Everything Else: The underpinnings and characteristics of the Early Netherlandish painting style

After developing the historical context for Early Netherlandish painting, I now turn to a discussion of the underlying movement. What exactly is Early Netherlandish painting? According to artandpopularculture.com:

Early Netherlandish painting (also known as Flemish Primitive or Late Gothic) refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th and early 16th century Northern Renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian centers of Bruges and Ghent. The period began approximately with the careers of Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the early 1420s and continued at least to the death of Gerard David in 1523. The end of the period is disputed, many scholars extend it to the death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1569, or to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568, or to the start of the 17th century.

I will use the 1420 - 1523 dates as the frame for this post.

Home of Early Netherlandish Art
A number of factors dictated that Flanders be the center of Netherlandish art. First, Bruges was the favored residence of the Dukes of Burgundy during their 15th-century rule. In 1446 the large court was based in Brussels but the duke traveled extensively, resulting in patronage being widely distributed. The potential for patronage attracted many talented artists. For example, Bruges was home to van Eyck (appointed Court Painter by Philip the Good), Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, and Gerard David while Rogier van der Weyden provided services to the Burgundian court at Brussels. Both Philip the Good (1419 - 1467) and Charles the Bold (1467 - 1477) were celebrated art patrons.

Portrait of a Man (Self-Portrait?)
Jan van Eyck, 1433

Second, Flanders was the most urbanized region of northern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries and the nodal point for merchants from England, the Baltic, Italy, and France (Dr. Andrew Murray, Introduction to Fifteenth-century Flanders, Smarthistory, 8/23/17).

Third, Flanders had a thriving domestic economy. Wool was the fundamental commodity at that time and the best wool came from England. The cloth towns of Flanders -- Bruges, Lille, Bergues -- were closely linked to the English raw wool which was spun into yarn and woven into cloth by the highly skilled resident craftspeople. Dyeing and fulling operations were also conducted in these towns. This cloth was either sold in Bruges or exported to other European cities.

The dynamism of the urban environment (especially in the towns of Bruges and Ghent), plus the domestic and trade economies, served as the perfect crucible for the flowering of artistic production:

Newly wealthy merchants became patrons of art
Being at a trade hub made it easier to procure raw materials and ship finished goods out
Urbanization allowed for the attraction of skilled craftsmen who could power the workshops that were critical to the production of work at scale.

Transition Zone
Let us travel back in time to the transition between the International Gothic and Early Netherlandish styles. The Limbourg brothers (three of them) were manuscript illustrators who worked for Philip the Bold and, after his death in 1404, his brother, John, Duke of Berry. Classic examples of their work are an illustration of the Bible (Bible moralisée) and the books of hours (Belles Heures (1405 - 1409) and Très Riches Heures du duc Berry (unfinished in their lifetime)).The latter of these books of hours is considered the greatest example of the International Gothic style in an illuminated manuscript. The brothers were the first to render landscape scenes with great accuracy (see picture below) and rendered elements in minute detail, characteristics which would become defining characteristics of the Early Netherlandish movement.

Limbourg Brothers
Très Riches Heures du Duc Berry
1409 -1549

Another key transition figure was Melchior Broederlam, court painter for Philip the Bold. One of the few works directly attributable to him are the Dijon Panels (shown below). The panels display International Gothic (and in the case of the left panel, Romanesque) sensibilities but also display naturalistic landscapes, utilize light and shadow to create a sense of depth, and provide a realistic, folksy depiction of Joseph. Further, these panels are painted with oil. These panels, painted in the final year of the 14th century, are truly a portal into the world of the early Netherlandish movement.

Early Netherlandish Period

The work of Jan van Eyck in the 1420s signaled the beginning of the Early Netherlandish period. Great names in this period included Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, Petreus Christus, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, and Gerard David but, by far, the most prominent of these was Jan van Eyck, one of the earliest.

According to the History of Art Research Portal, what was painted did not change much. As in the Gothic era, religious topics on wood panels dominated along with standalone portraits or portraits woven into religious scene. Examples of these two subjects are shown in the charts below.

What did change, however, was how the subjects were painted, as well as how the audience was addressed. The "Eyckian" mode of painting was characterized by (hoaportal.york.ac.uk):

New representational effects achieved by particular blends of oil and pigments applied in specific ways to the panel surface
Attention to light, shadow, texture, and spatial setting
An all-encompassing impression of naturalism permeates the entire image
A sudden disappearance of the gold backdrop on panels and replacement by naturalistic interior or exterior settings.

Vasari, in his writings on the great artists, had credited van Eyck with the discovery of oil painting but that is inaccurate. Its beginnings were recorded as far back as the 12th century but van Eyck's use of the medium on panel contributed to the acclaim of his paintings and the eventual widespread adoption of oil as the medium of choice across Europe in the 16th century. The main attributes of oil paint is shown in the charts below.

The leading artists of this period sought to "make the painted image vividly present and to render the unseen palpable." Works by masters such as van Eyck and van der Weyden were "prized for their remarkable qualities of versimilitude, their technical and coloristic virtuosity, and their heightened expressive power."

After the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, many of the Netherlandish artists lost their patronage. The city of Antwerp began to compete with Bruges and Brussels economically as did the Antwerp-focused Northern Mannerists as a competing painting style.

I will cover the Antwerp Mannerists in a future post. Below please find some Early Netherlandish paintings I found at the National Gallery in Washington when I visited there for the Tintoretto exhibit.