was written by Guiffret, Münz and Penchard, and on the other to glass painting, studied by Levi, mainly in Belgium. Carpet weaving cannot be excluded from the great art of 16th-century Dutch painting on a plane. The weaving of the rest of Europe pales in comparison to the Dutch carpet weaving; in the Netherlands, Brussels has now undoubtedly received leading importance in this art. Indeed, even Leo X ordered the famous Raphael carpets to be made in the workshop of Peter van Aelst in Brussels in 1515-1519; a number of other famous series of carpets designed by Italians, preserved in palaces, churches and meetings, are undoubtedly of Brussels origin. Let's name 22 carpets with the deeds of Scipio in the Garde Meuble in Paris, 10 tapestries with the love story of Vertumnus and Pomona in the Madrid palace and 26 woven cows from the story of Psyche in the palace at Fontainebleau. The Dutch cartons of Barend van Orley (d. 1542) and Jan Cornelis Vermeyen (1500-1559) were also used to depict Maximilian's hunts at Fontainebleau and the conquest of Tunisia in the Madrid palace. This branch of art has now forgotten its former strict style, with limited space, for the more picturesque, and its depth of style for the luxury of brighter colors. At the same time, glass painting in the Netherlands, as elsewhere, followed the same more plastic direction, with brighter colors; and it was here that she first unfolded her splendor widely and luxuriously. Such series of windows as in the Church of St. Waltrude in Mons (1520), in the church of St. James in Lüttich (1520-1540) and the Church of St. Catherine in Googstraaten (1520-1550), whose painting in architectural motifs is still imbued with Gothic echoes, as well as large series, entirely dressed in Renaissance forms, for example, the luxurious windows of the cathedral in Brussels, partly dating back to Orlais (1538), and the great church in Goude , works partly by Wouter and Dirk Crabet (1555-1577), partly by Lambert van Noort (before 1603), are among the largest works of glass painting of the 16th century. Even if we agree that ancient mosaic glass painting was more stylish than the newfangled glass painting, one still cannot help but be impressed by the calm, few-colored harmony of large windows in this direction.
Special kind monumental painting In one part of Holland they represent large paintings painted on wood for ceiling vaults, which in the polygons of the church choir represent in tempera the Last Judgment and other biblical events, as parallels of the Old Testament to the New. Paintings of this kind, published and appreciated by Gustav van Calcken and Jan Six, are rediscovered in churches in Enkhuizen (1484), Naarden (1518), Alkmaar (1519), Warmhuizen (1525) and in the church of St. Agnes in Utrecht (1516).
The oldest information about Netherlandish painting of the 16th century is found in Guicciardini's description of the Netherlands, in the epigrams to the paintings of Lampsonius, and in the famous book on painters by Carel van Mander with notes by Gijmans in French and Hans Floerke in German. Among the general works, one should point out the works of Waagen, Schnaase, Michiel, A. I. Waters and Thorel, as well as the works of Riegel and B. Riehl. Relying on Scheibler, the author of this book worked hard about thirty years ago to study Dutch painting of this period. Since then, his results have been partly supplemented and partly confirmed by new separate investigations by Scheibler, Gijmans, Gulin (van Loo) and Friedlander. The history of Antwerp painting was written by Max Rooses and F. I. van den Branden; For the history of Leuven art, Van Evan laid the foundation more than thirty years ago; for Mechel, Neeffs; for Lüttich, Gelbig; and for Haarlem, van der Willigen.
2 – The attractiveness of the Netherlands for artists
Already in the first quarter of the 16th century, artists from various Flemish, Dutch and Walloon cities flocked to Antwerp. In the lists of masters and students of the Antwerp guild of painters, published by Rombouts and van Lerius, among thousands of unknown names we see most of the famous Dutch painters of this century. At their head is Quentin Masseys the Elder, the great Flemish master, who, as is now generally accepted, was born in 1466 in Leuven from Antwerp parents, and in 1491 became master of the guild of St. Luke in Antwerp, where he died in 1530. Our information about this master has increased in recent times thanks to Guillemans, Carl Justi, Gluck, Cohen and de Bocher. Cohen showed that Quentin in Leuven was brought up on the works of the strict Old Flemish Dirk Bouts and, apparently, was related to his son Albrecht Bouts (approximately 1461-1549), whom Van Even, Gulin and others see as the master of the "Assumption of Our Lady" of the Brussels Museum. Whether Quentin was in Italy is not proven and does not necessarily follow from his style, which could develop on local soil to the great freedom, breadth and verve characteristic of the spirit of the time both in the north and in the south. Even the echoes of the Renaissance in the structure of his later paintings and in costumes, the full mood of his landscapes with luxurious buildings on mountain forest slopes and the tenderness of his confident modeling of the body, which, however, has nothing in common with the “sfumato” of Leonardo da Vinci, do not convince us is that he should have known the works of this master. Nevertheless, he did not remain at all cold towards the Renaissance movement and boldly and strongly led Flemish painting forward in line with his time. Of course, he does not have the variety, solidity and spiritual depth of Dürer, but he surpasses him in the pictorial power of the brush. The language of Quentin's forms, generally northern in essence and not free from coarseness and angularity in its dependence on other styles, appears in some heads of an independent type with a high forehead, a short chin and a small, slightly protruding mouth. His colors are rich, light and sparkling, in the tone of the body they turn to cold monochrome, and in the clothes to that iridescent shading with various colors, which Durer definitely rejected. His writing, with all its power, comes down to the painstaking finishing of details, such as transparent snowflakes and fluttering individual hairs. The wealth of imagination is not characteristic of Quinten, but he knows how to impart an extremely intimate spiritual life to quiet actions. The main groups of his paintings usually occupy the full width of the foreground; the light landscape makes a majestic transition from the middle ground to the background.
Life-size bust images of the Savior and His Mother in Antwerp, painted with love, but dryly processed, undoubtedly date back to the 15th century. Their repetitions in London have a gold background instead of dark green. The four large altarpieces give an idea of Quentin's mature strength at the beginning of the new century. The oldest are the doors of the carved altar that appeared in 1503 in San Salvador in Valladolid. They depict the Adoration of the Shepherds and Magi. The evidence presented by Karl Justi forces us to recognize in them works that are very typical of Quentin. Famous, easily accessible, large and best works by Quinten are the altarpiece of St., completed in 1509. Anne of the Brussels Museum, shining with calm beauty, with St. Originally in the dreamy mood of the middle part and completed in 1511, the altar of St. John of the Antwerp Museum, the middle part of which represents the Lamentation over the Body of Christ in a wide, powerful and passionate picture. The doors of the altar of St. Anna contains events from the lives of Joachim and Anna, written broadly and vitally with an excellent transmission of spiritual life. The doors of the St. John's altar have on their inner sides the torment of two Johns, and their figures on the outer sides, according to the old custom, are presented in the form of statues, painted in gray tones on a gray background. The fourth in a row with these works is, according to Gulin, a large triptych of Quentin with the Crucifixion in the Mayer van den Bergt collection in Antwerp. Among the small religious images they are joined by several paintings formerly considered the work of the "landscape painter" Patinir, and above all the beautiful Crucifixions with the Magdalene embracing the foot of the cross in the National Gallery in London and in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna. Adjacent to these paintings is the beautiful small “Lamentation over the Body of Christ” in the Louvre, which masterfully conveys the rigor of the Holy Body and the Sorrow of Mary and John, although not everyone recognizes it as a work by Quinten. Undoubtedly, the luxurious, solemnly seated Madonnas in Brussels and Berlin and the striking images of the Magdalene in Berlin and Antwerp are genuine.
Quentin Masseys was also the finalizer of the Dutch everyday genre with life-size half-figures. Most of the surviving paintings of this kind, with business people in offices, are, of course, only the work of the workshop. Personal work, judging by the confident, complete letter, is “The Weigher of Gold and His Wife” in the Louvre, “An Unequal Couple” at the Countess of Pourtales in Paris. It goes without saying that Quentin was also the greatest portrait painter of his time. More expressive and artistic portraits than his were never painted anywhere at that time. The most famous are the portrait of a canon against the backdrop of a wide, beautiful landscape in the Liechtenstein Gallery, the portrait of Peter Aegidius in his study at Longford Castle and the portrait of Erasmus writing in the Stroganov Palazzo in Rome. The portrait of Jean Carondelet on a green background in the Munich Pinakothek is attributed by the best experts to Orlais. The ever-increasing breadth of the master’s ideas and methods of painting can be traced precisely from these portraits.
Fig.76 - Masseys, Quentin. Portrait of a notary.
Quentin Masseys had undoubted followers primarily in the field of genre portraits in large half-figures. Some portraits of this kind, previously considered his works, for example, “Two Misers” in Windsor, which de Bocher insists belong to Quentin, and “Bargaining for a Chicken” in Dresden, due to their meaningless forms and cold colors, again began to be attributed to his son Ian Masseys. Marinus Claes from Romersval (Reimerswaal) (from 1495 to 1567 and later), who was a student of the Antwerp guild in 1509, is also closely associated with Quentin. His style of writing is harsher, but nevertheless more empty than Quentin's. With special love he dwells on the wrinkles of the skin and the details of the extremities. “St. Jerome” in Madrid was painted by him in 1521, “The Tax Collector” in Munich in 1542, “The Money Changer with his Wife” in Copenhagen in 1560. His “Calling of the Apostle Matthew” in the Lord’s collection also resembles a household painting Northbrook in London. With these pictures we identified his favorite subjects. Gulin calls him "one of the last great national-Flemish masters."
Fig.77 - "Tax Collector" in Munich in 1542
3 – Joachim Patinir
Patinir of Dinan (1490-1524), who became an Antwerp master in 1515, the first true landscape painter, recognized as such by Dürer, developed alongside Bouts, David and Quentin Masseys. But still, he always combined his landscapes with trees, waters and houses, with rocks in the background, piled on top of rocks, with biblical events and did not create such organically developed and integral in mood landscapes as Dürer’s landscape watercolors or small oil paintings Altdorfer and Huber's drawings. In certain parts, Patinir naturally and artistically observed and conveyed the steep rocky cliffs, lush groups of trees, wide river views of his homeland, the valleys of the upper Meuse; According to the old Netherlandish model, he depicted the leaves of the trees grainily, with dots: however, he piles individual parts on top of one another so fantastically and without respect for perspective that his pictures of nature seem generally cluttered and unnatural. The main paintings with his signature are: a landscape in Madrid with the "Temptation of St. Anthony", now attributed to Quentin Masseys, and a majestic landscape with the "Baptism of the Lord" of the Vienna Gallery. His signature also includes the landscape with "Rest on the Flight into Egypt", his favorite addition to the landscape in Antwerp and with St. Jerome in Karlsruhe. In Berlin, in addition to the museum, his works are in the Kaufman collection; in other countries you can get acquainted with him in the main galleries of Madrid and Vienna.
Fig.78 - Temptation of St. Antonia
Next to Patinir, a second almost contemporary landscape painter of the Meuse Valley developed, Henry (Hendrik) Bles or Met de Bles of Bouvigne (from 1480 to 1521 and later), nicknamed Civetta by the Italians for his “owl” sign. It is certain that he was in Italy, less certain that he lived in Antwerp. A number of mediocre paintings of religious content, namely “The Adoration of the Magi” and their prototype with the signature “Henricus Blesius” of the Munich Pinakothek, actually originated in Antwerp. Their landscapes, judging by the motifs and execution, are adjacent to the landscapes of Patinir, although their brown tone is lighter. Nevertheless, the style of the figures in these paintings has too little in common with the style of the figures in the real landscapes of Civetta, an exceptional landscape painter of ancient sources, so that some doubt cannot arise about the belonging of the religious paintings of the indicated Blesov group to the landscape painter Henry Met de Bles. In any case, we, together with Voll, consider the signature on the Munich painting to be authentic. The landscape painter with this name, in comparison with Patinir, is, firstly, distinguished by a more whitish coloring, then he is more confident, but more boring in composition, and finally, softer, but more pompous in his manner of writing. At the same time, he soon abandons equipping the landscape with religious figures and replaces them with a genre. The middle mature period includes his landscapes with the Way of the Cross of the Vienna Academy of Arts and the Palazzo Doria in Rome, a large fantastic mountain landscape with rolling mills, blast furnaces and forges in the Uffizi and a landscape with rocks, a river and the (almost imperceptible) Samaritan of the Vienna Gallery, which owns a whole series of it paintings The transition to the last manner is a landscape with a merchant and monkeys in Dresden.
Reliably working in Antwerp was Jan Gossaert from Maubeuge (Mabuse; about 1470-1541), usually called Mabuse after the name of his hometown, in Latin Malbodius. From David he passed to Quentin, and then in Italy (1508-1519), having processed the influence of the Upper Italian schools, he developed into the main representative of the Roman-Florentine style in Belgium. Not only architecture, but also figures and the entire composition take part in transforming the language of forms, and therefore, with its cold plastic, artificial sharpness, his style seems mannered and inartistic. On the contrary, Mabuse’s earlier works, for example the famous “Adoration of the Magi” in Castle Howard with his signature, “Christ on the Mount of Olives” in Berlin, “The Three-Part Altarpiece of the Madonna” in the Museum in Palermo, are Old Netherlandish works with a penetrating, vital language of forms and paints. Of the paintings of later times, “Adam and Eve” at Hampton Court, “Luke the Evangelist Painting the Virgin” at the Rudolfinum in Prague and “Madonnas” in Madrid, Munich and Paris, with all their technical skill, are distinguished by the deliberate coldness of the forms and tones of his Italianism; mythological paintings of this manner, such as “Hercules and Deianira” by Cook in Richmond (1517), “Neptune and Amphitrite” in Berlin and “Danae” in Munich (1527), are all the more unbearable because they still strive to combine completely realistic heads with cold plastic bodies . Portraits of Mabuse in Berlin, Paris and London show him, however, with the best side. Still, portraiture always returns to nature.
Fig.79 - "Neptune and Amphitrites" in Berlin
A related master, who developed under the influences of Quentin, Patinir and Mabuse, was Jos van Cleve the Elder (circa 1485-1540), an Amsterdam master in 1511, who at least visited Italy. After the studies of Kemmerer, Firmenich-Richartz, Justi, Gluck, Gulin and others, it can be considered almost completely established that the prolific, beautiful and sympathetic master of the Assumption of the Virgin, known by that name from his two images of this subject in Cologne (1515) and in Munich, none other than this Jos van Cleve the Elder, although Vol recognizes him only as a Munich image. Scheibler has done a great service by collating his works. These paintings by his brush, as well as other earlier ones, for all their Low German pleasantness and simplicity, are already touched by the first influences of the Renaissance. The main works of his middle age, when he still combined the freshness of the drawing with warm colors and a smooth brush, are the noble church altarpiece “Madonna of the Cherries” in Vienna, the small “Adoration of the Magi” in Dresden, the magnificent “Madonna” in Inns Hall near Liverpool and "The Crucifixion" by Weber in Hamburg. They are distinguished by rich, but only half expressing the forms of the Renaissance buildings with playing sculptural cupids and beautiful landscapes that continue the more balanced manner of Patinir. His later style, colder only in some plastically expressed figures, and in comparison with Mabuse softer and gentler in modeling, is represented by the large “Adoration of the Magi” in Dresden, images of the “Lamentation over Christ” in the Louvre and at the Staedel Institute, “Altar of the Three Magi "in Naples and" Holy Family"in the Palazzo Balbi in Genoa. His softly and evenly painted portraits in the galleries of Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Kassel and Madrid and the most beautiful among them, a portrait of a man from the Kaufmann collection in Berlin, are also reputed and were reputed before, mostly under other people's names. Quentin's influence is even stronger Masseys than the master of the "Assumption of the Virgin" is shown by the "master from Frankfurt", studied by Weizsäcker, with his main altar painting of Frankfurt, studied by Weizsäcker, with his main painting of the altar "Crucifixion" of the Städel Institute, and the "master of the Chapel of the Holy Blood" in Bruges; The Weber Gallery in Hamburg has an "Altar of the Virgin Mary" by him.
4 – Brussels School
Turning to Brussels, we meet here already in the first decades of the century an excellent local master, Barend van Orley (d. 1542), who, as they say, completed his education under the guidance of Raphael in Rome, although at the same time it is impossible to prove his presence in Italy. An artist of the 15th century at first, around 1520, under the influence of Raphael, Dürer and Mabuse, he switched to Romanism and himself is its most significant representative in the Netherlands. Thirty years ago Alphonse Waters showed, and recently Friedlander again thoroughly confirmed, that at first he devoted himself mainly to ancient painting, and subsequently to the weaving of carpets and glass painting on an extensive scale. Not only the already mentioned “Hunts of Maximilian” of the Louvre, but also “The Life of Abraham” at Hampton Court and Madrid, “The Battle of Pavia” in Naples and some of the most beautiful paintings on glass of the Brussels Cathedral were made from his cardboards.
Fig.80 - Battle of Pavia
Friedländer considers the “Altar of the Apostles” to be the earliest surviving altarpiece, the middle part of which with events from the life of the apostles Thomas and Matthew belongs to the Vienna Gallery, and the wings to the Brussels Gallery. He dates it to 1512. The door of the altar of St. The Walburga in the Turin Gallery, decorated in pure Gothic style, imbued with an equally old Flemish spirit, was begun only in 1515 and completed in 1520. An almost contemporaneous altar depicting the Sermon of St. Norberta in Munich gives already Renaissance architecture, of course, poorly understood. Among his excellent, simple and truthful portraits, his signature is the portrait of Dr. Celle from 1519 in Brussels. The Italianism of Orlais is manifested completely and immediately, albeit in a mild adaptation, in the “Trials of Job” (1521) of the Brussels Museum, in the recently acquired “Madonna” of the Louvre (1521), which corresponds to a similar painting from 1522 in the possession of a private person in Spain, as well as in the altar of the “Charity of the Poor” of the Antwerp Museum, with the image of the Last Judgment and works of mercy. We look at the altar with the Crucifixion in Rotterdam as a later work, and together with Friedländer we consider the portrait of Carondelet in Munich, attributed to Mosseis, to be the most mature work of the master. The altarpieces at the end of his life turned out to be rather mediocre works from his workshop.
Pieter Kok van Aelst (1502-1550), the "Flemish Vitruvius" traveler in Italy, who lived in Antwerp before moving to Brussels, was a student of Orlais. As a painter in the spirit of Orlais, we know him from The Last Supper in the Brussels Museum. In the same collection there are paintings by artists related to Orley, Cornelis and Jan van Coninksloo (1489-1554), in which there are no traces of any forward development, visible, however, in the paintings of the Brussels landscape painter Luca-Hassel van Helmont (1496-1561 ) Vienna Gallery and the Weber Collection in Hamburg, which followed the direction of Civetta. None of the landscapes of this school from the Meuse River, however, can compare in the immediacy of perception and colorful expression with the landscapes of Altdorfer and the Danube school.
Fig.81 - Flemish Vitruvius
Together with Gulin, we could still attribute to the Brussels school the “master of female half-figures”, in which Wieckhoff suggests nothing less than Jean Clouet, the Dutch court painter of the French king Francis I. The talented Viennese scientist really gave credibility to the fact that he worked in France, but that he was Jean Clouet remains more than doubtful. His ladies reading or playing music, usually painted separately or in several half-figures among richly decorated furnishings, have been preserved in many collections. Wickhoff has recently isolated and revised them. The most beautiful three ladies involved in music, Harrach galleries in Vienna. In terms of the sophistication of the everyday genre, these images, combining simple painting and hot colors with noble poses and calm animation, strike a new note in the history of painting.
In Bruges, David's immediate successors immediately attract attention. Among them is Adrian Isenbrandt, master of the guild of the city of Bruges from 1510, who died in 1551. Together with Gulin, we perhaps have the right to see his works in those paintings that Vaagen erroneously attributed to the Haarlem master Jan Mostaert. Without much imagination in his calm, moody landscapes, simply and clearly drawn figures, in the splendor of his deep tones with not entirely pure flesh tones, he brings David's style to a more tender charm. His great Adoration of the Magi in the Church of the Virgin Mary at Lübeck bears the date 1581, and Our Lady of Sorrows in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges is written at least ten years later. From among the paintings very often attributed to him, Gulin singled out some, for example, “The Apparition of the Madonna” (“Deipara Virgo”) of the Antwerp Museum, and attributed them to Ambrosius Benson (d. about 1550), who became master of the city of Bruges in 1519.
A new national direction in contrast to the art of these masters in the spirit of Quentin, with the style of which Italian influences come into conflict, is represented by Jan Prevost from Mons, who settled around 1494 in Bruges and died here in 1529, with his later only reliable paintings , for example, the Last Judgment of 1525 in the museum in Bruges, another Last Judgment by Weber in Hamburg and the Madonna in Glory in St. Petersburg. On the contrary, Lancelot Blondel (1496-1561), whose paintings stand out for their rich ornamentation, executed in a brown tone on gold and the cold shapes of the figures, swam completely with the flow of the Renaissance. Altar image of 1523 with the lives of Saints Cosmas and Damian in the Church of St. James gives an example of his early, still uneven style, and the mature later style is expressed in the altarpiece of the Madonna of 1545 in the cathedral and in the painting of the Apostle Luke of the same year in the Museum in Bruges. Blondel was then followed by the less advanced Clais, of whom only Peter Clais the Elder (1500-1576), whose excellent signed self-portrait of 1560 is available in the National Gallery in Christiania, goes beyond the first half of the century.
5 – Art of the Northern Netherlands
The most significant painters of the first half of the 16th century, studied in modern times by Dyulberg, gathered in the northern Netherlands, especially in Leiden, Utrecht, Amsterdam and Haarlem. The main movement first appeared with renewed vigor in Leiden. Cornelis Engebrechts (1468-1533) appeared here as a master who embarked on new paths. His two main works in the Leiden Museum are the altar with the Crucifixion (circa 1509), the Sacrifice of Abraham and the Brazen Serpent on the inner sides, the Mockery and Crowning of the Savior with the Crown of Thorns on the outer sides of the doors, and the altar with the Lamentation over the Body of Christ (circa 1526). ) with small scenes of the Passion of Christ on its sides and with magnificent doors with donors and saints. In both works, the passion of a living narrative is majestic, successfully introduced into the area of a rich landscape. In the Crucifixion the rendering of the body is excellent, despite the brown-gray shadows and the strong combined effect of individual sparkling colors; the pathetic movements are still somewhat theatrical; elongated, elongated figures with their small heads, long legs, thick calves and thin ankles seem to have only a distant kinship with nature; his male faces with long noses, female types with a high upper part of the face and a strikingly short lower part, have no resemblance to themselves. The paintings of the altar with the Lamentation over the Body of Christ are painted less sharply and executed softer and more in a tone taken in a brown palette. All the architecture in these paintings, of course, is late Gothic, and all the figures, in the absence of generally correct relationships, independently strive from the coherence of the 15th century to the freedom of the 16th century. We cannot list here the numerous small paintings from other collections that have recently been attributed to Engebrechtsen by the best experts. Yet among them is the small “Temptation of St. Anthony” in Dresden!
Fig.82 - Luca van Leyden
Engebrechts's main student was the famous son of Guy Jacobs, Luca van Leyden (from 1494 or earlier until 1533), who acted not only as a painter, but also as a carver and engraver of his compositions and a draftsman for wood engravings, in which he can be compared with Dürer . He left 170 copper engravings, 9 etchings and 16 woodcuts. His artistic development appears most clearly in the copper engravings highlighted by Folbert. After the experiences of early times, for example, the sleeping Mohammed (1508), already in the Conversion of Saul (1509) and in the Temptation of St. Anthony with elongated figures, like those of Engebrechts, the young master moves on to a clearer language of forms and to a more regular grouping against the backdrop of rich landscapes. Already in 1510, on the sheets with "Adam and Eve in Exile", "Ecce Homo", "The Thrush" he reaches the amazing heights of a mature national style, inner life and gentle technical completeness, then on the sheets with "Pentefrius" (1512) and With “Pyramus” (1514) he tries to convey a passionate feeling, and in the next period, with such engravings as “Carrying the Cross” (1515), the large “Calvary” (1517) and “Christ in the Image of a Gardener” (1519) he becomes under the banner of Durer. Dürer's influence on Luca culminates in the Portrait of Emperor Maximilian (1520), the larger series of The Passion of Christ (1521), The Dentist (1523) and The Surgeon (1524). But around 1525, Luke, under the influence of Mabuse, openly switched to the Roman school of Marcantonio, clearly visible not only in the forms, but also in the content of his elegant ornamental engravings (1527 and 1528), in “Venus and Cupid” (1528), in the series of the Fall (1529) and "Venus and Mars" (1530). The area of his subjects was as varied as the area of Dürer's subjects; but in spirit, strength and penetration, Luke cannot be compared with the great Nuremberger. His oil paintings that have come down to us confirm this impression. The fresh and vibrant colors of youth include: “The Players” by the Earl of Pembroke in Wilton Gowse and “The Chess Players” in Berlin. Around 1515, his Berlin Madonna, luxurious in colors and slightly touched by Renaissance trends, appeared. The spirit of the Renaissance is more strongly felt in the Madonna and Annunciation of 1522 in Munich. The best works of the Italian movement of late times are his famous Last Judgment (1526) in the Leiden Museum, then “Moses issuing water from a rock” in the German Museum (1527), an important painting of its kind with mannered, long figures and cold colors, and in three parts painting depicting the healing of the blind man of Jericho (1531) in St. Petersburg. The middle painting of the Last Judgment in Leiden represents Christ in the distance, without Mary and John, on a rainbow, below him, to the right and left, the apostles looking curiously from behind the clouds, and on the ground with a slightly curved horizon, the “Resurrection of the Dead.” The figures are not crowded into a ball, but, in a deliberately Italian spirit, are clearly and definitely scattered throughout the picture alone or in groups, but are involuntarily expressed in their own language of forms. Each nude figure strives to express itself and stands out with a particular, random flesh tone from its neighboring figures. With all the calculated forms majestic work yet it was completely independently conceived and executed. With its picturesqueness, conveyance of the life of the atmosphere, gentle harmony of tones and easy fluidity of writing, it surpasses almost all contemporaneous works of northern painting.
In Amsterdam, in the first decades of the century, the master Jacob Cornelis van Oostsazanen (1470-1533) flourished, who used architectural forms of the Renaissance in his later paintings, but in essence of his imagination remained a strict and dry artist in the Old Netherlandish spirit. The assumption that he depends on Engebrechts is devoid of any obviousness. His figures have high foreheads and a small lower face. He draws out each hair separately, and performs the details of the foreground firmly and diligently. He applies paint lusciously and carefully, although somewhat harshly, models in light, rich colors. His copper engravings were already known to Bartsch and Passavan, and Scheibler was the first to compare his paintings. His “Saul at the Witch of Endor” in the Rijksmuseum appeared in 1560, and a portrait of a man from the same collection in 1533. Ostsazanen’s paintings are also in Kassel, Berlin, Antwerp, Naples, Vienna and The Hague. The combination of external splendor with the warmth of internal feeling represents their unique attractiveness.
Fig.83 - Saul at the Sorceress of Endor
In Utrecht, Jan van Scorel (1495-1562) was famous, a master considered to be the true instiller of Italianism in Holland. He was a student of Jacob Cornelis in Amsterdam, Mabuse in Antwerp, and then traveled to Germany and Italy. His early manner with the Germanic influence of Dürer is shown by a beautiful altarpiece with the Holy Family from 1520 in Oberwellach, full of direct observation. His middle, Italian style is represented by "Rest on the Flight to Egypt" in the Utrecht Museum and Dulberg is reminded by Dosso Dossi. Of his later, cold, deliberately imitating the Roman school of paintings, compared by Justi, Scheibler and Bode, still written in Dutch with brownish shadows, “The Crucifixion” (1530) in the Bonn Provincial Museum bears the sign of Scorel. Imbued with the mood in the landscape "The Epiphany" in the Haarlem Museum is certified by van Mander. The rest of the paintings of this style can best be seen in Utrecht and Amsterdam. His altar with Christ in the form of a gardener by Weber in Hamburg is also excellent. Even more lively are his portraits, for example Agatha van Schongoven (1529) in the Doria Gallery in Rome. The paintings on wood of the Haarlem and Utrecht Museums, depicting the Haarlem and Utrecht pilgrims to the Holy Land in the form of half-figures walking one after the other, are the steps preceding the portrait groups of great Dutch painting. Apparently, Skorel also owns the family portrait of the Kassel Gallery, which makes such a strong impression.
6 –Jan Mostert
The main Haarlem master of this time is considered to be Jan Mostaert (1474-1556). Since no reliable works of his have survived, they are sought among the good works of nameless masters. Recently Gluck made the probable assumption that the beautiful portrait of a man in Brussels with the Tiburtine Sibyl against a landscape background, two panels with donors from the same collection and the charming “Adoration of the Magi” in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum are genuine works by Mostaert. Benoit and Friedländer added here, in addition to some portraits, a beautiful altar of the Passion of the Lord, the property of d'Oultremont in Brussels, supposedly originating in Haarlem, but with a monogram that in no case can be attributed to Mostert. In any case, the real Mostaert, if that is what he is, is a transitional master from the Gothic to the Renaissance, gifted with talent in the field of landscape and portraiture and the ability to write beautifully.
Fig.84 - "Adoration of the Magi" in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum
The second half of the 16th century, as has been said, brought Dutch painting, together with the new national realism, a complete victory over Italian idealism, which nevertheless prepared the freedom of movement for the great national painting of the 17th century.
The great masters of this fully developed Dutch Italianism of the second half XVI centuries differ from their predecessors, to whom they adjoined, the Orlais, Mabuse and Scorels, by their sharp and one-sided imitation of the south. The goal of their aspirations, which they achieved, was to be called the Dutch Michelangelo and Raphael. There is no doubt that they had great technical skill, and this is especially reflected in their portraits, which forced them to stick to nature. Their large, mannered pictures of secular or sacred content often lacked not only direct sight and feeling, but also all the eternal, truly artistic advantages. This applies equally to Orley’s student in Mecheln, Michel van Coxie (1499-1592), whose large paintings are displayed in churches and collections in Belgium, and to Mabuse’s student in Lüttich, Lambert Lombard (1505-1566), whose oil paintings are almost known only in the engravings of that time; the same can be said about Cornelis Floris's brother, Lombard's student Frans Floris de Vriendt (1517-1576), the master with the greatest influence of all these artists. Best picture his, namely the powerful “Descent of the Angels” (1554), is in the Antwerp Museum, and the weaker “Last Judgment” (1566) in the Brussels Museum. Floris's students included Maarten de Voe (1532-1603), Crispian van den Broeck (1524-1591) and the three Franken brothers, who form the senior branch of this family of artists, Hieronymus Franken I (1540-1610), Frans Franken I (1542 to 1616 ) and Ambrosius Franken (1544-1618), known mainly for various history paintings with small figures in landscapes, which the younger generation of Frankens continued to refine in the more recent style of the 17th century. The noble Leidenian Otto van Veen (Venius; 1558-1629), who is interesting to us as Rubens’ teacher, also belonged to the main pillars of the “great” Antwerp painting. He was a student of Federigo Zuccaro in Rome and in his powerless, motley paintings (in Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam) undoubtedly strived for classical calm and clarity.
The older generation of Flemish mannerists is formed by masters coming from Quentin Mosseys, who wrote genre subjects along with stories of secular and religious content. Such was the son of Quentin, Jan Mosseys (1509-1575), and his biblical paintings, painted quite in the spirit of the Italian direction, begin only in 1558 with the “Rejection of Joseph and Mary” of the Antwerp Museum, but his later paintings from folk life with half-figures , for example, "The Merry Society" (1564) in Vienna, remained local, at least in their design. A related master is Jan Sanders van Hemmessen (c. 1500 to 1563; book about him by Graefe), whose favorite image was The Calling of the Apostle Matthew in life-size half-figures. Starting from his Munich painting on this subject (1536) and the similar painting of “The Prodigal Son” (1536) in Brussels and to “The Healing of Tobias” in the Louvre (1555), one can trace his development, partly adjacent to Quentin and ending with cold Italianism with brownish shadows and whitish highlights. Gemmessen could also be considered a genre painter if, together with Eisenman, we attribute to him the paintings of the lively “Brunswick monogramist,” so named after the monogram of his painting “Feeding the Poor” in Brunswick, half representing a landscape. Still, we were never completely convinced of the correctness of this view, now abandoned by the majority of more modern experts, but again accepted by Graefe. Gemmessen died, however, in Haarlem, where he moved around 1550.
Maarten van Heemskerk (1498-1547), a student of Scorel, also lived in Haarlem. In his 1532 painting of the Haarlem Museum, depicting the Apostle Luke, he is still quite hot and truthful, but in later works, for example, in the cold design with brownish shadows “The Feast of Belshazzar” (1568) in the same place, he belongs to the fashionable Italian trend. The most important, however, Haarlem master of the second half of the 16th century was Cornelius Cornelis van Haarlem (1562-1633), his cold Italian-style paintings on biblical and mythological themes calculatedly exaggerate the randomly painted naked bodies before the viewer. weak sides"The Last Judgment" by Luke van Leyden, while his full of life and the "Riflemen's Lunch" movement of 1583. The Haarlem Museum occupies an important place in the history of Dutch group portraiture.
Joachim Uitewael (1566-1638), on his return from Italy to his hometown of Utrecht, was less original in his large paintings in the Utrecht Museum than in small paintings of mythological content, such as Parnassus (1596) in Dresden, for all the mannerism of his styles marked by poetic imagination and colorful harmony. Pieter Pourbus (1510-1584) was one of the Dutch who moved to Flanders; his son Frans Pourbus I (1545-1581) was already born in Bruges. Both belong to the best portrait painters of their time, but even in the historical paintings known in Bruges and Ghent, they still know how to combine a significant amount of primitive strength and clarity with imitation of the Italians.
In contrast to all these historical painters of the Italian trend, the masters of the national Dutch trend were, of course, at the same time the main representatives of the main folk artistic fields portrait, genre, landscape, dead nature and architectural motif. But all these branches have not yet had time to sharply dissociate themselves from one another and from historical painting. Biblical images mostly serve as a pretext for landscapes, genre and dead nature.
7 – Peter Arts
Among the oldest independent Dutch genre painters is Pieter Aarts or Aertsen (1508-1575), nicknamed Lange Peer, who worked in Antwerp for over twenty years, but was born and died in Amsterdam. Sivere was successfully involved in it. The altar fold of 1546, rediscovered by Sievers in the Rogartse monastery in Antwerp (now in the museum there), still stands on the basis of the Roman school. The best works of a master with a strong desire for realism have the character of a genre. Even his “Carrying the Cross” (1552) in Berlin, with its market women and loaded carts, gives the impression of a genre. His best paintings with carefully depicted circumferences move on to painting dead nature, and “Dance with Eggs” (1554) in Amsterdam, “Peasant Festival” (1550) in Vienna, life-sized “Cooks” (1559) in Brussels and in the palazzo Bianco in Genoa opens up new paths. He captures peasant types vividly and accurately, conveys actions clearly, and parts of interior spaces or landscapes are surprisingly connected with the figures. His drawing is simple and full of expression, his painting is broad and smooth, local tones are sharply highlighted everywhere.
The Antwerp student of Aartsen, Joachim Bekelaar (1533-1575), adjoins Gemmessen with his religious paintings, but stands at the head of the innovators with his large paintings markets and kitchens of the Vienna Gallery, designed like "nature-morte". His "Fair" (1560) in Munich has in the middle part "Christ shown to the people", and "Vegetable Market" (1561) in Stockholm has in the background the "Procession to Calvary". The Stockholm Gallery and the Naples Museum are especially rich in his works.
Also significant in his own way was another of Quentin's sons, Cornelius Masseys (from about 1511 to 1580 and later), known chiefly as a lively engraver and etcher of pictures of popular life. In rare oil paintings, for example, in the landscape with a cab driver (1542) of the Berlin Museum, he also stands on a national basis.
They are joined by the main master of national Dutch art of this time, in many respects the largest Dutch artist of the 16th century, Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Brueghel Bruegel), also called Muzhitsky (1525-1569), who was born in the Dutch village of Brueghel and became Peter's student and son-in-law Cook van Aelst in Antwerp, and then in 1563 moved to Brussels. Giemans, Michel, Bastelar, Gulin, Romdal and others wrote about him not long ago. He was in Rome, but partly under the influence of Hieronymus Bosch, it was he who completely reworked all the southern impressions and his Dutch views on nature into a new original whole. His strong gift of observation showed him as an instructive satirist in a number of works, and in a number of others as the most relaxed, most vital storyteller, and above all the greatest genre and landscape painter of his time, capable of amazingly reworking even biblical subjects in the direction of landscape and genre. IN early years During his life, Peter devoted himself mainly to graphics in the service of the Antwerp engraver and publisher Hieronymus Kok. His works were partly engraved by others, and partly he engraved them himself with etching. It is in the engravings made from his drawings in connection with his own understanding of biblical themes that there is a fantastic devilry and a satirical-didactic element. He is a truly great artist in his painting, and his earliest painting dates back to 1559. Half of the paintings, about 35, that have survived to this day are in the Vienna Court Museum. "Maslyanitsa and Lent"(1559), "Children's Games" (1560) still retain the high horizon and scattered composition of his engravings. Then he moved on to picturesqueness. His horizon dropped, the number of figures decreased, but they united into more cohesive groups, connected with each other and with the landscape His best works, precisely in terms of picturesqueness, are his late small pictures, for example “The Hanged Men” in Darmstadt and “The Blind” in Naples, both painted in 1568. The paintings with figures are distinguished by a highly expressive design and are usually painted with a light brush. intensifying sharp local tones, subtly coordinated with each other; his landscapes, often representing equally paintings with figures, are usually executed with a more perfect brush and with a clearer observation of light and shadow. He brought from his travels beyond the Alps majestic studies from life, conveying the nature of the high mountains with their steep cliffs and meandering rivers so naturally and in such a true perspective as in no earlier sketch of a landscape, except for Dürer’s studies. Their painting is dominated by strong brown earth tones with bluish-green foliage depicted in small dots. With a wide variety of airy tones and a strong rendering of atmospheric phenomena, these sketches stand out alone among the landscapes of the 16th century. The figures introduced into them to enliven them enhance the natural mood of the landscape. His November, December and February landscapes are magnificent, his marina, the first of its kind in Vienna, is powerfully written. There is also a huge mountain landscape with the "Conversion of the Apostle Paul", an example of a large historical landscape "The Defeat of the Philistines" - an exemplary example of battle painting, uniting the confused masses in natural movements, and the "Tower of Babel" - the prototype of numerous imitations of the "Peasant Wedding" in Vienna - the best of his peasant genres - in its natural structure and subtlety of painting, surpasses all Tenier's paintings depicting domestic scenes, from the life of peasants, to whom she showed the path. His most expressive biblical paintings, namely the snowy landscape with the “Massacre of the Innocents” and the spring landscape with “Carrying the Cross,” are also located there. Among the symbolic images, one should also note the “Land of Fairy Tales” from the Kaufmann collection in Berlin and the huge “Triumph of Death”, the original of which is apparently in Madrid.
Fig.85 - "The Hanged"
Fig.86 – painting “The Triumph of Death”
Pieter Bruegel's son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger (1564-1638), erroneously called "Infernal", in essence only a weak imitator of his elder, repeated some of these paintings. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the last of the primitives and the first of the modern masters, as Gulin says about him, was generally an innovator who predicted the future.
8 – Portraiture
Dutch portraiture of this period independently and confidently strived for pictorial perfection. In Antwerp, the best Flemish portrait painters of the second half of the 16th century were Lombard's students Billem Kay (d. 1568), whose female bust portrait is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and his student and cousin Adrian Thomas Kay (c. 1558-1589), famous according to reliable portraits of him in Vienna and Brussels. In Bruges, as has been stated, the Pourbuses chiefly flourished. Pieter Pourbus (circa 1510-1584) stands out for his extremely life-like portraits of the Fernagant couple (1551) in the Bruges Museum, presented against the backdrop of a luxuriously colored city view, and his son France Pourbus the Elder (1545-1581), whose portraits are painted with great observation and strength in warm colors, belong to the best for their time, for example, the portrait of a man with a red beard (1573) in Brussels. The world-famous master of Dutch portraiture of this century was Scorel's student, the Utrechtian Antonis More (Antonio Moro; 1512-1578), who felt at home in all the main cities of Europe. Hymans dedicated a vast and excellent pile to him. In his early works, for example in the double portrait of the canons of Utrecht (1544) in Berlin, his dependence on Scorel is still clearly visible. Later he was especially influenced by Holbein and Titian, between whom he occupies a middle position. In portraits of his middle period, beautifully positioned and confidently and smoothly painted in clear colors, for example in the portrait of the red-clad Jeanne d'Archelle (1561) in London, the gentleman with a clock (1565) in the Louvre, in the portraits of men of 1564 in The Hague and in Vienna, and then in Kassel, Dresden and Karlsruhe, he sometimes resembles his Italian contemporary Moroni. His later portraits became gentler and more consistent in tone; the most magnificent of them, the portrait of Hubert Goltzius (1576) in Brussels, at the same time shows a love for drawing out details, even down to the hair of the beard.
Many Dutch portrait painters of this time worked primarily abroad. Nicholas Neufchatel wrote in Nuremberg, Geldorp Gortius in Cologne (1558-1615 or 1618); After Holbein’s death, a whole colony of Dutch portrait painters settled in London, whom we will meet later.
In Holland, and first of all in Amsterdam, local folk painting of portrait groups gradually grew into one of the main artistic areas of great painting. The initiative was made by the heads of the shooting guilds. By the end of the century, Anatomies appeared, depicting portrait groups of guilds of surgeons, and Boards, depicting meetings of the boards of various charitable institutions. The Arrows of Dirk Jacobs (circa 1495-1565) in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the paintings of Cornelis Antonis Teunissen (circa 1500-1553) in the Rijksmuseum and in the town hall in Amsterdam, then more slowly gaining freedom paintings of this kind by Dirk Barendts (1534-1592 ) in the Rijksmuseum show how half-length figures of shooters, first lined up in a continuous row all together, gradually turn into artistically constructed groups, thanks to the selection of commanders, the distribution of diagonal lines, the spiritualization of faces and the more lively relationship of those depicted with each other. Even in the painting of the Riflemen's Dinners, a restrained genre movement began to enter only after 1580; and in full figure the arrows stand on the ground for the first time in a painting of 1588 by Cornelis Ketel (1548-1616) in the Rijksmuseum, and the master uses saving “primitive” means to construct the composition. The shooting paintings of Peter Isaacs (d. 1625) from the same collection fall into skillfully executed separate groups, and the oldest "Board" of the same collection, a portrait group of the board of the guild of linen workers of 1599, and the oldest "Anatomy", a lecture on anatomy by Sebastian Egberts 1503, owned by Art Peters (1550-1612), son of Peter Aertsen. Finally, in Haarlem, the shooting painting of Cornels van Harlam Cornelis (1562-1638) from 1583 represents a genre rather than a portrait group, due to the actions of individuals introduced into it, and marked a whole revolution, while the shooting painting of the same master from 1599 . and the same Haarlem collection, together with the acquired freedom of movement, again returns to the mainstream of the real portrait group.
Fig.87 – painting “Anatomy”
9 – Landscape painting
Dutch landscape painting in the second half of the 16th century also underwent significant changes. Instead of the fantastic Meuse landscapes of the Patinirov, Blesov and Gassels, landscapes of the brave innovator Pieter Bruegel appeared. Although in general they are the fruit of free imagination, they seem to us to be pieces of real nature. It is possible that Pieter Arts influenced him with his “unity of horizontal plan,” as Johanna de Jong puts it, but it was Bruegel, not Arts, who was the real landscape painter. The style of Bregel, with his manner of depicting trees through small dots, with bright greenery, was joined by the landscape of the Mecheln school, with its oldest master Hans Bohl (1534-1593). Two large mythological landscapes in Stockholm do not give such a good idea of it as nine small landscapes in Dresden, animated partly by biblical, partly everyday incidents. There were also Mecheln artists related to them, Lucas van Valckenborch (about 1540-1622), whose landscapes were painted mostly for their own sake, his brother Martin (1542-1604), his son Frederick van Valckenborch (1570-1623), whose paintings can be best study in Vienna.
Along with these previous trends in Flemish landscape painting, a new one now appears, recognizing the inadequacy of the general perspective of the then landscapes with gaps, but coming to the rescue with insufficient means. The difficulties presented by the image of the earth were eliminated by the “scenes” formed one after another, and the perspective difficulties, however, were eliminated by the previously used “three plans”, brown foreground, green middle and blue background. And first of all, the method of painting trees with dots is being replaced by the “tuft style,” which is more perfect, since it forms foliage from individual leafy bunches, written out leaf by leaf in the foreground. The founder of this transitional trend, as van Mander has already shown, is Gillis van Coninksloo (1544-1607), with whom Sponsel introduced us more closely. He was born in Antwerp and died in Amsterdam, and became influential in both Dutch and Flemish landscape painting. His lush, smoky landscape of 1588 depicting the Judgment of Midas in Dresden and two landscapes of 1598 and 1604. the Lichtenstein gallery describes it sufficiently. Matthew Bril, born in 1550 in Antwerp and died in 1584 in Rome, first carried the Koninksloo style to Italy, where his brother Paul Bril (1554-1626) developed it further, joining the Carracci, before whom we cannot speak about this master.
Finally, the architectural motif has also now developed in the Netherlands into an independent branch of art. Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-1604) came up with images of galleries in the Renaissance style; his paintings of this kind with a signature are in Vienna; followed by his student Hendrik Steenwijk the Elder (circa 1550-1603) came up with Gothic churches, large halls and powerful stone vaults; its somewhat dry, but its clearly drawn interior chambers feature deep shadows and subtle chiaroscuro. The earliest view of a Gothic church, painted by him in 1583, is in the Ambrosiana in Milan.
Thus the 16th century in the Netherlands prepared the way for the 17th century in all areas. All these types of painting achieve complete independence, freedom and sophistication, however, only in the light of the national Dutch art of the new century.
01 – Development of Dutch painting 02 – Attractiveness of the Netherlands for artists 03 – Joachim Patinier 04 – Brussels School 05 – Art of the Northern Netherlands 06 – Jan Mostaert 07 – Pieter Arts 08 – Portraiture 09 – Landscape painting