Holland. 17th century The country is experiencing unprecedented prosperity. The so-called "Golden Age". At the end of the 16th century, several provinces of the country achieved independence from Spain.

Now the Protestant Netherlands have gone their own way. And Catholic Flanders (present-day Belgium) under the wing of Spain is its own.

In independent Holland religious painting Almost no one needed it anymore. The Protestant Church did not approve of luxury decoration. But this circumstance “played into the hands” of secular painting.

Literally every resident of the new country awoke to love this type of art. The Dutch wanted to see in the paintings own life. And the artists willingly met them halfway.

Never before has the surrounding reality been depicted so much. Ordinary people, ordinary rooms and the most ordinary breakfast of a city dweller.

Realism flourished. Until the 20th century, it will be a worthy competitor to academicism with its nymphs and Greek goddesses.

These artists are called "small" Dutch. Why? The paintings were small in size, because they were created for small houses. Thus, almost all paintings by Jan Vermeer are no more than half a meter in height.

But I like the other version better. In the Netherlands in the 17th century, a great master, the “big” Dutchman, lived and worked. And everyone else was “small” in comparison with him.

We are talking, of course, about Rembrandt. Let's start with him.

1. Rembrandt (1606-1669)

Rembrandt. Self-portrait at the age of 63. 1669 National Gallery London

Rembrandt experienced a wide range of emotions during his life. That's why there's so much fun and bravado in his early work. And there are so many complex feelings - in the later ones.

Here he is young and carefree in the painting “The Prodigal Son in the Tavern.” On his knees is his beloved wife Saskia. He is a popular artist. Orders are pouring in.

Rembrandt. The Prodigal Son in a Tavern. 1635 Old Masters Gallery, Dresden

But all this will disappear in about 10 years. Saskia will die of consumption. Popularity will disappear like smoke. A large house with a unique collection will be taken away for debts.

But the same Rembrandt will appear who will remain for centuries. The bare feelings of the heroes. Their deepest thoughts.

2. Frans Hals (1583-1666)

Frans Hals. Self-portrait. 1650 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Frans Hals is one of the greatest portrait painters of all time. Therefore, I would also classify him as a “big” Dutchman.

In Holland at that time it was customary to order group portraits. This is how many similar works appeared depicting people working together: marksmen of one guild, doctors of one town, managers of a nursing home.

In this genre, Hals stands out the most. After all, most of these portraits looked like a deck of cards. People sit at the table with the same facial expression and just watch. It was different for Hals.

Look at his group portrait “Arrows of the Guild of St. George."

Frans Hals. Arrows of the Guild of St. George. 1627 Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands

Here you will not find a single repetition in pose or facial expression. At the same time, there is no chaos here. There are a lot of characters, but no one seems superfluous. Thanks to the amazingly correct arrangement of figures.

And even in a single portrait, Hals was superior to many artists. His patterns are natural. People from high society his paintings are devoid of contrived grandeur, and the models from the lower classes do not look humiliated.

And his characters are also very emotional: they smile, laugh, and gesticulate. Like, for example, this “Gypsy” with a sly look.

Frans Hals. Gypsy. 1625-1630

Hals, like Rembrandt, ended his life in poverty. For the same reason. His realism ran counter to the tastes of his customers. Who wanted their appearance to be embellished. Hals did not accept outright flattery, and thereby signed his own sentence - “Oblivion.”

3. Gerard Terborch (1617-1681)

Gerard Terborch. Self-portrait. 1668 Royal Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands

Terborkh was a master of the everyday genre. Rich and not-so-rich burghers talk leisurely, ladies read letters, and a procuress watches the courtship. Two or three closely spaced figures.

It was this master who developed the canons of the everyday genre. Which would later be borrowed by Jan Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and many other “small” Dutchmen.

Gerard Terborch. A glass of lemonade. 1660s. State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

“A Glass of Lemonade” is one of famous works Terborha. It shows another advantage of the artist. Incredibly realistic image of the dress fabric.

Terborch also has unusual works. Which speaks volumes about his desire to go beyond customer requirements.

His "The Grinder" shows the life of the poorest people in Holland. We are used to seeing cozy courtyards and clean rooms in the paintings of the “small” Dutch. But Terborch dared to show unsightly Holland.

Gerard Terborch. Grinder. 1653-1655 State Museums of Berlin

As you understand, such work was not in demand. And they - a rare event even Terborch.

4. Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

Jan Vermeer. Artist's workshop. 1666-1667 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

It is not known for certain what Jan Vermeer looked like. It is only obvious that in the painting “The Artist’s Workshop” he depicted himself. The truth from the back.

Therefore, it is surprising that a new fact from the master’s life has recently become known. It is connected with his masterpiece “Delft Street”.

Jan Vermeer. Delft street. 1657 State Museum in Amsterdam

It turned out that Vermeer spent his childhood on this street. The house pictured belonged to his aunt. She raised her five children there. Perhaps she is sitting on the doorstep sewing while her two children play on the sidewalk. Vermeer himself lived in the house opposite.

But more often he depicted the interior of these houses and their inhabitants. It would seem that the plots of the paintings are very simple. Here is a pretty lady, a wealthy city dweller, checking the operation of her scales.

Jan Vermeer. Woman with scales. 1662-1663 National Gallery of Art, Washington

Why did Vermeer stand out among thousands of other “small” Dutchmen?

He was an unsurpassed master of light. In the painting “Woman with Scales” the light softly envelops the heroine’s face, fabrics and walls. Giving the image an unknown spirituality.

And the compositions of Vermeer’s paintings are carefully verified. You won't find a single unnecessary detail. It is enough to remove one of them, the picture will “fall apart”, and the magic will go away.

All this was not easy for Vermeer. Such amazing quality required painstaking work. Only 2-3 paintings per year. As a result, the inability to feed the family. Vermeer also worked as an art dealer, selling works by other artists.

5. Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684)

Pieter de Hooch. Self-portrait. 1648-1649 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hoch is often compared to Vermeer. They worked at the same time, there was even a period in the same city. And in one genre - everyday. In Hoch we also see one or two figures in cozy Dutch courtyards or rooms.

Open doors and windows make the space of his paintings layered and entertaining. And the figures fit into this space very harmoniously. As, for example, in his painting “Maid with a Girl in the Courtyard.”

Pieter de Hooch. A maid with a girl in the courtyard. 1658 London National Gallery

Until the 20th century, Hoch was highly valued. But few people noticed the small works of his competitor Vermeer.

But in the 20th century everything changed. Hoch's glory faded. However, it is difficult not to recognize his achievements in painting. Few people could so competently combine the environment and people.

Pieter de Hooch. Card players in a sunny room. 1658 Royal art collection, London

Please note that in a modest house on the canvas “Card Players” there is a painting hanging in an expensive frame.

This is in Once again talks about how painting was popular among ordinary Dutch people. Paintings decorated every home: the house of a rich burgher, a modest city dweller, and even a peasant.

6. Jan Steen (1626-1679)

Jan Steen. Self-portrait with a lute. 1670s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Jan Steen is perhaps the most cheerful “little” Dutchman. But loving moral teaching. He often depicted taverns or poor houses in which vice existed.

Its main characters are revelers and ladies of easy virtue. He wanted to entertain the viewer, but latently warn him against a vicious life.

Jan Steen. It's a mess. 1663 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Sten also has quieter works. Like, for example, “Morning Toilet.” But here too the artist surprises the viewer with too revealing details. There are traces of stocking elastic, and not an empty chamber pot. And somehow it’s not at all appropriate for the dog to be lying right on the pillow.

Jan Steen. Morning toilet. 1661-1665 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

But despite all the frivolity, color solutions Wall is very professional. In this he was superior to many “little Dutchmen”. Look how perfectly the red stocking goes with the blue jacket and bright beige rug.

7. Jacobs Van Ruisdael (1629-1682)

Portrait of Ruisdael. Lithograph from a 19th century book.

Until the end of the 16th century, Dutch painting was inseparably linked with Flemish painting and had common name"Dutch school" Both of them, being a branch of German painting, consider the van Eyck brothers to be their ancestors and have been moving in the same direction for a long time, developing the same technique, so that the artists of Holland are no different from their Flanders and Brabant brothers.

When the Dutch people got rid of the oppression of Spain, Dutch painting acquired national character. Dutch artists are distinguished by their reproduction of nature with special love in all its simplicity and truth and a subtle sense of color.

The Dutch were the first to understand that even in inanimate nature everything breathes life, everything is attractive, everything is capable of evoking thought and exciting the movement of the heart.

Among landscape painters interpreting their domestic nature, are especially respected by Jan van Goyen (1595-1656), who, together with Ezaias van de Velde (c. 1590-1630) and Pieter Moleyn the Elder (1595-1661), is considered the founder of the Dutch landscape.

But the artists of Holland cannot be divided into schools. The expression “Dutch school of painting” is very arbitrary. In Holland, there were organized societies of artists, which were free corporations that protected the rights of their members and did not influence creative activity.

The name of Rembrandt (1606-1669) shines especially brightly in history, in whose personality all best qualities Dutch painting and its influence was reflected in all its types - in portraits, historical paintings, everyday scenes and landscape.

In the 17th century, everyday painting developed successfully, the first experiments of which were noted in the old Dutch school. In this genre, the most famous names are Cornelis Beg (1620-64), Richart Brackenburg (1650-1702), Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704) Henrik Roques, nicknamed Sorg (1621-82),

Artists who painted scenes of military life can be classified as genre painters. Chief Representative this branch of painting - the famous and unusually prolific Philips Wouwerman (1619-68)

In a special category we can single out masters who in their paintings combined landscapes with images of animals. The most famous among such painters of rural idyll is Paulus Potter (1625-54); Albert Cuyp (1620-91).

Dutch artists paid the greatest attention to the sea.

In the work of Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611 or 1612-93), his famous son Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707), Ludolf Backhuisen (1631-1708), painting of sea views was their specialty.

In the field of still life, the most famous were Jan-Davids de Gem (1606-83), his son Cornelis (1631-95), Abraham Mignon (1640-79), Melchior de Gondecoeter (1636-95), Maria Osterwijk (1630-93) .

The brilliant period of Dutch painting did not last long - only one century.

Since the beginning of the 18th century. its decline is coming, the reason for this is the tastes and views of the pompous era of Louis XIV. Instead of a direct relationship to nature, love of what is native and sincerity, the dominance of preconceived theories, convention, and imitation of the luminaries of the French school is established. The main propagator of this regrettable trend was the Flemish Gerard de Leresse (1641-1711), who settled in Amsterdam.

The decline of the school was also facilitated by the famous Adrian van de Werff (1659-1722), the dull color of whose paintings once seemed the height of perfection.

Foreign influence weighed heavily on Dutch painting until the twenties of the 19th century.

Subsequently, Dutch artists turned to their antiquity - to strict observation of nature.

The latest Dutch landscape painting is especially rich. These include Andreas Schelfhout (1787-1870), Barent Koekkoek (1803-62), Anton Mauwe (1838-88), Jacob Maris (b. 1837), Johannes Weissenbruch (1822-1880) and others.

Among the newest marine painters in Holland, the palm belongs to Johannes Schotel (1787-1838).

He showed animals in painting great art Wouters Verschoor (1812-74).

You can buy reproductions of paintings by Dutch artists in our online store.

Note. In addition to artists from the Netherlands, the list also includes painters from Flanders.

15th century Dutch art
The first manifestations of Renaissance art in the Netherlands date back to the early 15th century. The first paintings that can already be classified as early Renaissance monuments were created by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Both of them - Hubert (died 1426) and Jan (circa 1390-1441) - played a decisive role in the formation of the Dutch Renaissance. Almost nothing is known about Hubert. Jan was apparently a very educated man, he studied geometry, chemistry, cartography, and carried out some diplomatic assignments for the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, in whose service, by the way, his trip to Portugal took place. The first steps of the Renaissance in the Netherlands can be judged by the brothers’ paintings, executed in the 20s of the 15th century, and among them such as “Myrrh-Bearing Women at the Tomb” (possibly part of a polyptych; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beiningen), “ Madonna in the Church" (Berlin), "Saint Jerome" (Detroit, Art Institute).

The Van Eyck brothers occupy an exceptional place in contemporary art. But they weren't alone. At the same time, other painters who were stylistically and problematically related to them also worked with them. Among them, the first place undoubtedly belongs to the so-called Flemal master. Many ingenious attempts have been made to determine his true name and origin. Of these, the most convincing version is that this artist receives the name Robert Campin and a fairly developed biography. Previously called the Master of the Altar (or "Annunciation") of Merode. There is also an unconvincing point of view that attributes the works attributed to him to the young Rogier van der Weyden.

It is known about Campin that he was born in 1378 or 1379 in Valenciennes, received the title of master in 1406 in Tournai, lived there, performed in addition to paintings many decorative ones, was the teacher of a number of painters (including Rogier van der Weyden, who will be discussed below, from 1426, and Jacques Darais, from 1427) and died in 1444. Kampen's art has preserved everyday features in the general “pantheistic” scheme and thus turned out to be very close to the next generation of Dutch painters. The early works of Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Darais, an author who was extremely dependent on Campin (for example, his “Adoration of the Magi” and “The Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth,” 1434–1435; Berlin), clearly reveal an interest in the art of this master, in which there is no doubt the trend of time appears.

Rogier van der Weyden was born in 1399 or 1400, trained under Campin (that is, in Tournai), received the title of master in 1432, and in 1435 moved to Brussels, where he was the official painter of the city: in 1449–1450 he traveled to Italy and died in 1464. Some of the largest artists of the Dutch Renaissance studied with him (for example, Memling), and he enjoyed wide fame not only in his homeland, but also in Italy (the famous scientist and philosopher Nicholas of Cusa called him the greatest artist; later his work was noted by Dürer ). The work of Rogier van der Weyden served as a nourishing basis for a wide variety of painters of the next generation. Suffice it to say that his workshop - the first such widely organized workshop in the Netherlands - had a strong influence on the unprecedented spread of the style of one master in the 15th century, ultimately reduced this style to the sum of stencil techniques and even played the role of a brake on painting at the end of the century. And yet the art of the mid-15th century cannot be reduced to the Rohir tradition, although it is closely connected with it. The other path is epitomized primarily by the works of Dirik Bouts and Albert Ouwater. They, like Rogier, are somewhat alien to pantheistic admiration for life, and their image of man is increasingly losing touch with questions of the universe - philosophical, theological and artistic questions, acquiring more and more concreteness and psychological certainty. But Rogier van der Weyden, a master of heightened dramatic sound, an artist who strove for individual and at the same time sublime images, was mainly interested in the sphere of human spiritual properties. The achievements of Bouts and Ouwater lie in the field of enhancing the everyday authenticity of the image. Among formal problems, they were more interested in issues related to solving not so much expressive as visual problems (not the sharpness of the drawing and the expression of color, but the spatial organization of the picture and the naturalness of the light-air environment).

Portrait of a young woman, 1445, Art Gallery, Berlin

St Ivo, 1450, National Gallery, London

Saint Luke painting the image of the Madonna, 1450, Museum Groningen, Bruges

But before moving on to consider the work of these two painters, we should dwell on a phenomenon on a smaller scale, which shows that the discoveries of mid-century art, being both a continuation of the van Eyck-Kampen tradition and a departure from them, were in both of these qualities deeply justified. The more conservative painter Petrus Christus clearly demonstrates the historical inevitability of this apostasy, even for artists not inclined to radical discoveries. From 1444, Christus became a citizen of Bruges (he died there in 1472/1473) - that is, he saw the best works of van Eyck and was influenced by his tradition. Without resorting to the sharp aphorism of Rogier van der Weyden, Christus achieved a more individualized and differentiated characterization than van Eyck did. However, his portraits (E. Grimston - 1446, London, National Gallery; Carthusian monk - 1446, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) at the same time indicate a certain decline in imagery in his work. In art, the craving for the concrete, individual, and particular was becoming more and more apparent. Perhaps these tendencies were most clearly manifested in the work of Bouts. Younger than Rogier van der Weyden (born between 1400 and 1410), he was far from the dramatic and analytical nature of this master. Yet early Bouts comes largely from Rogier. The altar with “The Descent from the Cross” (Granada, Cathedral) and a number of other paintings, for example “Entombment” (London, National Gallery), indicate a deep study of the work of this artist. But the originality is already noticeable here - Bouts gives his characters more space, he is interested not so much in the emotional environment as in the action, the very process of it, his characters are more active. The same goes for portraits. In excellent portrait of a man(1462; London, National Gallery) prayerfully raised - although without any exaltation - eyes, a special mouth and neatly folded hands have such an individual coloring that van Eyck did not know. Even in the details you can feel this personal touch. A somewhat prosaic, but innocently real reflection lies in all the works of the master. It is most noticeable in his multi-figure compositions. And especially in his most famous work - the altar of the Louvain Church of St. Peter (between 1464 and 1467). If the viewer always perceives van Eyck's work as a miracle of creativity, then before the works of Bouts, different feelings arise. Bouts' compositional work speaks volumes about him as a director. Bearing in mind the successes of such a “director’s” method (that is, a method in which the artist’s task is to arrange characteristic features, as if extracted from nature, characters, organize the scene) in subsequent centuries, one should pay attention to this phenomenon in the work of Dirk Bouts.

The next stage of Dutch art covers the last three or four decades of the 15th century - an extremely difficult time for the life of the country and its culture. This period opens with the work of Joos van Wassenhove (or Joos van Gent; between 1435–1440 - after 1476), an artist who played a significant role in the formation of new painting, but left for Italy in 1472, acclimatized there and organically became involved in Italian art. His altar with the “Crucifixion” (Ghent, Church of St. Bavo) indicates a desire for narrative, but at the same time a desire to deprive the story of cold dispassion. He wants to achieve the latter with the help of grace and decorativeness. His altar is a secular work in nature with a light color scheme based on refined iridescent tones.
This period continues with the work of a master of exceptional talent - Hugo van der Goes. He was born around 1435, became a master in Ghent in 1467 and died in 1482. Hus's earliest works include several images of the Madonna and Child, distinguished by the lyrical aspect of the image (Philadelphia, Museum of Art, and Brussels, Museum), and the painting “St. Anne, Mary and Child and Donor” (Brussels, Museum). Developing the findings of Rogier van der Weyden, Hus sees in composition not so much a way of harmonious organization of what is depicted, but a means for concentration and revealing the emotional content of the scene. A person is remarkable to Hus only by the strength of his personal feelings. At the same time, Gus is attracted by tragic feelings. However, the image of Saint Genevieve (on the back of the Lamentation) indicates that, in search of naked emotion, Hugo van der Goes began to pay attention to its ethical significance. In the altar of Portinari, Hus tries to express his faith in the spiritual capabilities of man. But his art becomes nervous and tense. Artistic techniques Gusa is varied - especially when he needs to recreate the spiritual world of a person. Sometimes, as in conveying the reaction of the shepherds, he compares close feelings in a certain sequence. Sometimes, as in the image of Mary, the artist outlines common features experiences from which the viewer completes the feeling as a whole. Sometimes - in the images of a narrow-eyed angel or Margarita - he resorts to compositional or rhythmic techniques to decipher the image. Sometimes the very elusiveness of psychological expression turns into a means of characterization for him - this is how the reflection of a smile plays on the dry, colorless face of Maria Baroncelli. And pauses play a huge role - in spatial decision and in action. They provide an opportunity to mentally develop and complete the feeling that the artist outlined in the image. The character of Hugo van der Goes's images always depends on the role they are supposed to play as a whole. The third shepherd is really natural, Joseph is fully psychological, the angel to his right is almost unreal, and the images of Margaret and Magdalene are complex, synthetic and built on extremely subtle psychological gradations.

Hugo van der Goes always wanted to express and embody in his images the spiritual gentleness of a person, his inner warmth. But in essence, the artist’s last portraits indicate a growing crisis in Hus’s work, for his spiritual structure was generated not so much by an awareness of the individual qualities of a person, but by the tragic loss of the unity of man and the world for the artist. IN last job– “The Death of Mary” (Bruges, Museum) – this crisis results in the collapse of all the artist’s creative aspirations. The despair of the apostles is hopeless. Their gestures are meaningless. Floating in radiance, Christ, with his suffering, seems to justify their suffering, and his pierced palms are turned towards the viewer, and a figure of indefinite size violates the large-scale structure and sense of reality. It is also impossible to understand the extent of the reality of the apostles’ experience, for they all have the same feeling. And it’s not so much theirs as it is the artist’s. But its bearers are still physically real and psychologically convincing. Similar images will be revived later, when at the end of the 15th century in Dutch culture a hundred-year tradition came to its end (in Bosch). A strange zigzag forms the basis of the composition of the picture and organizes it: the seated apostle, the only one motionless, looking at the viewer, tilted from left to right, the prostrate Mary from right to left, Christ floating from left to right. And the same zigzag in the color scheme: the figure of the seated person is associated with Mary in color, the one lying on a dull blue cloth, in a robe also blue, but of the utmost, extreme blue, then - the ethereal, immaterial blue of Christ. And all around are the colors of the apostles’ robes: yellow, green, blue - infinitely cold, clear, unnatural. Feeling in “The Assumption” is naked. It leaves no room for hope or humanity. At the end of his life, Hugo van der Goes entered a monastery; his very last years were overshadowed by mental illness. Apparently, in these biographical facts one can see a reflection of the tragic contradictions that defined the master’s art. Hus's work was known and appreciated, and it attracted attention even outside the Netherlands. Jean Clouet the Elder (Master of Moulins) was greatly influenced by his art, Domenico Ghirlandaio knew and studied the Portinari altarpiece. However, his contemporaries did not understand him. Dutch art steadily leaned towards a different path, and isolated traces of the influence of Hus’s work only highlight the strength and prevalence of these other trends. They appeared most fully and consistently in the works of Hans Memling.

Earthly vanity, triptych, central panel,

Hell, left panel of the triptych "Earthly Vanities",
1485, Museum fine arts, Strasbourg

Hans Memling, apparently born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt am Main, in 1433 (died in 1494), the artist received excellent training from Rogier and, having moved to Bruges, gained wide fame there. Already relatively early works reveal the direction of his quest. The principles of light and sublime received from him a much more secular and earthly meaning, and everything earthly - a certain ideal elation. An example is the altar with the Madonna, saints and donors (London, National Gallery). Memling strives to preserve the everyday appearance of his real heroes and bring his ideal heroes closer to them. The sublime principle ceases to be an expression of certain pantheistically understood general world forces and turns into a natural spiritual property of man. The principles of Memling’s work emerge more clearly in the so-called Floreins-Altar (1479; Bruges, Memling Museum), the main stage and the right wing of which are essentially free copies of the corresponding parts of Rogier’s Munich altar. He decisively reduces the size of the altar, cuts off the top and side parts of Rogier's composition, reduces the number of figures and, as it were, brings the action closer to the viewer. The event loses its majestic scope. The images of the participants lose their representativeness and acquire private features, the composition is a shade of soft harmony, and the color, while maintaining purity and transparency, completely loses Rogirov’s cold, sharp sonority. It seems to tremble with light, clear shades. Even more characteristic is the “Annunciation” (circa 1482; New York, Lehman collection), where Rogier’s scheme is used; The image of Mary is given the features of soft idealization, the angel is significantly genre-dressed, and the interior items are painted with Van Eyck-like love. At the same time, motifs of the Italian Renaissance - garlands, putti, etc. - are increasingly penetrating Memling’s work, and the compositional structure is becoming more measured and clear (triptych with “Madonna and Child, Angel and Donor”, ​​Vienna). The artist tries to erase the line between the concrete, burgherly mundane principle and the idealizing, harmonious one.

Memling's art attracted the close attention of the masters of the northern provinces. But they were also interested in other features - those that were associated with the influence of Huss. The northern provinces, including Holland, lagged behind the southern ones in that period both economically and in spiritually. Early Dutch painting usually did not go beyond the late medieval and provincial template, and the level of its craft never rose to the artistry of the Flemish artists. Only in the last quarter of the 15th century did the situation change thanks to the art of Hertgen tot sint Jans. He lived in Haarlem, with the Johannite monks (to which he owes his nickname - sint Jans means Saint John) and died young - twenty-eight years old (born in Leiden (?) around 1460/65, died in Haarlem in 1490-1495 ). Hertgen vaguely sensed the anxiety that worried Hus. But, without rising to his tragic insights, he discovered the soft charm of simple human feeling. He is close to Gus with his interest in the inner, spiritual world person. Among Hertgen's major works is an altarpiece painted for the Johannites of Harlem. The right wing, now sawn on both sides, has survived from it. Its inner side represents a large multi-figure scene of mourning. Gertgen achieves both tasks set by the time: conveying warmth, humaneness of feeling and creating a vitally convincing narrative. The latter is especially noticeable on the outside of the door, where the burning of the remains of John the Baptist by Julian the Apostate is depicted. The participants in the action are endowed with exaggerated character, and the action is divided into a number of independent scenes, each of which is presented with vivid observation. Along the way, the master creates, perhaps, one of the first European art new time of group portraits: built on the principle of simple combination portrait characteristics, it anticipates the work of the 16th century. His “Family of Christ” (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), presented in a church interior, interpreted as a real spatial environment, provides a lot for understanding Geertgen’s work. The foreground figures remain significant, not showing any feelings, maintaining their everyday appearance with calm dignity. The artist creates images that are perhaps the most burgher in nature in the art of the Netherlands. At the same time, it is significant that Gertgen understands tenderness, sweetness and some naivety not as outwardly characteristic signs, but as certain properties of a person’s spiritual world. And this merging of the burgher sense of life with deep emotionality is an important feature of Gertgen’s work. It is no coincidence that he did not give the spiritual movements of his heroes a sublime, universal character. It’s as if he deliberately prevents his heroes from becoming exceptional. Because of this, they do not seem individual. They have tenderness and have no other feelings or extraneous thoughts; the very clarity and purity of their experiences makes them far from everyday life. However, the resulting ideality of the image never seems abstract or artificial. These features distinguish one of the best works artist, “Christmas” (London, National Gallery), a small painting that conceals feelings of excitement and surprise.
Gertgen died early, but the principles of his art did not remain in obscurity. However, the Master of the Braunschweig diptych (“Saint Bavo”, Braunschweig, Museum; “Christmas”, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and some other anonymous masters who are closest to him, who are closest to him, did not so much develop Hertgen’s principles as give them the character of a widespread standard. Perhaps the most significant among them is the Master of Virgo inter virgines (named after the painting of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum depicting Mary among the holy virgins), who gravitated not so much to the psychological justification of emotion, but to the sharpness of its expression in small, rather everyday and sometimes almost deliberately ugly figures ( "Entombment", St. Louis, Museum; "Lamentation", Liverpool; "Annunciation", Rotterdam). But also. his work is more evidence of the exhaustion of a centuries-old tradition than an expression of its development.

A sharp decline in the artistic level is also noticeable in the art of the southern provinces, whose masters were increasingly inclined to be carried away by insignificant everyday details. More interesting than the others is the very narrative Master of the Legend of St. Ursula, who worked in Bruges in the 80-90s of the 15th century (“The Legend of St. Ursula”; Bruges, Convent of the Black Sisters), the unknown author of portraits of the Baroncelli spouses who are not devoid of skill (Florence, Uffizi), and also a very traditional Bruges Master of the legend of St. Lucia (Altar of St. Lucia, 1480, Bruges, Church of St. James, also polyptych, Tallinn, Museum). The formation of empty, petty art at the end of the 15th century is the inevitable antithesis of the quest of Huss and Hertgen. The man has lost main support his worldview - faith in the harmonious and favorable order of the universe. But if the common consequence of this was only the impoverishment of the previous concept, then a closer look revealed threatening and mysterious features in the world. To answer the insoluble questions of the time, late medieval allegories, demonology, and gloomy predictions of the Holy Scriptures were used. In conditions of increasing acute social contradictions and difficult conflicts arose the art of Bosch.

Hieronymus van Aken, nicknamed Bosch, was born in 's-Hertogenbosch (died there in 1516), that is, away from the main art centers Netherlands. His early works are not without a hint of some primitiveness. But already they strangely combine a sharp and disturbing sense of the life of nature with cold grotesqueness in the depiction of people. Bosch responds to the trend contemporary art- with its craving for the real, with its concretization of the image of a person, and then - the reduction of its role and significance. He takes this tendency to a certain extent. In Bosch's art satirical or, better said, sarcastic images of the human race appear. This is his “Operation to remove the stones of stupidity” (Madrid, Prado). The operation is performed by a monk - and here an evil smile appears at the clergy. But the one to whom it is done looks intently at the viewer, and this gaze makes us involved in the action. Sarcasm grows in Bosch’s work; he imagines people as passengers on the ship of fools (the painting and drawing for it are in the Louvre). He turns to folk humor - and under his hands it takes on a dark and bitter shade.
Bosch comes to affirm the gloomy, irrational and base nature of life. He not only expresses his worldview, his sense of life, but gives it a moral and ethical assessment. "Haystack" is one of Bosch's most significant works. In this altar, a naked sense of reality is fused with allegory. The haystack alludes to the old Flemish proverb: “The world is a haystack: and everyone takes from it what they can grab”; people kiss in plain sight and play music between an angel and some devilish creature; fantastic creatures pull the cart, and the pope, the emperor, and ordinary people joyfully and obediently follow it: some run ahead, rush between the wheels and die, crushed. The landscape in the distance is not fantastic or fabulous. And above everything - on a cloud - is a small Christ with his hands raised. However, it would be wrong to think that Bosch gravitates towards the method of allegorical likenings. On the contrary, he strives to ensure that his idea is embodied in the very essence of artistic decisions, so that it appears before the viewer not as an encrypted proverb or parable, but as a generalizing unconditional way of life. With a sophistication of imagination unfamiliar to the Middle Ages, Bosch populates his paintings with creatures that bizarrely combine various animal forms, or animal forms with objects of the inanimate world, placing them in obviously incredible relationships. The sky turns red, birds equipped with sails fly through the air, monstrous creatures crawl across the face of the earth. Fish with horse legs open their mouths, and next to them are rats, carrying on their backs living wooden snags from which people hatch. The horse's croup turns into a giant jug, and a tailed head sneaks somewhere on thin bare legs. Everything crawls and everything is endowed with sharp, scratching forms. And everything is infected with energy: every creature - small, deceitful, tenacious - is engulfed in an angry and hasty movement. Bosch gives these phantasmagoric scenes the greatest persuasiveness. He abandons the image of the action unfolding in the foreground and extends it to the whole world. He imparts to his multi-figure dramatic extravaganzas an eerie tone in its universality. Sometimes he introduces a dramatization of a proverb into the picture - but there is no humor left in it. And in the center he places a small defenseless figurine of St. Anthony. Such, for example, is the altar with “The Temptation of St. Anthony” on the central door made of Lisbon Museum. But then Bosch shows an unprecedentedly acute, naked sense of reality (especially in the scenes on the outer doors of the mentioned altar). In Bosch's mature works the world is limitless, but its spatiality is different - less rapid. The air seems clearer and damper. This is how “John on Patmos” is written. On the reverse side of this painting, where scenes of the martyrdom of Christ are depicted in a circle, amazing landscapes are presented: transparent, clean, with wide river spaces, high skies and others - tragic and intense (“Crucifixion”). But the more persistently Bosch thinks about people. He tries to find an adequate expression of their life. He resorts to the form of a large altar and creates a strange, phantasmagoric grandiose spectacle of the sinful life of people - the “Garden of Delights”.

The artist's latest works strangely combine the fantasy and reality of his previous works, but at the same time they are characterized by a feeling of sad reconciliation. Clots of evil creatures that previously triumphantly spread throughout the entire field of the picture are scattered. Separate, small, they still hide under a tree, appear from quiet river streams, or run along deserted hills overgrown with grass. But they decreased in size and lost activity. They no longer attack humans. And he (still Saint Anthony) sits between them - reads, thinks (“Saint Anthony”, Prado). Bosch was not interested in the thought of one person’s position in the world. Saint Anthony in his previous works is defenseless, pitiful, but not lonely - in fact, he is deprived of that share of independence that would allow him to feel lonely. Now the landscape relates specifically to one person, and in Bosch’s work the theme of man’s loneliness in the world arises. 15th century art ends with Bosch. Bosch's work completes this stage of pure insights, then intense searches and tragic disappointments.
But the trend personified by his art was not the only one. No less symptomatic is another trend, associated with the work of a master of an immeasurably smaller scale - Gerard David. He died late - in 1523 (born around 1460). But, like Bosch, he closed the 15th century. Already his early works(“Annunciation”; Detroit) – prosaically realistic; works from the very end of the 1480s (two paintings on the plot of the trial of Cambyses; Bruges, Museum) reveal a close connection with Bouts; better than others are compositions of a lyrical nature with a developed, active landscape environment (“Rest on the Flight to Egypt”; Washington, National Gallery). But the impossibility for the master to go beyond the boundaries of the century is most clearly visible in his triptych with the “Baptism of Christ” (early 16th century; Bruges, Museum). The closeness and miniature nature of the painting seems to be in direct conflict with the large scale of the painting. Reality in his vision is devoid of life, emasculated. Behind the intensity of the color there is neither spiritual tension nor a sense of the preciousness of the universe. The enamel style of the painting is cold, self-contained and devoid of emotional purpose.

The 15th century in the Netherlands was a time of great art. By the end of the century it had exhausted itself. New historical conditions, the transition of society to another stage of development caused new stage in the evolution of art. It originated from the beginning of the 16th century. But in the Netherlands, with the original combination of the secular principle with religious criteria in assessing life phenomena, characteristic of their art, which comes from the van Eycks, with the inability to perceive a person in his self-sufficient greatness, outside the questions of spiritual communion with the world or with God - in the Netherlands there is a new era inevitably had to come only after the strongest and most grave crisis of the entire previous worldview. If in Italy High Renaissance was a logical consequence of Quattrocento art, there was no such connection in the Netherlands. The transition to a new era turned out to be especially painful, since it largely entailed the denial of previous art. In Italy, a break with medieval traditions occurred as early as the 14th century, and the art of the Italian Renaissance maintained the integrity of its development throughout the Renaissance. In the Netherlands the situation was different. Usage medieval heritage in the 15th century made it difficult to apply established traditions in the 16th century. For Dutch painters, the line between the 15th and 16th centuries turned out to be associated with a radical change in their worldview.

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Flemish painting is one of classical schools in the history of fine arts. Anyone interested in classical drawing has heard this phrase, but what is behind such a noble name? Could you, without hesitation, identify several features of this style and name the main names? In order to more confidently navigate the halls major museums and be a little less shy about the distant 17th century, you need to know this school.

History of the Flemish School

The 17th century began with an internal split in the Netherlands due to religious and political struggle for the internal freedom of the state. This led to a split in cultural sphere. The country splits into two parts, southern and northern, whose painting begins to develop in different directions. Southerners who remained in the Catholic faith under Spanish rule become representatives Flemish school, while northern artists art critics refer to Dutch school.

Representatives of the Flemish school of painting continued the traditions of their older Italian colleagues-artists of the Renaissance: Raphael Santi, Michelangelo Buonarroti who paid great attention to religious and mythological themes. Moving along a familiar path, supplemented by inorganic, crude elements of realism, Dutch artists could not create outstanding works of art. The stagnation continued until he stood up at the easel Peter Paul Rubens(1577-1640). What was so amazing that this Dutchman could bring to art?

Famous master

Rubens' talent was able to breathe life into the painting of the southerners, which was not very remarkable before him. Closely familiar with heritage Italian masters, the artist continued the tradition of turning to religious themes. But, unlike his colleagues, Rubens was able to harmoniously weave features into classical plots own style, gravitating towards the richness of colors, the depiction of nature filled with life.

From the artist’s paintings, as if from an open window, it seems to be pouring sunlight (« Last Judgment", 1617). Unusual solutions for constructing a composition of classical episodes from the Holy Scriptures or pagan mythology attracted attention to the new talent among his contemporaries, and still do. Such innovation looked fresh in comparison with the gloomy, muted shades of the paintings of his Dutch contemporaries.

Characteristic feature steel and models by a Flemish artist. Plump fair-haired ladies, painted with interest without inappropriate embellishment, often became central heroines paintings by Rubens. Examples can be found in the paintings “The Judgment of Paris” (1625), "Susanna and the Elders" (1608), "Venus in front of the mirror"(1615), etc.

In addition, Rubens provided influence on the formation of the landscape genre. He began to develop in the painting of Flemish artists to the main representative of the school, but it was the work of Rubens that set the main features of national landscape painting, reflecting the local color of the Netherlands.

Followers

Rubens, who quickly became famous, soon found himself surrounded by imitators and students. The master taught them to use folk characteristics locality, color, and perhaps glorify unusual human beauty. This attracted spectators and artists. Followers tried their hand at different genres- from portraits ( Gaspare De Caine, Abraham Janssens) to still lifes (Frans Snyders) and landscapes (Jan Wildens). Household painting Flemish school originally performed Adrian Brouwer And David Teniers Jr.

One of Rubens' most successful and notable students was Anthony Van Dyck(1599 - 1641). His author's style developed gradually, at first completely subordinated to imitation of his mentor, but over time he became more careful with paints. The student had a penchant for gentle, muted shades in contrast to the teacher.

Van Dyck's paintings make it clear that he did not have a strong inclination to build complex compositions, volumetric spaces with heavy figures, which distinguished his teacher's paintings. The gallery of the artist’s works is filled with single or paired portraits, ceremonial or intimate, which speaks of the author’s genre priorities that are different from Rubens.